The Paua Farm

 

When you enter the Paua farm the first thing you will notice are the innovative dumping buckets.

Mike spent months trying to work out how to make a wave in the tanks, to recreate the constantly turbulent waters he knew Paua would thrive on. His unique idea came about when travelling to Hanmer Spring’s thermal hot pools where he noticed an arrangement of fun dumping buckets pouring water over the excited children playing below.

This is when the magic happened and Mike knew somehow they had to re-create that same dumping water motion in their Paua farm. This bucket drop allows the oxygenated water to be pushed past the gills of the Paua while at the same time keeping the food moving around the paua and cleaning the tanks. For the paua, it’s as if they’re living in the constant currents from Cook Strait.

Every 3 days Mike and Antonia feed the Paua Macrocystis Seaweed and Bull kelp. The baby paua love being fed and will often move about and twist in the tanks to show their excitement, as they smell the seaweed heading their way.