A 2013 workshop Future proofing New Zealand’s shellfish aquaculture: Monitoring and adaptation to ocean acidification, brought together experts from government, the aquaculture industry and science organizations from the US and NZ to raise awareness of ocean acidification within the NZ aquaculture community, identify ways to protect the aquaculture industry and develop US-NZ scientific cooperation to address OA. Papers presented at the workshop and points raised during discussion are summarised.

With funding from Fisheries New Zealand and support from the Department of Conservation (DOC), we trialled attaching short-term (24 hours) suction-cup recording tags (DTAGs) to Hector’s dolphins in Te Koko-o-Kupe/Cloudy Bay.

We wanted to determine if DTAGs are a possible tool for monitoring this endangered species and could help answer research gaps identified by DOC’s Threat Management Plan and Research Strategy.

We found these suction-cup DTAGs had little to no impact on Hector’s dolphin behaviour.

We tagged 11 dolphins, and their tags stayed attached for 1.5 to 24 hours.

We gathered over 83 hours of data on this species, including the first ever three-dimensional recordings of Hector’s dolphin underwater, their night-time movements, and recordings of the different sounds they make and hear during a typical day.

Overall, such insights about these dolphins can influence how we manage them in relation to their various threats.

This report provides results for the 20th summer trawl survey of hoki, hake, ling, and associated species in the Sub-Antarctic carried out from 23 November to 23 December 2022. Seventy-four of the 80 planned phase one stations were completed; there was no time to carry out phase two.

When compared with the previous survey in 2020, biomass estimates in core strata (200–800 m depths) were up by 31% for hoki, up by 10% for ling, and down by 25% for hake. The precision target (coefficient of variation) of 15% was met for hoki and ling but slightly exceeded for hake.

The hoki length and age distributions were mainly adult fish with few 1+ fish (2021 year class, fish less than 45 cm) and few 2+ fish (2020 year class, 45–55 cm). The hake and ling length and age distributions were broad, with few juvenile fish.

The acoustic estimate of midwater fish abundance was lower than that in 2020 but still above the average of the time series.

A total of 188 species or species groups were caught, of which 88 different species of fish and squid (29 560 fish) were measured, and 12 320 fish were individually weighed during the survey.