Aquaculture, like any other type of farming, requires stocks that perform well, but many fish farmers still rely on wild-caught broodstock of unknown quality. To develop elite broodstock for the New Zealand aquaculture industry, NIWA has established selective breeding programmes for three new species: kingfish, hāpuku and pāua (abalone).

Contamination of shellfish by faecal microbes is a health hazard to the consumer and so is of particular concern to the commercial producer. NIWA scientists have developed a model to predict shellfish contamination using a ‘neural network’ – a tool that has become increasingly popular for predicting the behaviour of complex systems.