Guidance for identifying appropriate water quality, benthic, and hydrodynamic effects monitoring for non-fed aquaculture in the Waikato region

Report: TR 2023/14

Authors: Hilke Giles

This document provides practical guidance for consent holders, science providers, and Waikato Regional Council (WRC) to identify appropriate monitoring of water quality, benthic, and hydrodynamic effects of non-fed aquaculture, such as shellfish spat catching and on-growing, and seaweed farming. These effects are generally well understood and are of relatively low risk to the coastal environment.

The monitoring framework is designed for the general scale and type of non-fed aquaculture present in the Waikato CMA at the time of preparing the guidance but anticipates an increased scale of seaweed aquaculture. For marine farms outside this scope the guidance will still be informative but may not provide a complete set of monitoring requirements.

This guidance is not intended to be prescriptive. Instead, it provides a framework for identifying appropriate monitoring in the context of local environmental characteristics and sensitivities, and the nature and intensity of predicted effects from the marine farm.

This guidance can be used at any stage of a resource consent for non-fed aquaculture, including:

• To identify appropriate monitoring for a new commercial marine farm and develop a (draft) environmental monitoring plan (EMOP) to be submitted with a resource consent application for a new marine farm.
• To identify appropriate monitoring as part of a monitoring review, for example a review of the EMOP or consent conditions stipulating monitoring requirements.
• To support the identification of appropriate monitoring for a change or addition to an existing marine farm, such as a farm extension or change of species.
• To identify appropriate monitoring (within the confines of the applicable planning provisions) where an existing marine farm is seeking a renewal of its resource consent.

This guidance is non-statutory. While the monitoring framework presented in this guidance identifies monitoring ‘requirements’, in a resource consent compliance context, these represent recommendations only. Also, for existing consents to avoid any concerns or doubt, the existing consent conditions always prevail. Site- or farm-specific circumstances may require deviation from the identified monitoring requirements. The monitoring framework applies primarily to the identification of new or review of monitoring requirements for commercial aquaculture. Considerations for non-commercial and multi-trophic aquaculture as well as farm extensions are also provided.