The Marianvale Blue Murray Cod Farm on Tiyces Lane at Carrick will soon be producing up to 200 tonnes of cod per year to Australian and Asian fish markets and restaurants.

Farm manager Roger Camm said Marianvale Blue employed six staff, and outlined that the production of the fish would contribute $3.5 – 4 million to the region’s economy.

Local trades people were also used to build the site.

The Minister went on a tour of the site with Mayor Geoff Kettle and delegates and staff from both Marianvale Blue and the Department of Primary Industries (DPI).

To keep the fish in optimum condition, they are kept in large tanks, with the water at a regulated temperature of between 18 and 24 degrees Celsius.

Each tank is automatically fed using a computer system, and the water used is sourced from a bore near the property. Mr Camm maintained that throughout the farming process, the fish are never out of the water or touched by human hands.

There is also a strong emphasis on fish health and husbandry, with the fish usually tested every two days to check for any disease or anomalies.

“If the temperature or PH levels drop, or if anything else goes wrong, the guys are straight on the phone to tell me, and it gets fixed,” he said.

They fish are processed using a vacuum pump and grading system, which measures both the width and the weight of the fish.

The grader then pumps the fish back to their correct tank through a series of large plastic pipes that spray the fish at regular intervals to keep them moist.

The market for the fish is predominantly within Australia, with some of the fish going to all the top restaurants in Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra.

He said that the feedback they were receiving was excellent, and that they are hoping to break into the Asian market in the near future, with strong interest from markets and restaurants in Hong Kong, China and Thailand.

“We’re still sorting out the logistics of getting the fish over there at the moment,” he said.

“But for the Australian market, the fish are taken live to the restaurants, the patron picks out the fish that they require, and then the customer can more or less have the fish cooked in front of them,” Mr Camm said.

Murray Cod has a rich history in Australia, with the industry really booming from about 1915 onwards, where it was commercially fished right throughout Victoria and much of southern NSW until 1935.

But unfortunately by 1935 the rivers were ‘fished out’, and for a period of about 10 years, Murray Cod was on the endangered list. Mr Camm said that the Melbourne Fish Markets kept good records of the amount of fish that was caught in the early years.

“Melbourne Markets had at least 1000 tonnes of cod, (approximately 20 tonnes a week) going through the markets in 1918, which is a huge amount, especially back then,” he said.

Minister Hodgkinson said that cod was a vital part of not only the region’s economy but also to Australia as a whole.

“This is just a fantastic facility, and is great for the sustainability of Murray cod,” she said.

“It’s great for Australians who want to eat fish, and it’s also fantastic for Goulburn to have a facility like this associated with the city. I think this is probably the largest single species aquaculture facility that I’ve been into in the last couple of years. It is enormous, and producing 200 tonnes of cod a year is no small endeavour. Fish and aquaculture is a wonderful sustainable resource, that not only can be used to feed hungry mouths in NSW and Australia, but into the Asian market in countries such as Malaysia and China,” she said.

“This is where Marianvale want to go. They want to be producing iconic Murray cod fish to the world, and I congratulate them for that.”