To make ends meet, and alleviate writing "amazingly dull" papers on fishery matters, he moonlighted as a commercial diver for a mussel farm.

The remaining 20% is caught using fibrous ropes which are suspended in the sea near mussel farms.

In the year 2000 there were 3000 hectares of mussel farms and proposals for another 30,000 ha.

With more recent technological developments larger mussel farms can now be constructed further offshore and in more exposed waters.

Trialling of mussel farms began in the Marlborough Sounds in the late 1960s.

Nearly a million pounds a year are produced by what is said to be the oldest mussel farm in the United States.

Cribba Sound is famed for the quality of mussels produced at the mussel farms located there.

By 2006 there were over 900 mussel farms in New Zealand covering about 6500 hectares, and worth about $224 million in annual sales.

If successful, a new seaweed growing industry could spread to the mussel farms in the Marlborough Sounds.

WE spent the afternoon weaving through mussel farms, which lace miles of the shoreline.