Lance Wiffen is at the wheel of his luxury motor cruiser in the middle of Port Phillip Bay while an enthusiastic foreign tour group swills champagne and gulps down raw mussels on the deck.
But this is more than a pleasure cruise.
The veteran fisherman is out to educate the wider public about the virtues of mussels and the sustainability of Victoria’s farmed mussel industry.
“The people of Victoria own this water; the people of Australia own this water; we just lease it off them so it’s important that they’re happy with what we’re doing,” Mr Wiffen said.
He has has become the unofficial ambassador of Victoria’s burgeoning mussel industry.
Mussels are grown in the waters off Melbourne. (ABC Landline)
His tourism venture has involved taking visitors around the bay to enjoy local seafood and wines, and see mussel leases up close.
“So we love taking them out and they’re pleasantly surprised when they find out how environmentally good mussels are,” Mr Wiffen said.
Halfway into the cruise he weighed anchor beside one of his leases and hauled up rope lines teeming with mussels and other marine life.
The ropes were part of a vast underwater network of leases across the bay which provided the shellfish with a habitat and the mussel farmers with the ability to haul in the mussels for harvest after about a year.
The blue mussel, a native of the region, was long regarded as little better than fish bait.
Mr Wiffen has worked hard to elevate it to gourmet delicacy served in some of Australia’s finest restaurants.
“I couldn’t think of one celebrity chef that hasn’t cooked mussels on the telly,” Mr Wiffen said.
“They’ve all done a wonderful job for our industry.”
Population protection
His business partner, Phil Lamb, said while mussels were plucked from the wild, the vast majority began their life in a hatchery.
Phil Lamb inspects a tank of mussel larvae. (ABC News: Tim Lee)
“We wanted to be masters of our own destiny and relying on wild caught mussel spat is intermittent and unreliable,” Mr Lamb said.
There was a dramatic decline in the amount of mussel larvae, known as spat, in the bay in about 2000.
Mussel farmers had previously relied on scooping up buckets of seawater laden with the microscopic larvae, raising it in tanks and releasing it back into the bay until the shellfish were mature enough to harvest.
“So we wanted to establish a hatchery where we could actually control the production of our spat, then as we grew our markets, we could ensure that we could supply those markets,” Mr Lamb said.
By replicating natural spawning conditions the hatchery has managed to produce millions of shellfish annually.
They have been fed a special algal mixture until big enough to attach to special ropes, then deposited in the nutrient-rich waters of the bay until they reached harvestable size.
Sixteen-day-old mussel larvae seen under a microscope. (ABC News: Tim Lee)
Future mussels
Mr Wiffen said he wanted to see the area of sea leases expanded to meet growing demand.
His sentiment was shared by Peter Lillie of Yumbah Aquaculture.
His business has moved to double its 90 hectares of sea lease that has produced 500 tonnes of mussels a year.
Peter Lillie wants to see more mussel leases in Port Phillip Bay. (ABC News: Tim Lee)
While most mussels were sold live in their shells, Yumbah has started selling a pre-cooked product to provide a longer use-by date.
“We have been pioneering a short-cooked product which gives us a 73-day shelf life,” Mr Lillie said.
The company has exported to a range of Asian countries.
Mr Lillie said he hoped to soon send the shellfish to China.
“Well they’re low in fat, high in protein, selenium and other things like that, you can’t beat them,” he said.
The blue mussel is native to Port Phillip Bay. (ABC News: Tim Lee)
Mr Wiffen said because mussels were filter feeders, they helped to avert environmental problems such as algal blooms.
He also said they stored carbon in their shells.
“So through a process of bio-mineralisation, we’re actually considered a carbon sink,” he said.
“The more mussels we grow in Port Phillip Bay the better it is for Port Phillip Bay.
“Some scientists are saying that mussels could be the food that feed the world going forward because the population is going to need to eat something and where can they get high protein from that’s not damaging the environment.”
