Area 5 Paua Management Company (PauaMac 5) releases about 200,000 baby paua every year around the southern South Island from Otago Peninsula to Fiordland and Stewart Island as part of its research into the viability of releasing hatchery-reared paua into the wild.
Last week, eight divers released 39,000, 3-year-old paua into the commercial fishing area off the Otago Peninsula coast.
PauaMac 5 executive member Andrew Parkers said 11,000 of those paua, which ranged in size from 15mm to 70mm, were tagged and would be surveyed each year to assess their progress.
It was hoped the older paua (normally reseeding used 10mm-15mm paua) would provide good breeding stock in the future.
Mr Street was commissioned by PauaMac 5 to research the re-seeding project in the Catlins three and a-half years ago.
The Papatowai exercise had been successful in showing that if seedings were put in the right habitat - in shallow waters, under boulders - it did increase the abundance of the juvenile population very significantly, he said.
"They always made up about 50% of their own size group, and had similar behaviour to natural small paua."
The most recent inspection of the site showed the mean length of the released paua was 70mm, although there were far fewer in the habitat than previously, he said. It took about six years to grow to the minimum legal size of 125mm.
"While some degree of illegal gathering may have taken place, it is more likely that they have left this shallow water under-boulder habitat and moved to deeper water more open areas."
This was a natural sequence for small paua and left room for other young paua to move into the shallow areas under boulders where the light-sensitive molluscs flourished, he said.
The next step for the study was to take a look in deeper waters and tag the smaller, under-boulder paua.
From now on, it would become harder to track the hatchery-reared paua because in deeper water they would be more difficult to locate as marine growths such as algae would tend to cover the original markings, Mr Street said.
PauaMac 5 chairman Storm Stanley said details of growth rates from projects like Mr Street's, along with monitoring survival rates, was helping the industry to discover if reseeding on a large scale would be economical and sustainable.
"It looks very promising from the studies being done."
