The Dunedin Salmon Community Trust recently harvested its first batch of salmon eggs from fish which have returned to the Water of Leith to spawn.
The hatchery took delivery of 60,000 eggs from Kaitangata this week to add to 35,000 collected from the Water of Leith and 180,000 from the Rangitata River.
"They're the first eggs we've got from the Leith and they all came from just seven hens," hatchery co-ordinator Betty Mason-Palmer said.
"We'd like more of them to come back, and trap more of the returning fish for their eggs, but Dunedin doesn't have the gravelly rivers they like to spawn in."
The pink eggs, which are about the size of shirt buttons, are placed in troughs and fertilised, before developing into eyed ova in about six weeks.
"A lot of people who fish in the harbour don't know what goes on here. It's an amazing thing to watch.
"As soon as they start hatching, you get real excited. It's good fun."
The eggs would be released into the Water of Leith when they had developed into smolt of 7g to 8g, which would probably be about October.
"We try to stagger the release, so the water and temperature conditions are most favourable and before the predators, like barracouta, start coming in," Ms Mason-Palmer said.
"We've been encouraging school groups to come in, so they can see the whole life cycle. It's hands-on science."
Nearly 100,000 smolt have been released since the hatchery was re-established by a group of volunteers, on the site of a former sewage treatment plant, in 2008.
Another 15,000 smolt will be released into the Water of Leith tomorrow morning.
