('COUNTRY CALENDAR' THEME) - The best of New Zealand's rural heartland ` Hyundai Country Calendar. www.able.co.nz Copyright Able 2025 - It does look like organised chaos. - NARRATOR: A battleground at the beach. - Oh, I don't like losing. - These tiny larvae are creating waves for the country's mussel industry and giving this family a chance to take on the world. - Put the work in and you reap what comes back. (PIANO MUSIC) - It's a late winter's afternoon, and Zarn Reichardt is off hunting. - We're heading out to the beach now. That wind's picked up a fair bit, so hopefully it'll be knocking that swell down. I've talked to the old man ` there's a bit of sign around, so we'll go out and see what we can find. - Armed with his 13-tonne truck and loader, the Far North's Mussel Man, the Kutai Guy, is heading for Ninety Mile Beach. - Hopefully we get out there as the tide falls, and we'll get into it. - Zarn and the ever-changing tides along this beach are old friends. He's been harvesting spat ` the tiny green-lipped mussel larvae ` since he was a boy. The goal is to capture the seaborne bounty ` worth its weight in gold to the mussel industry. - Almost a little bit nervous until we get into it, but once you're into it, it's not too bad. The mussel farmer always wants their spat, cos without the spat, they don't get to grow any mussels, so there's always that added pressure, but we try our best to get it. Ninety Mile Beach is the only place in the world where naturally, beach falls. - KIDS: Hi! - They call it 'beach-cast spats', so they're not hanging out lines to catch it. Mussels spawn down the west coast; the larvae floats up with the currents; larvae floating all across the water finds the seaweed; they join up, and as it washes up on Ninety Mile Beach, we collect it. - For now, though, it's a waiting game. Spat-laden seaweed had been spotted earlier in the day, but the swell is building, and that's pushed the tiny larvae back out to sea. But Zarn's mate Troy Denison has a secret weapon. He's determined to track down the elusive spat using a drone. - Hey, mate. How are you, mate? - Bit dark, is it? - Yeah, bit dark. Yeah. Wanna chuck the drone up and have a look? We went to school together, got up to a bit of mischief together, and now we're sort of working together with business. Great to work with your mates. It is still a bit murky, eh? Bit of a groundswell rolling like that, too. - It's still definitely pretty rough. - Might've just been plankton that I could see. You can spend a lot of time thinking that you can see something. You throw the drone up. If there's nothing there, you can carry on to the next bit and go and have a look. And then, if there is something there, you just know that you have to keep around that area and keep an eye on it. - Pretty hard to see today. That's real dirty, eh? - The frustration of the wait is starting to show. There are 13 spat harvesters that work Ninety Mile Beach; the atmosphere is competitive ` a mix of friendship and rivalry. Everyone is waiting. No one wants to give in and risk missing out. - So, how clean's the water? When you're out here looking, you're stuck out here so you can't really do anything else. Spat turns up down, you know, on the wharf in Coro or the South Island, and your farmer doesn't have it, well, you soon get a phone call, 'Where's mine?' So, you know, that's why we're out here on the hunt all the time. We're putting in the hours; we're searching, you know? There's times out here we don't get it. You're on general, Dan? - Yeah, mate, I'm on general. Doesn't seem like anything behind it yet. - Yeah, copy that. Still early in the tide, but hopefully something starts to show soon. It just makes it all worth it when it does turn up. - Zarn's dad, Sean, has spent his day patrolling the northern end of the beach, but the spat remains out of sight. - Seen anything down` up there? - Nah. Nah, bugger all, just a bit of rubbish. - Oh yeah, I jumped in the water down south, but it was just a big roll up. No finds on it. Are those boys out of the water now, Dan? - Yeah, bro, Trev here's got 'em parked back in the dunes. And yep, there ya go ` we've tipped the bucket out ` it's all junk, bro. - Ah, yeah. Copy that. Ah, well, I'll head back down south. Oh, well, we probably should head up that way. - Yeah, we better go and have a look. - Exactly two hours after high tide, the spat is finally falling. And just like that, the whole mood changes. It takes just minutes to get the machines into the water. - When you've been doing it for a while, you get used to it. We're getting a little bit. It's just starting to fall in. As the tide drops out, hopefully we get a bit more. The wind's quite cold, but that's to be expected. When I head out, I pretty much look at what the other machines are doing ` so if I look at a loader and they get a good bucket, I'll just go to where they are. We keep our buckets up off the sand just so we don't damage the pipi beds. The waves had a bit of punch behind them, but everyone out there's been doing it for a long time, you know. We're all pretty good at it. It definitely gets the heart rate up, but I think that's almost, you know, part of the job. If you do miss out or, you know, you're late, the heart still sinks. You still get that 'dammit' feeling, but you just try not to let those events happen too often. Pretty exciting ` I don't know how many other jobs in the world you get to drive around with machines in the water and on the beach and get a resource that's so valuable, so, yeah, pretty lucky, to be fair. Slow progress, but we're chipping away at it. We have to move around quite a bit to get a bit, but it's just part and parcel of the job. You can't have it good all the time. So, we'll continue to work patch by patch, bit by bit. And, you know, it all adds up to the freight at the end of the day. Weather-wise, it's been pretty good. Could've been a bit more spat, but you have your good days and your bad days, and that was not a bad day. - Throughout the day, the freshly harvested spat is ferried back to Zarn's headquarters, where the team works fast to keep this kaimoana alive. - Time is crucial for the survival of the tiny mussel larvae Zarn Reichardt has carefully plucked from Ninety Mile Beach in the Far North. Back at his base in Houhora, Zarn's working quickly to process the spat. - Sure enough, that wind had blown the tops off the waves and it was there. It was a bit of a battle, but we got a good 2 or 3 tonne on board, so it's a good start. It's good; it's big; farmers at this time of the year ` they want big mussels so it survives the winter and the cold water. - Zarn's wife, Michelle, and her sorting crew are cleaning up the spat-laden seaweed and putting it in 10-kilo bags, ready for transporting to Coromandel. - This is really nice spat to pack. It'll go out nice cos it's quite fine. Yeah, but sometimes we get some really messy stuff, and it takes hours and hours to pack, but this is pretty good. It's pretty clean. There's not much to take out, just the odd bit of long stuff. I've been doing it since I was little, pretty much. My kids were all my backpack babies. They'd be on my back and... just teaching them the ropes. - How ya getting on ` winning? - Yeah, we're winning. - Oh, that's good. - Getting there. - It's calmer than yesterday, so hopefully a bit more this afternoon. - Oh, yeah, that'll be good. - Zarn harvests spat on consignment to mussel farmers in the Coromandel and the Marlborough Sounds. The mussel farmers own the quota but leave it up to the experts to gather the valuable crop. - Zarn'll message me ` he'll be out the beach ` 'I need a crew.' We're very lucky to have some good people around us; they're here at a phone call. - We look forward to coming to work, and we're always just as happy when we leave ` just, you know, excited about the work we've just done, and we can't wait to come back. And that's` that's every time, even if it's been a 13-hour shift. (LAUGHS) - JJ and his partner arrived in the Far North a year ago. They work on the shelling crew and, this winter, have picked up a few extra shifts sorting spat. - We just couldn't get ahead. We were never happy; we were always struggling to put gas in our cars, and I think coming up here's sort of been a good reset. Small community, which is awesome. And there's a lot of old-school values here, especially work ethic. What I've seen from being with these guys is that they love bringing everyone in to have a piece of the pie, ultimately, and it works bloody well. - While he waits for the last of the tiny mussel larvae to be processed, Zarn and his 6-year-old, Rylan, get into one of their must-do jobs. - We started with the live mussels into Northland, just dipping our toe, really, and it sort of picked up loyal clientele customer base, and it grew from there. At the time, I had a little food trailer, and I was experimenting with the smoked mussels out of there, and they went really well. So, when it came time, I sold my Burger Bus trailer and put everything into the smoked mussel product and, yeah, gave it a good nudge. - The afternoon is winding down in the Far North, but for Zarn, his day is far from over. He and a mate have a nine-hour road trip ahead, driving through the night to deliver precious spat to his Coromandel mussel farmer. - We try and pull it out of the water and get it back into the water as quick as possible to reduce that mortality rate. As being a living species and a juvenile, time is of the essence. Spat's very demanding. When spat's around, that's sort of P1, and then mussels as well. So it's just a fine line of juggling it all, really. And the same thing, when it's time to get the work done, you've just gotta do it. - Taking turns to drive, Zarn's had a bit of sleep, but he's on a tight deadline. He has to be at the wharf on the outskirts of Coromandel township by 3am. - We've got 7� tonne on. We left Hauhora in the Far North last night, and we're on our way to Te Kouma and Coromandel, and we're just coming along the coast road now. We should be on the wharf, ready to unload in about... 30 minutes. (FORKLIFT BEEPS) We are just unloading our spat out of the truck, and there'll be three barges coming in ` 200 bags on each barge, so we're just getting it ready, so when they turn up, they're gone and they're on the water straight away. - Jake Bartrom and his family own Gulf Mussels and farm in the waters of the Coromandel. - The key thing here is the quality of the spat. So when you open up, the first thing you do is you smell it ` smells fresh; it's good. The spat actually has a scent. If you know what you're looking for, you can see it. It looks like pepper, really, I suppose. Big bits of ground pepper. You can tell that there's probably sort of 300,000 or 400,000 mussels-a-kilo in here. So, in this bag, there's around, sort of, four million mussels. It's a smell like nothing else, and, yeah, it just` it just smells` (LAUGHS) smells good. It sounds crazy. - It doesn't take Jake and Zarn long to repack the bags and get them loaded on to the barge. Pulling out just after 4am, the barge crew also has a big day ahead. From the wharf, it's an hour's steam out to the mussel farms in the Firth of Thames. - All good weather for it, eh, bro? - Yeah, bro, looking good today. Some nice calm weather to head down the coast... southwest. I mean, it's looking pretty good. - Ah, yeah, sweet. - By daybreak, the next generation of green-lipped mussels is being readied for its new home. Breaking news, Skinny Mobile has found a new way to keep prices low. They've digitally cloned their happiest customer, to make really cost-effective ads. I'm a real Skinny Mobile customer who loves them so much that I let them digitally clone me using A.I. Join me on Skinny today! Wow, what a heartwarming story about a telco that will do anything to keep prices low and customers happy. Wow, we are so happy. Get the Skinny! (MAN SHOUTS) (GENTLE GUITAR MUSIC) - It's another early start on the Firth of Thames, and the crew of the Gulf Mussels barge are well into their day. They're working the tides to return the spat caught in the Far North to the mineral-rich waters of the Coromandel. Sahn Povey has been on the crew for three years. - As I'm breaking it up and sprinkling it down the chute, the rope's catching it, and then the cotton's closing off that over the rope ` so the spat's all tied up into that cotton, and then it feeds out on to that wheel, then they tie it off to the backbone. And, um, we won't see it for a few months. Hopefully it grows. - The cotton stockings keep the tiny spat safe and break down naturally over time. - Six! Skipper Whakaaria-mai Poutini-Lawrence heads a tight team that processes the spat and harvests fully grown mussels year-round. - We're all family on this barge, like, I know every single one of them personally before we even started working here ` One! so we've got a definitely, like, a tight crew. It's pretty much a brotherhood. It's always a lot of laughs on here, a lot of, you know. Still getting the job done, but under` under some good high morale. - Well, I grew up in this area, but I was never really on the water until I started here. Growing up in Manaia, Coromandel, it's a part of your living here. Being Maori, we have a strong connection to the sea ` Tangaroa. Working with kaimoana, it's a good way to feed your whanau. And, um, it's a good way to be out here and see how this industry works. Top-notch job, I reckon ` better than stuck in four walls in an office. - Once attached, the mussels feed on plankton and need to survive temperature changes and tidal flows for up to three years before they're harvested. - Very seldom we get down here; we're still busy at that end. It's nice to see how big of an impact it does have. Like, you look around at all the boats everywhere and all the other companies, as well. It is just a big part of the industry, and without it, there would be no industry. - It's now early January, and back in the Far North, the first of the new season's mussels are being processed. - Today we've got about 35 bins. That's roughly around about 200 mussels, give or take their size. So, yeah, we've got a good` good busy day today. - Zarn has transported them back home, and Michelle has her crew in to prepare the green-lipped mussels for smoking. - When the muscles warm, it's easier to cut. Otherwise, if they cool down, they get a bit tough, so it makes it harder to shell. It slows us down quite a bit. - You can talk, joke, be an idiot as long as your hands keep moving and you keep shelling, cos, um, the mussels don't stop coming. - With the new season comes another special road trip for Zarn. - We are just about to pull into Moerewa, a small town in Northland, and the people here love their kutai. And they're awesome people as well. Everyone's sort of become whanau, eh? And you get to catch up with everyone, have a bit of banter. - Kia ora, Zarn. - Hey, bro, how are you? - I'm good. I'm glad for fortune. - Happy new year and all the rest. - You too, what you said, bro. - If we weren't bringing fresh, live mussels into communities like this, their access to their wild beds aren't there any more, so pretty much, this is the replacement for it. You all right? - Thank you for that. - Awesome. - Getting kutai's, uh, what we call MAF ` Maori After a Feed. - (LAUGHS) - So, yeah, we'll come for a feed of kutai. - ZARN: About a kilo of kai in that one, bro. - Look at that. - Rick Petera and Trish Wilson waste no time tasting their catch. - It's hard to find mussels where we live, even though we live on the beach, so... We gotta go right out and find them, so this is way better than going out there. - We love to get this amount so we can share it with others in our community. - Yeah, we have a lot of older people in our community ` a lot of retired people like myself ` and they can't get out to do that, so we'll take an order off them, and then we'll bring them home for them and distribute 'em out amongst them. Makes them happy; makes us happy. - Mmm. - With the empty mussel shells now being used to resurface the driveway, it's a sign for Zarn to fire up the smoker for the new season. It's been just over a year since Northland's Kutai Guy decided to scale up his operation. While the business is growing week by week, it still relies on Zarn's hands-on expertise. - We try and get as many as we can on a tray and sit them perfectly, because once they're smoked, they set in that shape. We use apple wood. We start it with manuka, then we use apple wood just because it's a bit softer. The smoke's not as harsh. Manuka can be quite strong, and we still want the flavour of the mussel to come through. We'll just monitor it very closely, and as soon as they're ready, we'll whip them out. These are looking absolutely outstanding. You can see everything's coloured evenly. If you pick them up they're still, like, moist, so that means they've got their weight. Like, their weight's still there; they're still gonna be soft; they're not gonna be over-dry and chewy ` these are the perfect smoke. (PEACEFUL GUITAR MUSIC) - Come, we're gonna climb up and have a race. - Michelle and Zarn always make time for family. Ninety Mile Beach has long been their big backyard, and these days, it's deeply entwined with their livelihoods and their passion for quality. - Come on and hold my hand. It's a lot of hard work, like, a lot of hours, and a lot of the time we don't see much of Zarn, but in the long term, it's all for them. Yep, we're just gonna see if we can find some pipis. It's pretty cool we're building something for them, for their future. - RYLAN: Oh, look! - Once you get used to the grind, you just persevere with it, and then you start seeing incremental small wins. Then, you keep getting traction; you keep gaining momentum. And sometimes you do get a little bit lost in the day-to-day, you know, battles, but when you sort of` sort of sit back and look how far you've come in the last year or even six months, you` sort of makes it all worth it. - It's a bit scary sometimes, but we've both been brought up with good work ethic, so... yeah, put the work in, and you reap what comes back. - Another one, Mum? I think that's gonna be like that pretty much forever, you know. - Mm. - You know, one day, if we get to, you know, exporting our product around the world would be amazing, but I just know there's a lot of work to get there, and that's still quite a way away. (PEACEFUL GUITAR MUSIC) ('COUNTRY CALENDAR' THEME) - Next time ` They farm for a living. - Farming is farming, and we do what we do, but the Arabian horses ` it's, like, something special; not only riding, but also breeding for other people. - The horse work they do for love. - There's no money involved. - (LAUGHS) No. - It's, uh... We do this cos we'd like to give something back. - That's next time on Hyundai Country Calendar.