Mark Webb is leaving lakes and rivers for the ocean.
The 40-year Fish & Game officer at the Central South Island Fish & Game Council and its predecessor the South Canterbury Acclimatisation Society, will retire at the end of this month.
As well as leaving the job, Mr Webb will leave the house he and his late father built together over eight years next door to the office, and, with Julie — his wife of 30 years — move to Kaikoura to begin a new chapter in their lives.
Christchurch-born, Mr Webb gained his bachelor’s degree of science and then took up his first job with the fisheries research division of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries.
‘‘I always intended to go back to university and do my masters. I wanted to be a marine biologist, but about that time, Jacques Cousteau came along and suddenly everyone wanted to be marine biologists, so I had to find something else.’’
The job was to give him a taste for hands-on, outdoor work.
‘‘I was out in the field the whole time I was there, and I thought, this was great.’’
With the temporary role coming to an end, Mr Webb began jobseeking again, and picked up a role as a fisheries consultant on the lower Waitaki power development scheme.
‘‘That was great work too, there were seven or eight other people all my age, and we were all learning what we could do with a 4WD truck or a motorbike. It was a really good grounding.’’
When that project began winding down, Mr Webb applied for a job with the South Canterbury Acclimatisation Society, and gained his first permanent position.
‘‘One of the other guys applied for it too, and he got offered it first, because he was married, but he turned it down because the pay wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t worried about the pay, I just wanted a job.’’
The society, however, was keen to rectify Mr Webb’s single status and ensure he stayed in Temuka.
In his 1985 annual report, chairman Ken Andrews wrote: ‘‘Mark is a very presentable eligible bachelor with a BSc degree in Zoology and is proving to be a very valuable asset to the society’s workforce, so come on you local lasses, keep him in the district.’’
The first six months were not so much a baptism by fire, but by drought.
‘‘From December 1984 to May 1985, right across the peak of the summer, we just salvaged fish, because all the rivers were dry. We were month after month in the Opihi, salvaging thousands of trout and juvenile salmon.
‘‘We’d salvage fish all day, and then do a four-hour round trip to the Mackenzie Country [to pump them into safer waterways].’’
The focus for the acclimatisation society in the 1980s was to improve things for anglers and hunters, with hatcheries and game farms boosting numbers of fish to catch and birds to shoot.
‘‘My time has been more about what we have got, where is it, how many of them are there? My focus has been moving away from that stocking, to improving natural habitats.
‘‘At the start, we didn’t know much about our fisheries. We’d done the odd spawning survey on the Opihi, but there wasn’t much data. My role was to set up programmes to collect that information, make it consistent from year to year, and establish some population trends. And the same with our game birds, doing snapshots of the populations at the beginning of March each year.’’
There is much to be proud of; months of work at Lake Alexandrina, the successful placement of a Water Conservation Order on the Rangitata River, seeing the development of the country’s best sports fishery in the Waitaki canals.
But the sea — and the skifields — are calling.
‘‘The first time I thought about what I wanted to do, it was 1230 days until I was retirement age. I’d just spent two weeks in Kaikoura for the Christmas holidays, and I was driving home, and I thought, I could do this fulltime.
‘‘I couldn’t just then, but it’s come around pretty quickly.’’
Now the holder of a Gold Card, Mr Webb recently got his first ‘‘old age discount’’ — a substantial reduction off a season pass at Treble Cone skifield, and plans to enjoy being able to ski as much as he wants.
The Webbs will settle in Kaikoura, having bought his family’s home there.
‘‘Kaikoura is where I got my love of the sea from. Mr family started to go there when I was 5, and the first job I wanted to have when I was a kid was a commercial fisherman.
‘‘So, my first job interview in about 40 years was a couple of months ago, when I spent two days on a charter boat as a deck hand.’’
The plan is to pick up work as a relieving deck hand, perhaps one day a week, on charter fishing boats and commercial boats.
‘‘It seems like there are a lot of boats and not many deck hands, so I think there’s an opportunity there.’’
