A few commercial fishermen operate out of Milford Sound, where their main catches are blue cod, crayfish and pāua (abalone). It is a harsh environment to work in. In this sound clip, a local fisherman describes conditions at the mouth of a fiord after heavy rain.
Transcript
Quite often the weather would be so bad outside and the sea so rough that you know the mouths of those sounds would become just so dangerous, that it was, you can imagine, after say a storm of two or three days and heavy rain and there could be anything up to four or five feet of fresh water on top of the salt inside the sand. So you can imagine with all the fresh water coming out and maybe the tide and the swell coming in and at the mouth of the sound there was just horrendous sometimes. You get a huge build up, a huge build up of turbulence, you know, and the water and waves sort of going all ways.
Te whakamahi i tēnei tūemi
by Peter Righteous
Sound file from Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision. Any re-use of this audio is a breach of copyright. Reference: 205411.
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