For Mike Terry, fishing isn't just a job - it's a way of life, passed down through generations. Mike has spent more than 60 years on the water. From the early days of fishing without the convenience of GPS to today's high-tech trawl gear, he's seen it all. While Mike is stepping back a bit more these days to spend time with his wife and grandkids, he still plays an active role in the family business, helping his son, Mike Terry Junior, on Atlantic Dawn.
How did you first get into commercial fishing? I'm a third-generation fisherman. Fishing is a way of life for our family. I started when I was still going to school and have been a full-time fisher for 57 years now. I know this because I was listening to the radio a couple of weeks back and it was the 57th anniversary of the Wahine disaster and that was the year I went fishing full time.
Nowadays, my son (Mike Terry Junior) drives the boat most of the time, so we're up to the fourth generation. It really is a family thing; we're not out there to catch every f ish in the ocean. We just like to feed the New Zealand public and make a living at something we enjoy doing.
What do you love about fishing? I just love the freedom of it, the wildness, the great things you get to see when out on the ocean. A lot of people get quite upset that we're destroying the ecosystem and killing mammals and that. But we do all sorts of things to avoid this. It's a rare accident that something happens. We love the ocean and all the animals and mammals and f ish and everything that lives in it.
What's the best piece of fishing or business advice you've received? I've just sort of found out my own advice really because my father drowned when I was a young guy. We had two boats and his sunk in a major storm in the Wairarapa. So yeah, I sort of stumbled along and found my own way.
My son's learning a lot off me because I'm still around and can tell him, "This is what you need to do and what you don't need to do."
Is there a common fishing misconception you'd love to help set the record straight on? Yeah, there's a lot of misconceptions about us digging up the ocean floor. We're not doing that. Especially on this new boat that we've got here, with trawl sensors, trawl boards, cod end sensors. We can set our trawl boards up so that they don't plough into the ocean like in the old-school days.
These days we can just run them skimming the bottom and we can do all sorts of great things with electronics these days. So again, it's a big misconception that we're out there destroying the ecosystem.
What's your most memorable day on the water so far? I've had quite a few memorable days, but a real standout was when I first started fishing for orange roughy - I was one of the first to do it. On one of those early days, there were massive whales all around us while we were working a bag of fish. I think they were just eating some of the ones that got out. They were actually just eyeballing us. It was crazy.
What's the coolest piece of fishing gear you can't live without? All our electronics. I couldn't live without them. When I first started, we never had plotters, no GPS. So, when we started fishing orange roughy, we just went on radar like 30 miles off. It was a guessing game. Now, when our electronics fail, you think, "Oh hell, I'm lost." We can't really do our job without them now.
If you weren't in the seafood business, what would you be doing? That's a hard one. I was brought up down in D'Urville Island, French Pass, and have always loved the outdoors, the bush and all that sort of stuff. So, guess I'd probably be doing something that was maybe to do with farming or forestry.
Tell us about life outside of work. I've got what I call a play boat. My wife and I and the grandkids, we spend a lot of time in the Marlborough Sounds or French Pass where I was brought up. The grandkids absolutely love it. Great fishing and my kids love it, too.
We spend as much time as we can down there. I've actually just bought a big one, 65-footer, so we're off cruising around the whole of New Zealand we hope. Before I can't do it anymore, I'm running out of years.
What is your favourite music when you're out on the water? I'm an old-school country and Western man. The boys on the deck always have to have music on, and it's usually the youngest that picks. So, not me.
I still work on deck as well, but if the music's too loud I'll make up some excuse and go inside to do something.
What is your favourite seafood? Well, they're all good but I would say my favourite fish would have to be tarakihi. It's a good all-rounder. Snapper is nice too. There's a lot of fallacy about snapper - that if it's not looked after properly it gets all soft and that - but now we slurry everything as soon as it comes aboard it's just as firm as tarakihi.
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