00:00Lance Whiffen is steaming out from Port Arlington in Port Phillip Bay to check on his mussel leases.
00:09Not in one of his fishing boats, but in a former shark fishing vessel he has converted into a luxury cruiser.
00:16On board today is a tour group from Singapore, enjoying a selection of the finest food and drink.
00:26But this is far more than a culinary cruise. Those on board also learn about the bay's blue mussel industry.
00:35First of all the restaurants started doing it and we got lots of restaurants eating mussels.
00:41And then that allowed us to then start doing retail and we had to improve what we did too.
00:46A pioneer of Victoria's farmed mussel industry, Lance and family started this venture last year and it's been a runaway success.
00:55He believes these tours are the best way to publicly show that the industry is economically valuable and sustainable.
01:03There'd be no better place to grow shellfish than Port Phillip Bay.
01:07Lance is still smarting because in 1997 he and other fishermen were summarily banned from scallop fishing in the bay.
01:15He says for political, not scientific reasons. He's determined to ensure that doesn't happen to mussel farmers.
01:23And we got booted and we got no warning, we were just booted.
01:27That's always frightened me and I realise it can happen any time to any industry regardless of how good it is.
01:33So it's really important that we take people out.
01:37The people of Victoria own this water, the people of Australia own this water.
01:41We just lease it off them. So it's important that they're happy with what we're doing.
01:47Halfway into the cruise, there's the grand reveal.
01:54From five metres below the surface, clinging tightly to special ropes, emerge tens of thousands of mussels and a teeming assortment of other marine life.
02:05This is a mere fraction of an immense underwater network in Port Phillip Bay, an area of almost 2,000 square kilometres.
02:14The bay itself was traditionally, you know, probably the originator of mussel farming in Australia.
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