Clean Water Message Hits Road

Fish & Game’s ‘Live Trout Truck’ – used to transport fish raised at the Rotorua hatchery – is an eye-catching mobile billboard helping push an environmental message.

The colourful graphics on the vehicle have been designed to promote Fish & Game’s environmental advocacy towards habitat protection – ‘Keep our waters pure and clean’, while also teasing would-be anglers to ‘Catch me if you can’.

The transporter is used to help stock Rotorua lakes, and totes yearlings as far afield as Auckland and Wellington. Equipped with oxygen-fed stainless steel tanks, the truck can carry as many as 5000 fish at a time. Because the truck is on the road so often passing through urban areas – and so highly visible – it’s a cost-effective way to reach people in the wider community and educate them about the importance of clean water for wild life.

Once the truck arrives at its destination it usually attracts a crowd of curious onlookers. Many people aren’t aware that in the North Island alone, about 80,000 fish a year are raised at the Ngongotaha hatchery and carried to new homes in lakes round the island. The trout truck, after a big makeover, helps tell the story of this work.