Leigh is a small town located in the Rodney District of the Auckland region in New Zealand. It is known for its beautiful beaches, fishing opportunities, and marine reserve. The area is home to a range of fisheries and aquaculture activities, including oyster farming, green-lipped mussels, and snapper fishing. Sitting at the far end, on a quiet road is Lee Fish.
Cleaning and gutting fish is done for local as well as international markets. Lee Fish is named after the town (Leigh). The spelling was modified, or rather simplified, to ensure consistent pronunciation of the brand name, and to resonate with the major client at the time, which happened to be Japan.
Packs of ice in mid-flight.
While Lee Fish doesn’t own any vessels, they do own some quota. This means that commercial fishing boats can lease quota off Lee Fish or use their own.
Fish unloaded from the various ports around the country is trucked overnight to Leigh for processing and packaging. The very next day, fish go to local restaurants and Foodstuffs supermarkets, but also find their way halfway across the world in Japan, USA, Europe, Australia, and other countries.
While the packaging looks identical in monochrome, they’re all colour coded. Blue, green, red—they all go to different destinations.
This batch seemed to be headed for several “New World” supermarkets located in Auckland.
A bit of a surprise to see my name on the white board. New Zealand had been through a summer fraught with storms and cyclones and several roads had slips, or were merely washed away. The trip from my home (at 4:30 am) would normally take about an hour or less. Instead, I found myself going through several detours, and landing up about half an hour later than I expected. The GPS was instructing me to take an alternate route, but I headed straight for the usual route—the motorway—and that was closed. Next time I’ll pay attention to the GPS.
