Two Marlborough men were sentenced to community work when they appeared in the Blenheim District Court yesterday for stealing mussel spat from their employer.
Kelvin James Slape, 35, from Renwick, and Raymond George Naish, 66, from Canvastown, were sentenced to 100 hours' and 150 hours' community work, respectively, for their plan to steal mussel spat from Sanford.
The men, who no longer work for the company, were both ordered to pay it $2500 in reparation.
Naish also faced a charge of receiving the mussel spat.
Slape, a former mussel-seeding boat skipper for Sanford, had admitted theft for helping Naish take mussel spat from Sanford to the private farm.
In an earlier court appearance, police prosecutor Sergeant Steve Frost said Naish had approached Slape, who had the equipment and crew, to take the spat line to a private marine farm in Port Ligar. The pair agreed Slape and his crew would each get $500 for the work.
Between April and December last year, Slape and his crew stripped a mussel line valued at up to $14,300, he said.
Mussel lines were usually stripped and mussels discarded if they were of no value, he said.
Defence lawyer Rob Harrison said Naish believed the mussels were going to be stripped because they were unusable by the company. Naish decided to take the spat to another farm to mature.
Slape's defence lawyer, Matthew Marshall, said Slape had been told to strip the line so the spat, or juvenile mussels, had no value to the company.
The amount of reparation was in dispute because the company was claiming for items that had already been returned, both lawyers said.
Judge Bruce Davidson said the theft was unusual and it would be difficult to settle on a final reparation figure. However, the company was entitled to bring a civil case against them, he said.
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