Fishermen To Stop Work

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31000, 4 March 1966, Page 1

Fishermen To Stop Work

(Neto Zealand Press Association) AUCKLAND, March 3. Auckland fishermen will hold a stop-work meeting on March 16.

Mr W. Jennings, the president of the Auckland Fishermen’s Association, said today that the meeting would discuss the whole question of Japanese poaching within the 12-mile limit. Mr Jennings has asked the. association’s solicitors for a legal opinion on whether he could seize any Japanese dories he found inside the limits. Fishermen who spoke to Mr Jennings this morning before he took his 60ft trawler, the Kaikohe, to sea, supported his demand for direct action against the poachers. The Government, they said, was quick to act against local fishermen who trawled within restricted areas, but was turning a blind eye to the blatant poaching of the Japanese. Mr Jennings said it was bad enough when the Japanese fished off the west coast, but if the Japanese were allowed to poach in the Hauraki Gulf the outlook for local fishermen would be • bleak.

“These are our winter fishing grounds that we use when the weather is too bad to get out off the coast,” he said. “The catch is all consumer fish sold to the people in Auckland.”