WHITEBAIT

Hokitika Guardian, 25 July 1930, Page 6

WHITEBAIT

RESTRICTIONS OBJECTED TO. . . . ' • (>. , A UCIvL&ND, • • “It is unfortunate that those in charge of the New Zealand Fisheries Department have no idea of the thousands of people who earn theii t daily bread by whietebait fishing during tlie season,” said Mr W. Stevenson, ' of Dunedin, managing director of the Irvine,' Stevenson (St. GeprgC)--Com-pany Ltd. in commenting on: Eie proposed whitebait regulations-.- Mr Stevenson’s firm has whitebait canneries in the Waikato and at Hokitika, Greymouth, Westport 'arid Dunedin. “At a time when unemployment is rife,” Mr Stevenson continued, “it is little short of scandalous for the Fisheries Department to wish to add to the ranks of the unemployed. Those who have canned wliiteba.it for many years should have a better idea than any one else whether restrictions are necessary. and they say emphatically that they are neither necessary nor practicable. Nature, by periodically sending a. season of bad weather, looks after the fish supply, jsince whitebait are not caught in rough weather and are therefore left free, to breed in their milli-ns. When the regulations wore brmud’t for:*--'- 1 last year they occasion'd indignation meetings in all the whitebait c-'utre.s of the Dominion, and the i”ntier was promptly dropped. “Tim o'’’- ' trouble appears to be that there is a. big Government Fishery Department with nothing to do, and unless the members stir up some trouble the Government pruning knife is likely to become busy in it. “To put the matter in a nutshell.” concluded Mr Henderson, “it appears to be a case of either you lose your job or T lose mine. For about thirty years the chief occupation of the Fisheries Department has boon the introduction of salmon into New Zealand ns a commercial proposition, yet- there are no salmon commercially nor arc there likely to he any. Is it to he wondered then, that the Government Fisheries fears the pruning knife?”'