NET LOSSES

Forest and Bird, Volume 22, Issue 1, 1 February 1991, Page 41

NET LOSSES

by

Mark Feldman

T WAS LATE SPRING and the school of kingfish was moving along the East Coast towards its summer home in Doubtless Bay. The leader of the school was a powerful fish that weighed just over ten kilograms. He was a beautiful creature with a dark blue-green back and silver-white belly. A bright yellow stripe along his side separated the other colours and splashed onto his muscular tail. That powerful tail propelled him effortlessly through open water as the school prepared to look for a place to feed. Finding food these days was an easy matter, and represented no real challenge to the young leader. In earlier years they had been forced to chase schools of koheru and mackerel offshore where it took considerable teamwork to corner their prey. It was far easier to catch their food near reefs and rocky shorelines but there had always been resident kingfish at these reefs. The resident fish were much older and larger. They guarded their

territory jealously, seldom giving the school enough time to eat before the young kingfish were driven off. But now most of those big kingfish were gone and the school was free to feed wherever they chose. There was also lots to eat. There were more koheru and mackerel than the young leader could ever remember. Most of the kingfish and kahawai that used to compete for food had been caught by humans. As a result, the smaller mackerel had been able to increase their numbers unchecked. It was a simple matter to herd these small fish into a tight school and then drive them up against a rock face where the kingfish could take turns swooping in for their morning meal. Life was easy for the school of young kingfish but danger lurked wherever they travelled. The last leader of the school had been caught by some sort of nearly invisible net. The monofilament strands of the loosely set net had tangled around his fins and

scales. The more he struggled the more the net settled around him. After struggling for hours death had finally overtaken him. A few other members of the school had perished in that net as well. The new leader did not understand how the nets worked but he knew they represented a slow death for any fish that was unlucky enough to be caught. He had witnessed what happened to the last leader and had swum around the net for almost an hour as the school watched the trapped fish struggle to get free. Finally they had given up and moved on, leaving their leader and compatriots behind to die slowly in the dreaded net. Now the school was fast approaching the rocky headland near the entrance to Doubtless Bay. There were always lots of small mackerel to be found milling around the cliff faces and the kingis were hoping to find an easy meal there. In the past years there used to be several thirty kilogram kingfish living

along the rocks but they had been caught by the many recreational fishermen that came by, leaving the mackerel and the hunting grounds to the smaller school fish. Unfortunately, spread out before them, invisible and unmoving, was 500 metres of loosely hung gill net. The lead fish never sensed the net and suddenly found himself swimming at full speed into a curtain of death. By the time he saw it there was no time to turn. He was too big for his head to fit through the mesh but his fins and tail quickly tangled in the monofilament. As he struggled, more of the net wrapped around him until he was held virtually motionless. The nylon that trapped him was teeming

with millions of bacteria and fungi, left over from the infections of earlier victims of the net. While the young leader struggled, the nylon wore away the protective mucous that covered him and began to get under his scales. The fast growing bacteria found it easy to gain access to the fish’s skin and soon began to colonise his living tissues. Within an hour the kingfish sensed move-

ment in the net. He was being pulled upward, towards the dark shadow of a boat. As the net was pulled tight, its mesh spread apart and the kingi’s trapped fins began to work free. Finally, when the net was only a few metres from the boat, the mesh spread far enough for the kingfish to drop out and swim weakly away. He was free! As he moved through the water his gills

Gill net update

HE FIRST STEP taken by the MAF Fish Board to deal with the destructive effects of gill nets was a regressive one. They abdicated all responsibility for gill net control to the individual Fishery Management Plans (FMPs) being developed in various parts of New Zealand. This was clearly an attempt to delay decision making and diffuse responsibility. But it was not totally unreasonable because gill nets ARE used differently in the various fisheries around the country. The first of the FMPs to be proposed (late 1989) was for the Auckland Zone, the top half of the North Island. This is the area where most New Zealanders live and where most recreational and tourist fishing occurs. Amazingly, there was virtually NOTHING in the proposed FMP about regulating gill nets! There were only promises of additional evaluation and a short list of their harmful effects. The public response was clear; the lack of set net regulation was the most common complaint in 900 submissions representing many thousands of people. Additional information came from a survey by New Zealand Fishermen conducted during the winter of 1990. It revealed that 92 percent of the country’s recreational fishermen wanted gill nets

eliminated from within two miles of shore. It also showed that 16 percent of recreational fishermen use gill nets, a figure that corresponded with an earlier MAF survey. Amazingly though, more than half of the recreational fishermen that use gill nets would be happy to give them up if IF commercial gill nets were banned! So the situation was clear. In the Auckland Zone 225,000 recreational fishermen wanted to see an end to commercial set nets. In opposition to them were only 422 commercial gill netters. Of these 422 fishers ONLY 167 of them used gill nets for a significant percentage of their activities! In response to this conflict a Set Net Task Force was established in June 1990. By September 1990 they had met six times and submitted two reports. Representation on the task force was lopsided to say the least. There were five commercial fishery representatives for 422 fishers and one representative for 250,000 recreational fishermen! In addition there was one representative from the Underwater Association, one from Greenpeace (100,000 members) and one from Forest and Bird (60,000 members). There were also several MAF officials and various numbers of other observers which sometimes varied the ratio slightly.

Clearly the task force was structured to the advantage of a handful of gill net fishers and the second report reflects that. Most of the report deals with how gill netters could improve their techniques to reduce the killing of mammals, seabirds, turtles, sharks and nontargeted fish species. Many excellent suggestions were made here and some might actually help reduce the terrible side-effects of gill netting. Examples were increasing net mesh sizes, closing hazardous reef and current areas to nets, decreasing net length, increasing use of buoys, outlawing trammel nets and decreasing soak time of nets. In an effort to gather more information the task force also sent out a questionnaire for recreational gill-netters to respond to. If every gill netter was an ardent environmentalist and IF MAF had the funds and personnel to enforce new regulations then SOME of the proposals would make a little sense. But we live in a different world than that. MAF cannot enforce the present regula tions, even in areas around Auckland, and most gill netters I've met are certainly not environmentalists. And, most importantly, none of the proposals solve the most significant problems produced by the nets. The important issues that were not solved by the task force were how to protect reef '

brought more and more life-giving oxygen to his tissues and the weakness began to ease. But as the hours passed, the pain under his scales increased and it became more and more difficult to flex his skin when he moved. By the next day the bacteria had begun to spread into the bloodstream of the stressed fish. As the bacteria spread inward, fungal spores began to grow in the damaged skin

and increased the pain and swelling under the rigid scales. The once powerful kingfish became progressively weaker and immobile as the infections gained momentum. By that night he settled near the bottom, exhausted by his struggles. The fungi and bacteria continued their attack and soon overwhelmed his weakened immune system. With the coming

of the dawn the kingfish began to be pushed by the tide towards a small beach. His skin was covered by the fungal growth that had found easy purchase in the many wounds from the net. His blood was swarming with the bacteria that had effortlessly got in the same way. He finally found death on an empty beach, under a cloud of hungry gulls. A few minutes later the gill net fisher’s boat sped by. He was heading out to check his gear. He noticed the flock of gulls on the beach but was unaware of where they had got their meal that day. Just as he was unaware of so many of the other, unnecessary deaths caused by his nets as they lay under the sea. &

fish, how to reduce the killing of non-targeted quota species, how to reduce the wastage (50-70 percent of species caught) inherent in gill nets, how to reduce the flow of netted fish to the black market, how to prevent the destruction of the recreational fishery (60 percent of the commercial catch of kingfish is in set nets), how to avoid local depletion of fish in harbours and how to protect the seabirds and mammals that live throughout the Auckland Zone. In short, the task force had no solutions to the destruction caused by set nets. So, what are the effective options we have? The report written by Mark Davison of Greenpeace on the use of set nets advocates the elimination of all set nets except those necessary to catch species that cannot be caught any other way; and then to have those fisheries highly regulated to prevent abuses. In the Auckland Zone that boils down to using gill nets ONLY in the estuarine mullet and flounder fisheries. All other species that are important commercially can be caught by other means. Forest and Bird and the Sport Fishing Council are in agreement with the elimination of all gill nets except those used for mullet and flounder by commercial fishermen. Unfortunately, even the nets used for flounder and mullet can be used to target snapper,

trevally, kahawai and parore. Because of these potential abuses, recreational set nets should be eliminated completely from the Auckland Zone. Commercial fishers that supposedly target flounder and mullet should not be allowed to do so unless they have adequate quota for trevally, kahawai and snapper. Most importantly, ALL set nets should be banned from areas that support substantial recreational fisheries like Mangonui, Bay of Islands, Whangarei and significant areas around Auckland. The destructive effects that set nets have already had on our recreational fishery, tourist industry, marine birds and mammals, reef fish and quota regulated species will take many years to correct. The desires of a few hundred gill netters cannot be allowed to interfere with the needs of millions of people and the health of our oceans. There have already been too many delays. We should have had the gill nets out of our waters a year ago. gf

Mark Feldman is a Mangonui fisher and conservationist who wrote an article for the May 1990 issue of Forest & Bird on the quota system and its effect on fish species such as kawhali.

The California example

EW ZEALAND IS NOT the first country in the world to have to face the gill net issue. New York State banned gill netting in their part of the Great Lakes years ago; the other States and Canada followed later. Florida, the vacation centre of America, eliminated all gill nets from the coastline around the Everglades and severely restricted their use elsewhere. British Columbia is well on the road towards eliminating gill nets completely. Even Australia (except Tasmania) has banned amateur gill net fishing. But California, with its many similarities to New Zealand, can teach us the most. In 1983 gill nets were banned from many areas because of the disastrous killing of scores of harbour porpoises and over 30,000 common murres, a Pacific seabird. Later the nets were banned from the migratory paths of the grey whales in Northern California because the whales were becoming entangled. Despite these restrictions the use of gill nets in California continued to grow. From 1981 to 1985 the number of commercial gill net permits rose from 340 to over 1,000! The reason was simple; gill nets are

a cheap way of catching fish. The fact that they catch unwanted fish, sharks, seabirds and mammals was of no concern to the commercial lobby that had powerful financial ties with the California State Assembly. And as long as the commercial fishing lobby supported the financial needs of select California Assemblymen the carnage was allowed to continue. But rebellion was growing among the people of California. The recreational fishermen had seen the gill nets destroy the sports fishery. Rock cod, halibut and California yellowtail were virtually gone and, by the end of the 1980s, the gill netters were killing the sharks and rays off while they targeted the last of the swordfish. In early 1990 the latest Bill to eliminate gill nets was buried by the Wildlife Committee of the Assembly as a result of the commercial lobby’s organization and financial clout. Finally the people acted. Assemblywoman Doris Allen joined forces with the Committee to Ban Gill Nets and raised $400,000 in four months. In the same period of time they also got a staggering one million signatures on a petition to

ban the dreaded nets. In America such petitions have great power. They are the key mechanism to overcome the laxity of easily influenced State politicians. If enough signatures are obtained on a petition, then that petition appears on the ballot at the next election. If the people approve it, the petition becomes law. You can guess the rest of the story. On November 6, 1990, the people of California voted on the wisdom of eliminating gill nets from their waters. Their judgement was Clear and final. The gill nets were banned and for the first time in many years there's hope that the fish will return. Perhaps New Zealand can learn something from the people of California. The Amearicans waited until their fishery was almost destroyed before they finally acted. It took them a full decade to realise there's no way to police gill nets nor is it possible to protect the creatures of the sea while gill nets are in the water. Maybe, this time, the people of New Zealand can profit from others’ mistakes WITHOUT repeating them. A