Are We Fishing to the Last Bite?

Forest and Bird, Issue 265, 1 August 1992, Page 15

Are We Fishing to the Last Bite?

Jack mackerel.

Ask any recreational fishers today and they will tell you the fishing has never been NG 4 worse. Ask the commercial operators and they will say that since the quota management system was & established the fishing has never been better. BARRY s WEEBER casts his line and explains why fisheries are a EE major conservation issue. iil

* FISHING °* UST 16 YEARS AGO, New Zealand fishers operated in small boats within 20 km of the shore, fishing to depths of around 200 metres. Orange roughy was unknown and the industry was dominated by owner-opera-tors who caught traditional species like snapper, school shark, trevally, groper, flat fish and rock lobster. Apart from rock lobster, fish were mainly sold for local consumption. Today all that has changed. In 1978 New Zealand extended its fisheries management control out to 200 nautical miles [370 km] as part of the international consensus on changes to the law of the sea. ~The enclosed area of water is the fifth largest Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) in the world and is over 15 times the land area of New Zealand. Fish is now a billion dollar export industry. The catch from the EEZ area over the last 20 years has increased from 225,000 to 565,000 tonnes — a small catch in international terms. By comparison, the current reported world catch is around 100 million tonnes, up from the 70 million tonnes reported in 1976. The actual catch could be 30 to 50 percent higher. For the first few years after the declaration of the New Zealand EEZ, foreignlicensed vessels from Japan, the Soviet Union and South Korea dominated the fishery. But from the early 1980s New Zealand companies began investing in vessels or chartered foreign vessels to catch fish on their behalf. This was promoted by the government through tax incentives on the boats and through increasing restrictions on foreign vessel catch. Since 1986 there has been little increase in the percentage of the total catch taken by New Zealand owned vessels. About 180 foreign vessels — trawlers, squid jiggers and long liners from Japan, Korea, Russia and Norway — are now chartered each year by New Zealand companies for fishing throughout the BEZ. Today the fishing industry is dominated by a decreasing number of large New Zealand companies. The three big companies, Sealords, Talley’s/Amaltal and Sandfords, control over half the total quota. These companies are the major players in a large industry lobby, the Fishing Industry Association. The owner

operators who dominate the paua, rock lobster and some inshore fisheries are mostly members of the Federation of Commercial Fishermen. VER-FISHING in the late 1970s and early 1980s placed the inshore fishery under stress. Too many fishers were chasing a diminishing number of fish. Major inshore fisheries such as trevally, tarakihi, snapper and rock lobster were particularly in trouble. The 1963 de-licensing of the fishing industry and limited management controls were the main causes of this over-fishing. Anyone could get a licence to go fishing and there was no limit on the amounts that could be caught. Sustainability was not a consideration. To deal with this problem, MAF and sectors of the industry promoted the introduction of a quota management system for major New Zealand fish stocks. Deepwater species such as orange roughy, hoki, oreos, squid and hake had been managed by individual quotas since: 1983. In 1986 the 26 major commercial species were placed under the quota system, and since then paua, rock lobster, squid and some jack mackerel fisheries have been added. The system originally allocated fishers a tradeable commercial property nght which guaranteed them access to a set tonnage of the Total Allowable Catch (TAC) for each fishery or fish stock. This fixed tonnage could not be reduced without the government buying back quota from fishers at the current value of traded quota. In introducing the quota system the government enforced major reductions in fishing effort in the inshore fishery. The snapper and school shark catches, for example, were reduced by a third nationally and rig (another shark) was reduced by two-thirds. Fisheries researchers advised against a fixed tonnage quota system because of the uncertainties in catch levels caused by inadequate information and the natural fluctuation of fish stocks. Another cause for concern was that the government in tight financial times would not have the resources to buy back quota. The system created an incentive to overfish, as fishers would benefit financially from any TAC reductions caused by overfishing. Reductions in the TAC would increase the monetary value of a quota. Treasury and some MAF economists had argued that fisheries researchers were too conservative and that fish stocks were more likely to increase than decrease. So the potential revenue gain from tendering

Orange roughy older than your grandmother

RANGE ROUGHY being eaten around the world today could have been spawned when the Treaty of Waitangi was signed. They are a very slowgrowing fish living at great depths (700 to 1,500 metres) and feeding on deepwater prawns, squid and other fish. Research in Australia indicates the oldest fish could be well over 150 years old. It is one of the world’s deepest fisheries. Concern over the sustainability of the orange roughy fishery has been expressed since about 1986 but reductions in the TAC have been extremely slow. The current exploitation of orange roughy stocks on the Chatham Rise (the main roughy fishery in New Zealand waters) can only be described as mining. Only one of the five known stocks has a TAC set at the long-term sustainable level. In addition, no consideration has been made of the effects on natural predators of orange roughy such as sperm whales. The government has reduced the TAC from 34,000 tonnes in 1988 to 24,000 tonnes in 1990 and maintained it at that level for 1991-92. Yet, over that period MAF scientists were saying that this was not sustainable and were recommending catches at less than a third of this level. In 1992 MAF scientists again reviewed the evidence and concluded that to have a greater than

even chance of rebuilding the stock in the 1992-93 fishing year the TAC would have to be set at "no more than 6,100 tonnes"’. Again we wait to see whether the Minister of Fisheries will finally take on the industry and reduce the TAC to a sustainable level or will ignore the evidence and continue to allow the mining of this fish.

* FISHING * out new quota from new stocks or increased quota from old stocks should more than cover the cost of buy-backs. But by 1989 the government finally realised it had a problem. The orange roughy TAC on the Chatham Ruse was far too high and needed to be reduced by over 75 percent. To do this, the government would have to pay out over $80 million. It was also likely that other orange roughy stocks were in a similar state and that the hoki TAC would need to be reduced. It was likely that several hundred million dollars would be needed to correct the structural flaws in the initial system. Negotiations between the government and the industry led to an agreement on the introduction of a proportional rather than a fixed tonnage system. Under this system each quota is set as a proportion of the total catch. The total catch itself may be varied from year to year. And as part of the 1990 introduction of a proportional Total Allowable Commercial Catch (TACC) came a taxpayer-funded $47 million compensation pool. N NEW ZEALAND, despite the hype from ministers and fishing industry leaders, the quota management system by itself has not resulted in sustainable fisheries. The current catch in the New Zealand EEZ of around half a million tonnes is near the likely long-term sustainable yield from the zone, but many of the individual stocks are fished at unsustainable levels. The reported catch also does not take account of a considerable level of illegal activity such as underreporting, dumping and illegal selling.

If TACs are set too high, as they have been for orange roughy or rock lobster, then the quota management system will fail to deliver. The current decision-making system on TACs leaves too much power in the hands of the Minister of Fisheries with precious few criteria on which he can base his decisions. Fish stocks were the only major resource excluded from the Resource Management Act and are

therefore not subject to the sustainability principles set out in that Act. The industry itself has been unwilling to manage fisheries sustainably. It has selectively used information to support TAC increases and then ignored similar information in order to oppose TAC reductions. New Zealand is not alone in having problems managing its fish. According to a report prepared by the United Nations

G G __, virtually every fishery in the | world has been criminally overfished for years. We know this because, for years, fisheries scientists have politely recom mended to their governments that they should not let their fishing fleets catch quite so many fish next year. Canada has severely reduced the numbers of cod on what was once the world’s richest fishing grounds, the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. European ministers are trying to reform a Common Fisheries Policy that 1s causing the imminent collapse of fishing in the North Sea. Norwegians, North Africans and Thais puzzle over their dwindling catches. None of this is surprising. Fish 1s a Gnite resource. You can run out of them. The world is doing just that. And this will be serious for the large number of people who rely heavily on fish for protein. 99 Editorial in New Scientist 11 April 1992

Rock lobster slow progress to end overfishing

ONCERN ABOUT the state of the rock lobster or crayfish fishery has been raised by MAF scientists since the early 1970s with little response from ministers. In 1990 an assessment by MAF stated that: For at least ten years effort has been two to three times higher than optimal for this fishery. As a consequence the stock is smaller than the optimal level. Further consequences are that the catch is less than the potential maximum sustainable yield, economic yields are small compared with their potential, and the fishery may decline further and be in some danger of collapse. In 1990 rock lobster was added to the quota management system. A particular problem with rock lobster is that the total catch includes a large illegal and recreational catch as well as the reported commercial catch. To deal with the continuing debate over the sustainable rock lobster catch the Minister for Fisher-

ies established a committee of representatives from the fishing industry, Maori, recreational and conservation groups to come up with a plan to rebuild the population within ten years. The committee met for five months and, although its report last October made progress in the area of integrating catch limits, enforcement, and size controls, it failed to agree on any catch reductions. Last November MAF’s Dr Paul Breen reported that "at the present catch levels, the risk of collapse is very high: 29 percent over four years and 78 percent over the next ten years’. Extrapolation from Dr Breen’s figures means that to rebuild the stock within ten years the TACC would need to be reduced to under 1,500 tonnes. Under pressure from the industry Mr Kidd made only a modest reduction to the TACC for 1992-3 taking it down from 3,000 to 2,700 tonnes. This was against the advice of his own department, the Department of Conservation, Ministry for the Environment and conservation groups.

for the June Earth Summit, marine fisheries internationally face mounting problems including "local overfishing, ecosystem degradation, over capitalisation and excessive fleet sizes, [and] insufficiently selective gear". ISHERIES LEGISLATION in New Zealand at present tends to deal only with fisheries on a stock by stock or species by species basis. All other species in the sea can be fished. This creates problems for sustainable fisheries management. New arrivals can strip-mine coastal areas for species previously not harvested, long before management measures can be implemented. Regulation and controls can take years to put in place. On land we manage species differently. Under the Wildlife Act there is a list of species that can be taken and species with partial or complete protection. The same principle should exist for the marine ecosystem. There should be a list of species that can only be taken by commercial fishers and another for recreational fishers. All other species should be protected. A consultative process of moving species between categories, as there is in the

Snapper down to ten percent

ISHING for snapper around New Zealand goes back many years and is an important recreational and traditional fishery as well as a commercial one. In northern New Zealand the recreational and traditional component has regularly made up between 20 and 30 percent of all snapper caught. Yet there are now only ten percent of the snapper that there used to be around New Zealand. Even this level is the result of two good recent spawning years. According to a recent MAF report the population will decline further unless catch limits are reduced, particularly in the area east of Auckland where a 30 percent reduction is needed. The major problem has been decisions of the Quota Appeal Authority which was set up to deal with allocations which did not match the actual catch or the changing circumstances of a fisher. But sustainability of the total fishery is not one of the criteria on which the authority makes its decisions. Thus the authority has increased the TACC for the area east of Auckland by 27 percent (to 6,002 tonnes) since 1986, and by 20 percent west of

Auckland, despite the decline in snapper stocks. This year major decisions may be made on getting snapper back to a sustainable level. Twenty percent of virgin biomass is usually seen as the absolute minimum by fisheries scien-

tists. Ten percent is extreme danger territory. At current catch levels it will take 60 years for the west Auckland fishery to rebuild and east Auckland is likely to decline further. The fishing industry is currently opposing any catch reductions.

Guide to fisheries jargon

Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) the area between the edge of the territorial sea (12 nautical miles offshore) to 200 nautical miles [370 km| off-shore. The figure of 200 miles was agreed during the negotiations on the Law of the Sea in the mid1970s. Total Allowable Catch (TAC) is the catch that can be taken from a fish stock. Since 1986 when the quota management system was introduced, it includes the Total Allowable Commercial Catch (TACC) along with recreational and traditional Maori catches. trawlers are vessels that fish with large netted bags (trawl nets) dragging behind them. These nets are used particularly in fishing for deep water species and can be up to several hundred metres long with a mouth up to 70 metres high. long liners are vessels setting one OF a BN eT marge 4)

& several long lines (often: MPO eee kilometres long) with hooked branch lines. jiggers are squid fishing vessels using multi-barbed hooks on many lines (sometimes over 100). sustainability Maintaining a population at levels so that exploitation does not affect its reproductive ability and genetic diversity. For fish stocks this level is thought to be somewhere in the range of 30 to 60 percent of the original stock. Working this out is more complhicated for fish than it 1s for the generally less fecund land animals. Fish populations are notoriously difficult to count and there is no clear relationship between the size of a population and the number of juvenile fish that a population can produce. What we do know is that the likelihood of stock collapse increases as the population gets smaller.

* FISHING * Wildlife Act, could be managed in a similar manner. Fisheries legislation needs principles similar to those in the Resource Management Act. New Zealand should also be looking at one useful international model for integrated fisheries management. Under the Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) the fisheries south of the Antarctic Convergence are managed as a whole ecosystem. This means that the impact of fishing on marine mammals and sea birds is considered when fish catch limits are set. Unlike New Zealand’s fisheries legislation which focuses just on the maximum sustainable yield of individual stocks, CCAMLR considers the impact on other species, fish predators and the impacts of harvesting on the general marine ecosystem. The information required for such decision making is more detailed and the scientific committee of CCAMLR has only started to grapple with these issues. New Zealand should be adopting a precautionary approach to fisheries management. The long-term economic and environmental consequences of overoptimistic and unsustainable catch levels based on inadequate biological data dictate this. The boom and bust nature of

New Zealand’s fisheries is a major blight on the country’s environmental record. In the absence of most of the biological information required to manage a fishery, the fishing effort should be limited only to a research catch or a carefully monitored small-scale exploratory commercial catch. Catch levels should not be increased before going through a process of environmental assessment. AST YEAR Fisheries Minister Doug Kidd launched a major review of the Fisheries Act and associated legislation. The task force set up by the minister released its final report in April. It suggested greater industry and less government involvement in fisheries management, a suggestion that alarmed conservationists. While the task force agreed on the need for clear purposes and principles similar to the Resource Management Acct, it failed to establish a clear decision-making framework for these. The response from fishing interests to the report has been mixed. While the larger companies have welcomed proposals for a greater decision-making role for quota-holders’ associations, the Federation of Commercial Fishermen criticised

the proposals and has instead promoted the idea of a round table of representatives from all interests to negotiate management plans for each fishery. The problem remains, however, that fishers have refused to reduce catch limits to sustainable levels. Forest and Bird has suggested to the minister that the process of managing fisheries should be closer to the principles of the Resource Management Act. Further, there should be a list of species that can be fished commercially, recreationally or traditionally. Any species not on these lists could not be taken. Such a process would help to control the problems of coastal areas being depleted of marine life. The minister requested submissions on this report by the end of May. By the time this article is published we should have a better idea of the government’s response to the recommendations of the task force. %

Barry Weeber

‘Is a researcher

for Forest and Bird. He specialises in fisheries, energy and resource management issues.