The Wasteful Set Net

Forest and Bird, Issue 314, 1 November 2004, Page 36

The Wasteful Set Net

AND

JENNY

TONY

Underwater photo-journalists

are

disturbed by the damage they see done to fish life.

through lifeless eyes — a 50-centimetre long silver drummer it was held by fine nylon mesh. Nearby another flapped weakly, near death. On both sides of the drummer, snapper and parore had also succumbed to the invisible wall hanging in midwater. We swam down to the sea floor to see what was entangled in the lower end of the net where it merged with the ecklonia kelp. Red moki, banded wrasse and scorpionfish, species that are used to pushing their way through the kelp, were also snared. Most of those fish would be thrown away, some to be devoured by seagulls on the surface. Others would sink out of sight, becoming food for the bottom dwellers, the crabs and shellfish. The menace of unattended set nets affects almost all the New Zealand coast. Near Coromandel we saw kahawai, trevally, red moki and butterfish floating in the shallows, discarded by the set netters who took only the snapper. On a dive just outside Tory Channel, where the inter-island ferry enters the Marlborough Sounds, a set net stopped us in our tracks, luckily before we blundered into it. That net held small blue moki, tarakihi, banded wrasse and butterfish. Neither of its floats had any identification. Why do people use set sets, often referred to as gill nets? The easy answer is that they are cheap and catch a lot of fish without much effort. In the early 1970s an increase in fish prices saw a huge increase in the use of set nets. The Quota Management System, introduced in 1986 went some way to control the commercial use of set nets although they are still in common use. Commercial netters have a financial interest in ensuring that the net is cleared quickly and nothing is wasted. Amateur set nets can be left out for days if the weather is bad or some other activity takes priority. The Ministry of Fisheries has set net regulations covering mesh size, the number of nets per person or boat, and where they can be laid. Netters must also have the net floats marked with their name and contact details. I: front of us a large fish seemed to peer

In spite of this some people still ignore the regulations. The bycatch is used as an excuse by some as a way of getting a few fish as bait for a crayfish pot.

How many fish succumb to these unattended walls of death is unknown. Yet the use of set nets continues pillaging fish to the detriment of sightseers and genuine

fishermen who sit on boats or on the rocks waiting for a bite. The daily-limit regulations for line fishermen seem irrelevant when a set net can be left overnight or longer. Any fish under the legal size or over the daily limit are easily discarded. To come home from a day’s fishing with a meal or two from the sea is something many New Zealanders enjoy. The majority of fishermen follow the regulations, returning undersized and unwanted catches to the sea. Many line fishermen head back to shore once they have enough for a feed, not needing to catch their legal limit. Those left today are tomorrow’s catch and if you don’t make it back out tomorrow, there’s always the day after. Others head down onto sandy beaches and drag a net for a feed. Flounder, mullet and kahawai are often caught this way, but as with line fishing the unwanted fish are returned to the sea — alive. For others, yellow-eyed mullet are targeted as bait for the next day’s fishing trip. This method of netting ensures that only the target fish are taken and others are released. New Zealanders complained loudly when the foreign ‘wall of death’ fishermen began to pillage the South Pacific and Tasman Sea, outside New Zealand’s 200-mile limit. These massive nets, some hundreds of kilometres long, caught everything including dolphins, sharks, sunfish and marlin which were thrown back dead into the sea. Government action in response to public pressure in New Zealand and overseas saw the disappearance of these ‘walls of death’ and a subsequent increase in the number of game fish caught or tagged and released around our northern coast. Around Akaroa in the South Island, restrictions on set nets were established to protect Hector’s dolphin, the smallest in the world. Research into this endemic dolphin began around Banks Peninsula in 1984. Researchers Steve Dawson and Liz Slooten, found evidence of 230 Hector’s dolphin deaths along the coast between Motunau and Timaru. After publication in 1991, these numbers were disputed by officials of the Ministry of Fisheries, but even at half the recorded number of deaths the Hector’s dolphin populations were not sustainable. The Banks Peninsula Marine Mammal Sanctuary was created as a result of those deaths. New recreational fishing guidelines now ban amateur set netting out to four nautical miles, from the Waiau river in the north to the Waitaki river in the south, from October 1-March 31, (with the exception of flounder netting areas in Pigeon Bay, Port Levy and Akaroa, and a reef south of Timaru).

‘The number of dolphins caught in commercial gill-netting still has not been reduced to sustainable numbers, according to Dr Slooten of Otago University, who is also a member of the national executive of Forest and Bird. An observer programme on commercial gill-net boats in 1997-8 showed dolphins caught just outside the boundaries of the sanctuary. near-identical dolphin, now known A: the Maui dolphin, lives off the west coast of the North Island, between Kawhia and the Kaipara Harbour. This pod numbers between 100 and 150. Efforts to ban set nets in the Maui dolphins’ habitat met with resistance, but if unattended set netting were allowed to continue, they might have become extinct in a decade or two. Of the seven dead dolphins found since July 2001, four had definite evidence of being caught in set nets and only one died of natural causes. Set nets have recently been banned within four nautical miles of the coast between Maunganui Bluff, north of Dargaville and Pariokariwa Point, north of New Plymouth. Yet we still tolerate other coastal set nets that kill more than they are entitled to and waste much of what they catch. Many fish caught don’t come under the Ministry of Fisheries regulations. Consequently, there is no ‘other species’ limit for the silver drummer, parore, mullet and numerous species of wrasse. Sea horses also fall into this no-limit category in New Zealand even though there is a huge market for them in Asia. Luckily they have great camouflage and are rarely seen and even less taken, but a net that snares their weedy habitat and pulls it up

will affect them. Although they will fall under the CITES agreement (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna), there is no move to limit the daily take under Ministry of Fisheries regulations in New Zealand. Modern set nets, which are made from nylon and are cheap to buy, are now replacing the older cotton nets which quickly broke down if lost. Now, we often see tangled meshes of these nylon nets with the remains of red moki, butterfish and silver drummer. Crayfish detect the fish carcasses in the net and entangle themselves as they attempt to feed off them. A large commercial set net recently snagged Laison’s Reef, between White Island and the Volkner Rocks. Laison’s Reef is one of the top dive sites in the Bay of Plenty and visiting divers noticed it and the carnage it was causing. With the aid of local fisheries officers they dived to the extreme depths of 70 metres to remove it. Without that effort it would have continued to snare marine life for years. The damage caused by lost nets in nondived areas remains unknown. Meanwhile, the net’s owner just goes out, buys another net and the same situation continues. In estuaries, nets are often laid right across the channels, rather than running parallel to them. Whangateau Harbour, an hour north of Auckland, often has more than its fair share, especially over the holiday season. The prolific fish life in early summer usually decreases markedly by late summer. Most netters are after snapper, john dory, kahawai and flounder. But schools of parore also come into the harbour to breed and

these are the main catch. Many become food for seagulls before the nets are cleared. Other nets are not cleared every day, leaving even snapper and kahawai to rot. At Goat Island Marine Reserve, near Leigh on the Rodney coast, it’s not just the snapper that have increased in numbers. Non-line-targeted species have made a huge comeback with hundreds of silver

drummer, parore, red moki and butterfish — and of course, no nets. Not only fish and dolphins succumb to nets. Gannets, shags and little blue penguins become entangled and drown in set nets. The coastal ecosystem is fragile; remove just a small part and many other species suffer. Surely it is time we did something about set nets. After all, what is taken by

them will ultimately affect the catches of real fishermen sitting in boats, on beaches and on the rocks with a line in the water waiting for that tug of success. — Underwater photo-journalists JENNY AND TONY ENDERBY are based at Leigh, near Warkworth in lower Northland. For further information see Dawson, S and Slooten, E, Down-under Dolphins, The Story of Hector’s Dolphins, Canterbuy University Press, 1996.