Food

Sustainable fisheries

Updated: 05 Sep 2008
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Introduction

How sustainable is our fishing industry? We look at the troubled waters surrounding our fisheries.

New Zealand's fishing industry exported $1.3 billion worth of seafood in 2007 - it's our fifth largest export industry. We have a sophisticated fishery management system, but some consumers and conservationists are still worried about the sustainability of our fisheries.

Quota management system

A crayfish

Nunzio, Giuseppe, and Antonio, three Italian fishermen, quickly load a leaky dinghy with bait and row quietly out to the Star of the Sea, an aluminium "cray" boat anchored in the middle of Wellington's Island Bay.

Dawn is still two hours away as Nunzio, the skipper, clambers aboard and fires the engine. A GPS system bleeps into life, the anchor is raised, and the boat slips quietly out through a channel. The fishermen motor towards cray pots set between 7 and 27 fathoms off the coast. It's a 40-minute trip.

When the first pot (a steel cage) is hauled up, it's empty. The second, third and fourth pots each yield two or three thrashing crayfish. But small males and egg-bearing females are thrown back, so only two are kept. The fifth pot is better: a dozen crayfish break the surface. Antonio sorts five into a blue container, throws the rest back and clips fresh bait into the metal cage.

Once the sixth pot is emptied, Nunzio wheels around. Giuseppe and Antonio slide the newly baited cages back overboard and the boat motors towards the next set of pots down the coast. Only 136 to go ...

Setting catch limits

The sustainability of this local cray fishery is monitored through our quota management system (QMS), which sets catch limits for specific fisheries. To make a living, Nunzio needs to purchase a slice of the total allowable commercial catch off a "quota" owner - another fisher or company. That slice is called ACE (annual catch entitlement: see "Managing our fish stocks", below).

Government administration of the QMS is a thorny subject depending on who you talk to. The fact that the Fisheries Minister is trying to put a precise catch entitlement on an estimated number of fish lies at the heart of most criticisms of the system.

The Ministry of Fisheries says: "It is extremely difficult and prohibitively expensive to get precise information about fish stocks and the marine environment. This means there will always be an element of uncertainty about our fish stocks." According to the ministry, it currently spends $25 million per year on scientific research into our fisheries and the ocean environment.

People fight over how best to deal with the uncertainty. Broadly, there's a tension between commercial fishers who think that the Minister is too cautious when setting catch limits, and conservationists and recreational fishers who think that the Minister isn't cautious enough.

The Fisheries Minister can face litigation from either side over quota cuts. Last year, a trawling company challenged a quota cut in one orange-roughy fishery. The Minister believed that he had set the catch limit based on the best available information, as required by law. The High Court thought that more precise information was required to make a cut. The Minister's decision was overturned.

An amendment to the Fisheries Act - due in October - will consolidate the Minister's ability to set catch limits based on the "best available information", using a range of indicators to estimate the health of a fishery.

However, a wider-reaching change to the Fisheries Act is being considered. The purpose of the Act is to provide for the utilisation of fisheries while ensuring sustainability. But in cases where there's a lack of information about a fish stock, the Act is ambiguous. It isn't clear if the Minister should err on the side of "sustainability" or "utilisation". Any potential amendment to this section of the Act will have to wait for decisions by the next government.

Managing our fish stocks

New Zealand's quota management system was introduced in 1986 to better manage our fish stocks. Fisheries management before 1986 hadn't prevented many in-shore fisheries (for example, snapper) falling into serious decline.

Fisheries

Our fishing grounds are split into specific "fisheries" within 10 quota-management areas covering 4.4 million square kilometres. Fisheries correspond to the major commercial fish species in their major fishing grounds. There are fisheries designated for 97 species of marine life.

Total allowable catch

The Minister of Fisheries sets the total allowable catch for a fishery at the beginning of each year. The year runs from 1 October until 30 September for most commercially fished species.

Total allowable commercial catch

For fisheries in coastal waters, a certain percentage of the total allowable catch is set aside for Maori (customary, not commercial) and recreational fishers. The rest is the total allowable commercial catch and is allocated to the seafood industry as individual transferable quota.

Individual transferable quota

Individual transferable quota gives companies or individual fishers the right to catch a defined amount of a certain species in a certain area. Individual quota is fully transferable within a division - which means companies or individual fishers can buy and sell quota.

Quota gives you the right to a percentage of the total allowable commercial catch. That slice of the catch is called "ACE" (annual catch entitlement). The ACE varies as the total allowable commercial catch is cut or increased according to the health of the fishery.

Sustainability

The effectiveness of the quota management system (QMS) for creating sustainable fisheries is in dispute.

Take hoki: it's our second-most-valuable export fishery.

For the second time, the hoki industry has been awarded the sustainability tick of the world's top marine certification organisation - the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC). This recognises our QMS has a good grasp of hoki numbers and that our fishers use "world best practice" techniques to reduce the amount of by-catch.

But even this "best managed fishery" has its critics. The Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society of New Zealand and the New Zealand branch of the World Wildlife Fund appealed hoki's sustainability tick. Both thought that the certifier had been too generous when it reviewed hoki against the criteria for a sustainable fishery.

And the independent international panel that heard the objections to the hoki fishery's re-certification thought the critics had a point. It thought hoki passed the re-certification only "by the skin of its teeth". The panel noted that the certifier had based some of its marks on "highly optimistic" assumptions. Despite these reservations, the sustainability tick stands. According to industry, the management of hoki is a New Zealand success story. The only other MSC-certified fish available in New Zealand is John West canned Alaskan salmon.

Sustainable consuming

You can see the hoki debate reflected in buying guides about sustainable fisheries. The Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society rates hoki as one of the least sustainable fish in its widely circulated Best Fish Guide. Not surprisingly, the Seafood Industry Council and the Fisheries Minister disagree. The Seafood Industry Council says all New Zealand fisheries are sustainable.

The National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) carries out much of the research used to set catch limits. NIWA's chief scientist for fisheries Dr John McKoy says: "The essence of those different views is uncertainty. It's not easy to measure fish stocks, so you end up with statistical limits. The limits can be quite wide. People interpret those limits to suit themselves."

In Dr McKoy's view, the concept of "sustainability" is based on the criteria that you personally choose to set. He points out that MSC's criteria are internationally regarded as well balanced and rigorous.

He also cautions that there's a serious lack of data about many fish stocks: "We don't have much information at all about many of our in-shore fisheries and what we have is often quite old. For many fish stocks, we don't have adequate information to be confident about management decisions."

By the buy

On the day Consumer went fishing (see Quota management system), Nunzio and his crew pulled up about $2000 worth of crayfish after deducting the cost of ACE (annual catch entitlement) for that catch. Around $22 per kg of crayfish caught goes towards paying off the cost of ACE. Whether it's worth going out fishing depends on the price of ACE versus the market price for crayfish.

The price paid for the catch is further whittled down by fuel ($400), bait ($200) and general maintenance. The rest of the money is split between the crew. It was a good day, but that's not always the case. Fishers are at the mercy of the catch, the weather, the price of fuel, and the market demand. Nunzio sometimes loses money if different combinations of these factors are against him.

Most small owner-operators face similar pressures. Those who own quota at least have the option of leasing it if high fuel prices or a sky-high exchange rate make fishing uneconomical. But even quota owners are in a bind if the market falls out of their particular fishery or the total allowable catch is cut.

Records and monitoring

Fishers operate in the great unknown, but a surprising amount is known about what they do out there.

Records

Whenever they dock, fishers must report their catch on approved catch-effort forms. This information is cross-checked with other reports creating an audit trail from fishers, through processors, wholesalers and finally to the consumer at the point of sale.

Monitoring

The Ministry of Fisheries has a vessel monitoring system. Deepwater fishing vessels have to carry a satellite transponder unit that allows observers to track their location. Fishers can't wander too far astray without being noticed.

Economics

Vessels converge on specific fishing grounds because that's where the catch is best. Fishers also try to work in the most efficient way. For example, several innovations to reduce by-catch have been driven by industry. Fishers don't want to waste time sorting unmarketable fish from their catch.

But conservationists argue that some methods of fishing - such as bottom trawling to catch orange roughy and oreo - are irresponsible. Smaller fish might escape unharmed through the mesh of a trawl net, but species over a certain size are caught. Bottom-trawling can also damage coral and sponge forests on the ocean-bed.

Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society's Kevin Hackwell says that the amount of recorded by-catch increases when government observers are posted on fishing vessels. That's a point disputed by the Seafood Industry Council, but reported by the Parliamentary Commission for the Environment back in 1999. Recently the Fisheries Minister acknowledged there was good evidence that not all dolphin mortalities had been reported by fishers in the past.

Our view

  • Closing a fishery because a stock is on the point of collapse is disastrous for fishers - it also means we've mismanaged part of the marine environment. We support an amendment to the Fisheries Act if it makes it easier for the Minister to err on the side of sustainability.

  • We think more effort needs to be spent researching fish stocks. We doubt it's "prohibitively" expensive to get a better handle on our fish stocks (it's a $1.3 billion export industry after all). Better information would help clear up some of the uncertainty surrounding changes in the catch limits.


More information


More from consumer.org.nz

Choosing fresh fish

Fresh fish

How fresh is that fish? Follow these five tips to find out:

  • 1. Smell it. Fresh fish has little odour. If it smells really fishy leave it behind.

  • 2. Buy the freshest available fish, rather than deciding what you want before you get to the shop. "White fish" fillets (for example hoki, snapper or tarakihi) should be glossy and translucent with pale wet flesh. The fillet should be elastic when poked, and the blood vessels along the bone should be bright red.

  • 3. Ask to have a whole fish filleted if none of the fillets look up to scratch. Whole fish should have clear bulging eyes and bright glossy skin with a luminous wet sheen. The gills should be bright pink and have a fresh seaweed smell.

  • 4. Wrap a bag of ice up with your fish. If you buy it at lunchtime, store it in the work fridge.

  • 5. Eat fish within a day or two of buying it.


Report by Luke Harrison