Quota management system

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.