Stop further erosion of recreational fishing catch limits
Previously, Fish Mainland asserted that 2020 would be remembered as the year of the COVID-19 pandemic and a time when Government actions had the most (potentially) adverse impacts on South Island marine recreational fishing.
Just to recap, the proposed Marine Protected Areas in the southeast would lock up in perpetuity some longstanding recreational fishing areas, including those adjoining Dunedin.
Also, the National Blue Cod Strategy reduced South Island daily bag limits by 50 to 80% while North Island limits remained unchanged. The Strategy also ended filleting at sea, while fishers no longer can transit through an area with a larger catch taken in another area.
Furthermore, the set-net ban precluded recreational netting even in estuaries and inlets where it has been done for over 100 years without any dolphin sightings, let alone mortalities, while forcing fishers to net offshore in known dolphin habitat.
2021 will be remembered not only as the year the Government’s COVID-19 strategy shifted from elimination to suppression, but also a time when the Government continued to adversely impact recreational fishing.
Currently the Government is considering action in response to some unethical fishers having taken excessive amounts of North Island unprotected finfish species and, therefore, are vulnerable to localised depletion.
But Fisheries New Zealand did not stop with the obvious solution, which is to propose daily bag limits for individual unprotected species. Instead, they have proposed a regulatory amendment ‘so that a [regional] combined daily bag limit applies to all species unless specifically excluded.’
In short, the primary proposal would either add the unprotected species to an existing regional combined daily bag limit, or worse yet (Fisheries New Zealand’s preference) would expand the combined limits to also include those species that already have individual limits.
The secondary proposal included retaining the regional combined daily limits or reducing those limits now at 30 fish per day to 20 fish solely for the purpose of ‘nationwide consistency.’
The result of these one-size-fits-all proposals would reduce the daily quantum of fish that fishers can lawfully take and therefore, erode their current level of access to fisheries resources.
Fish Mainland strongly supports immediate action to limit the take of unprotected finfish species. But to achieve Fisheries New Zealand’s stated purpose of ensuring ‘reasonable levels of utilisation’ for recreational fishers a broader discussion is needed regarding the management of finfish species.
Broader consideration should be given to the take of finfish species by other sectors that may pose even greater risks to species sustainability. A further consideration is the evidence that certain land-based activities pose increasing risks to the sustainability of several species important to all fishing sectors.
Stated another way, rarely, if ever, is there evidence that recreational fishers are the sole cause of the decline of fish species. If there is a problem with recreational catch levels, it should be mitigated with an individual species limit, as has been done with blue cod and most other species important to South Island recreational fishers.
With that said, recreational fishers remain a relatively easy target for Government actions, since historically their voice has been unorganised and dispersed. Therefore, Fish Mainland has an important role in relaying South Island fishers’ collective voice in fisheries management processes.
In addition, the recreational fisher self-reporting system that Fish Mainland and Fisheries New Zealand are currently developing and implementing will aid in providing evidence for possible future changes (increases or decreases) in daily individual or combined limits in South Island fisheries.
This article is also available on The Fishing Paper and Hunting News’ December 2021 issue 195. View Original Article
