Submission: Reopening the Kaikōura shellfish fisheries
Addressed to Inshore Fisheries Management, Fisheries New Zealand, FMSubmissions@mpi.govt.nz on 5 July 2021
Introduction
Fish Mainland is an incorporated not-for-profit organisation whose purpose is to coordinate and assist the South Island marine fishing community in restoring and sustaining fisheries resources for the benefit of all who fish in South Island waters.
Fish Mainland is a member-based organisation. The Members have democratic control over the organisation through the power to nominate, elect and remove Regional Directors of the Board. Also, the South Island Mandated Iwi Organisations can appoint and remove two other Directors. The Board appoints two more Directors and an independent Chair of the Board. Elected and appointed Directors of the Board demonstrate Fish Mainland’s mandate to represent recreational fishers.
Fish Mainland supports the work that Te Korowai and the Kaikōura Marine Guardians undertake to ensure the Kaikōura Marine Area and surrounding areas are sustainably managed for current and future generations.
Fish Mainland fully supports Te Korowai and the Kaikōura Marine Guardians in proposing the pāua fishery reopen subject to their consideration of the current fragility of the resource and the much-needed management tools to ensure the rebuild continues unimpeded. We especially applaud their bold combination of tools designed to address the potential impact that recreational fishing could have on the pāua fishery and their preparedness to be adaptive as new information is made available. After all the fishery has been through since the earthquake, it would be irresponsible to take any other type of approach to its reopening.
Submission
Fish Mainland would like to raise two important issues for consideration.
First, while the focus of the pāua fishery reopening is appropriately directed at the Kaikōura community, it is important to phrase the management challenge more broadly. This is because decisions on whether the fishery has recovered sufficiently to warrant reopening must consider a variant of the 80-20 rule; while the local community may take around 20 percent of the pāua catch in the Kaikōura area, 80 percent is taken by recreational fishers from outside that area, particularly those who transit through or relocate for periods of time, such as over the holidays.
Accordingly, Fisheries New Zealand’s references to estimated recreational catch in the Kaikōura area, based on the National Panel Survey (NPS) results, should be considered with some caution. While the NPS and other methodologies provide valuable information, there are challenges in their use in South Island fisheries. For example, some meshblocks and fisheries are not well represented in the NPS, causing some estimates of catch and effort to be less precise.
Fisheries in the Kaikōura area are a good example. Since the NPS surveys households only, it is not designed to consider the high level of catch by those who transit through the area or relocate for periods of time, thus likely causing the results to under-represent the actual levels of recreational catch and effort.
Therefore, decisions about the appropriateness of the collection of management tools must consider the significant amounts of harvest by non-locals and their likely response to those tools. In other words, the support by the local community for reopening the pāua fishery can and should have a significant impact on the behaviours of and opportunities for non-local fishers in the area.
Second, Fish Mainland highlights the main issue raised by the Kaikōura Guardians in its 1 February 2021 advice to the Hon David Parker. That is, information on recreational harvest levels and locations is critical for on-going management of the pāua fishery once it reopens. Without this information, management tools cannot be adequately adaptive, potentially putting the pāua fishery at risk.
Fish Mainland agrees that improved information gathering is urgently needed and, therefore, should be a high priority outcome for reopening the fishery. Accordingly, it is perplexing that Fisheries New Zealand is not consulting on this issue through the consultation document does refer to reporting of recreational pāua catch using a smartphone app.
This is somewhat ironic since Fish Mainland has developed a voluntary self-reporting system with Fisheries New Zealand to collect information, and the interface with recreational fishers will be a smartphone app.
This system is initially designed to improve the management of South Island blue cod stocks via the new traffic light system (e.g. colours change as available information suggests the state of the fishery is improving or declining). The system is being developed because the National Blue Cod Strategy has not specified the information needed to legitimise colour changes across an area.
The system is like the longstanding voluntary arrangements for collecting CPUE data for the commercial rock lobster fisheries. Over time, these voluntary arrangements have continued to improve so that the data provided have become integral to stock assessments.
The self-reporting system is currently being developed with the financial support of a Sustainable Food and Fibre Futures Grant. It could be developed further to collect information on pāua catch and effort and in ways that assist locals’ involvement in its development and implementation (e.g., reinforce fine-scale reporting).
The intention is also to have specific reporting codes so that participating groups could regularly receive reports on their collated catch and effort information and aggregated anonymised information would be made available to the public.
Fish Mainland suggests that a complementary way to gather information on recreational pāua catch and effort is to undertake roving surveys along the Kaikōura coastline. While traversing the publicly accessible sites by road, surveyors could count the number of fishers and conduct interviews to gather information on the size and number of pāua harvested as fishers return to their cars. This methodology could assist in estimating total catch and verifying trends in the self-reporting system’s data.
Fish Mainland considers these two information-gathering methodologies would be more acceptable to non-local fishers and Government than a system requiring fisher registration or reporting, though such a system would provide a valuable sample frame for randomised surveys to obtain representative catch data that could be extrapolated to estimate total catch.
Fish Mainland also considers that a condition of reopening the pāua fishery should be an seasonal review with reported results and stock estimates published and feedback sought before catch levels and the recreational fishing season are set for the next year.
And, since charter boats already have required reporting of catch of certain species, it would be feasible to add pāua to the list for required catch reporting.
Fish Mainland’s responses to the questions set out in the consultation document are as follows:
1. Do you support reopening the Kaikōura Marine Area (Clarence River to the Conway River) to pāua fishing?
Based on the science, the Kaikōura Marine Guardians advised the pāua fishery could reopen since dive surveys show the full pāua lifecycle is intact and functioning over a widespread area of the fishery, though there is some ‘patchiness’ as the rebuild has not been uniform in all areas. Accordingly, the biological criteria for reopening the fishery have been achieved over a reasonable portion of available pāua habitat.
The Kaikōura Marine Guardians also advised that a precautionary and adaptive management approach would need to be taken to reopen the pāua fishery, and that was the strong message that Te Korowai received from the local community (e.g., constrain the level of fishing effort and catch, gather information, monitor the fishery carefully and effectively, and regularly review and adjust management settings).
Accordingly, Fish Mainland supports the fishery reopening so long as the expected precautionary and adaptive management approach is put in place, including a monitoring system for recording recreational catch and effort. The concern is that reopening the fishery will undoubtedly attract a very large number of fishers, especially in the first few weeks.
2. Should this reopening extend further north from Cape Campbell/Marfells Beach to the Conway River?
Fisheries New Zealand’s consultation document should provide more information on the potential risks of extending the boundaries of the reopening so that the public could provide informed views in response to this question.
3. If the fishery is reopened, do you support the following proposed management measures for the recreational fishery:
an annual 1 December to 1 March fishing season.
Fish Mainland supports the proposed recreational three-month open season (1 December 2021 to 1 March 2022) so long as there are steps taken to assess the level of fishing catch and effort over this period and the science on pāua food availability, which suggests the fishery should not remain closed for a further period.
Should the fishery be reopened for the 2021/2022 season, we also support the intent to have researchers undertake underwater surveys to understand how the current biomass stands up to the commercial and recreational harvest levels. Any consideration of continuing the season or extending it should be based on the results of these surveys.
Furthermore, there is no real value in closing the season only during the winter months (e.g., July to September), as most recreational and commercial fishers do not dive during these months. Also, it would be problematic to undertake underwater surveys during these months due to adverse sea conditions.
Finally, Fish Mainland acknowledges that it would be problematic to set the closed season to align with pāua spawning, as we understand that spawning can occur at different times of the year. While the most common time of spawning along the Kaikōura coast is spring/summer, it can occur less frequently in autumn/winter.
a lower daily limit of three pāua per person with an accumulation limit of six pāua per person.
Fish Mainland acknowledges that wherever these limits are set will cause controversy, but without catch data they will remain crude, less effective tools for constraining the total recreational catch.
As highlighted, any reopening of the pāua fishery must be based on a precautionary and adaptive management approach. Some predict that over 1,000 recreational fishers could access the fishery during the first week of the reopening. If correct, and the daily limit was set at 3 pāua, the first week’s catch would be around 1.2 mt. If the daily limit was set at 5 pāua, the first week’s catch would be around 2 mt. Either way, the likely total catch level during the 3-month season could well exceed the current 8 mt recreational allowance.
Fish Mainland notes that Fisheries New Zealand is currently consulting on the PAU3A and PAU3B TAC settings, with options for the PAU3A (Kaikōura) recreational allowance ranging from 5 to 2.5 mt.
Fish Mainland also notes the objections that recreational fishers express whenever potential reductions in recreational catch are raised, as is the case with current consultation, without any corresponding discussion regarding potential reductions in commercial catch levels. There is an increasing expectation that Fisheries New Zealand will take a more holistic, across-sector approach to managing fisheries, as do the Kaikōura Guardians. This approach would be more conducive to the fishing sectors having discussions about allocations, including those that are spatial and temporal, that reflect changing values and resource use over time.
Regarding a six pāua per person accumulation limit, it should be noted that the pāua fisheries in other regions will remain open while PAU3A will likely remain in a rebuild phase for several years, perhaps for a further 10 years before reaching the pre-earthquake level of abundance. Also, the pāua food source is quite patchy in deeper water. The food source is mostly in shallower water, which is why so much of the pāua stock is there, making it more susceptible to over harvesting by all sectors.
Fish Mainland supports the reduction in the accumulation limit as an important precautionary approach that should be reviewed after the 2021/22 season, while recognising that in the future the limit may become more favourable for recreational fishers, should survey results and other data support its increase.
a new vehicle and vessel limit.
Fish Mainland supports vehicle and vessel limits as another effective way to apply a precautionary and adaptive approach to ensuring resource sustainability.
We support the Kaikōura Guardians’ recommendation to set a vehicle limit and a vessel limit to four daily bag limits (i.e., 12 pāua) or one pāua per person, whichever is greatest.
A vehicle and vessel limit, coupled with a reduced accumulation limit, could prove to be important steps in avoiding a bonanza mentality, that could lead to localised depletion of the stock and jeopardise the rebuild.
a larger minimum legal-size limit of 130 mm in shell length for black-foot pāua.
Fish Mainland supports the proposed 130 mm length for black-foot pāua, as it would help improve the stock’s spawning rate and, therefore, its sustainability. It would also be more in line with the commercial fishers harvesting pāua at 135 mm and at 140 mm in some areas. But, it would differ from the 125 mm legal-size limit in the rest of PAU3, including around Banks Peninsula, which could complicate enforcement efforts.
The Kaikōura Guardians note that an important component to increasing the legal-size limit is the required use of an approved pāua harvesting tool to help improve compliance with the new limit and minimise the risk of damage to pāua during harvesting.
Given the importance the Guardians place on the use of an approved harvesting tool, Fish Mainland is surprised that Fisheries New Zealand excluded it from consultation. It would have been helpful to at least include an explanation regarding why it may be too problematic to require all fishers to only use an approved tool.
4. Are there any other measures you would like us to consider on the proposal to reopen the Kaikōura Marine Area/extended area to fishing? This could include reopening the kina fishery.
Fish Mainland supports the reopening of the kina fishery as a way of assisting the recovery of kelp beds, which are the food source for pāua.
As noted, while Fisheries New Zealand’s consultation document discusses collecting information on recreational fishing, it does not pose any questions for public input into this critical component for on-going management. This omission is disappointing, as it appears to show a lack of support for the most important issue that the Kaikōura Marine Guardians envision in designing a fit-for-purpose precautionary and adaptive management system for reopening the pāua fishery.
The Kaikōura Marine Guardians’ 1 February 2021 Ministerial advice refers to a new approach to information collection as being the ‘game-changer’ for the effective management of recreational fishing. The Kaikōura community is understandably concerned that the public will be able to get their daily limit in wading depth, which will be beyond most peoples’ prior experience and could create a bonanza mentality and consequential extreme levels of recreational harvest.
In short, the prospect of re-opening the pāua fishery during the summer months, even with lower limits in place, and without any new means of collecting real-time information on recreational catch and effort could well lead to localised depletion that jeopardises the rebuild of this fragile fishery.
Please refer to our above points regarding new ways to collect information on recreational catch and effort.
Finally, whenever details are released to the public about reopening the pāua fishery, emphasis should be placed on the fragility of the population recovery and the potential downsides of getting the catch levels wrong. Emphasis should also be placed on the need for a precautionary and adaptive management approach, where the fishery at first would be opened on a limited basis, and the extent of a next opening will be based on available data. This way, the public will be more prepared for and accepting of changes as they occur.
Thank you for the opportunity to provide input into these important and significant decisions.
Yours sincerely,
James Crossland
Chair of the Board
