Rock lobster industry commentator Daryl Sykes provides the second of a series of articles exploring the development and growth of the industry.
In the first article of this series we tracked just some of the administrative and technological developments that marked the growth and consolidation of the New Zealand rock lobster industry from the 1940s through to the late 1980s. The industry has a history of innovation across the complete value chain, from the water to the consumer, but the New Zealand rock lobster fisheries are also notable for innovation in research and management approaches.
For this article we are going to kick off with what was a revolution in fisheries management – the Quota Management System or QMS – introduced for rock lobsters in April 1990.
In 1983, a precursor to the QMS was implemented to control seven deepwater fish stocks. At the time, the deepwater fisheries stocks were relatively healthy and this system was implemented to prevent over fishing or overcapitalisation from occurring as it had in the inshore finfish stocks. To be eligible for the individual quota (IQ), companies needed to prove that they had the ability to access the fishery but also that they had the processing investments necessary to process catch. The quota allocated under this scheme was granted for ten years. However, in 1985 the allocations were confirmed by the Government and granted in perpetuity thus bringing the deepwater species into the QMS.
Having secured the deepwater, the Government sought to extend the QMS across all inshore fisheries. The Ministry of Fisheries of the day had planned on commencing with the lobster fisheries, thinking that it should be less complicated and less contentious than the multi species/multi method finfish sector. The lobster industry, represented at the time by the NZ Federation of Commercial Fishermen, was not a willing participant. The opposition was strong and the Ministry made little headway in ‘selling’ the QMS to that sector and set aside their initiative in favour of bringing inshore finfish into the QMS.
It was never going to be an easy task even though the majority of inshore fishermen had already publicly conceded that there were ‘too many fishermen chasing too few fish’. The Ministry made various concessions to the finfish industry which in hindsight were probably unwise and definitely led to some inequities in quota allocations and species mixes when the QMS commenced in October 1986.
Lobster industry participants were closely observing the finfish quota allocations and when they finally accepted the inevitability of following finfish into the QMS, industry representatives went looking for the deal that best suited their fisheries and the fishing families who derived their livelihoods from them.
By way of advocacy and negotiation the lobster industry restricted the use of notional catch histories and ensured that there would be no explosion of vessel numbers across the nine rock lobster fishery areas. When rock lobster was introduced to the QMS, both the criteria and the appeal process used during the finfish quota allocations were tightened up. The rock lobster appeals were relatively uncontroversial and were disposed of very quickly.
Industry successfully argued for potting to be the only permissible commercial harvest method and was also partially successful in constraining what was known as ‘multiple use of permits’. On April 1st 1990 the lobster fisheries were in the QMS and all commercial participants were working to defined catch limits. That change took a bit of getting used to, especially when there was a strong feeling across the industry that the Total Allowable Commercial Catches (TACCs) set for each of the nine management areas were wrong.
The Ministry TACC setting policy in 1990 resulted in some management areas having initial TACCs well in excess of their most recent catch histories and others having TACCs much lower than recent histories. With support and investment from the science unit of the NZ Fishing Industry Board (FIB) the lobster industry continued to press for nine separate TACCs to be set and reviewed annually. That approach has been the standard since the mid to late 1990s.
There were some interesting threads of innovation through that first decade of the lobster QMS. The most important of which are those which had long term consequences, for example, the innovations in stock assessment science, fisheries data collection and modelling which are still being carefully refined and updated in a truly cooperative effort between the industry and science providers working under contract to the Ministry.
But underlying that cooperative effort back in the early 1990s was the willingness of the rock lobster industry at large to take on the co-management opportunities presented by the QMS.
The QMS was and still is a rights-based system with underlying incentives for rights-holders to act cooperatively and collectively to protect and enhance the stocks in which they own a share of the available harvesting rights. The buzzwords at the time were stewardship and custodial attitude. The rock lobster industry was reasonably well organised before the QMS but by 1994 had become a stand-alone commercial stakeholder organisation with its own negotiated funding base and a strong regional representative structure built on the ownership of quota shares and catching rights. The lobster industry became very pro-active in taking up opportunities to participate in the research and management of their fisheries.
Under the umbrella of the NZ Rock Lobster Industry Council (NZ RLIC) the industry initiated collaborations with the Fishing Industry Board, the Ministry of Fisheries and with research providers. Industry invested in new technologies – the vessel logbook programmes, supplementary tag and release projects, digital data collection, a fishery accreditation system, and direct contracting of stock assessment expertise were well underway from the late 1990s onwards. Support and encouragement was forthcoming from various Ministers and from the Ministry itself – everyone was keen to see the QMS realise its full potential.
The lobster industry very quickly recognised the benefits of TACCs being catch limits rather than targets and in response to observed stock declines variously in CRA 8, CRA 3 and CRA 4 during the 1990s and early 2000s the respective industry groups gave expression to the anticipated notions of stewardship by agreeing and 7
implementing several significant voluntary reductions to commercial catch limits, and/or prompted the development of formal ‘decision rules’ to guide annual TACC setting. These have been refined and regularly updated to form the basis of advice presented to Ministers each year to guide their sustainability decision making.
Unfortunately a succession of departmental reforms and a progressive loss of institutional knowledge within the Ministry of Fisheries coupled with a perceived weakening of the stewardship ethos across the fishing industry stifled further heralded development of once ‘cooperative user group management’ and moved the system back towards a Ministry command and control situation. In spite of that shift, the industry has continued to make its own investments in science and management and to promote timely, equitable and pragmatic decision making.
Back out on the water and inside the regional processing and export facilities, in the first decades of the QMS industry was also being very proactive. Working to a quota limit and maintaining a reputation for delivering premium live seafood to discerning Asian markets meant that product quality, catching efficiency, and sound business planning were necessary requisites for the catching and export sectors. Individually and collectively on a regional basis the industry invested in harvesting and processing technologies and operational codes of practice.
The national biotoxin management plan for rock lobsters had its origins in the Canterbury/Marlborough (CRA5) lobster fishery where industry awareness of the effects of biotoxins on nearby aquaculture producers prompted independent testing and development of operational responses to biotoxin events. These have since been expanded and are well established across all nine lobster fisheries management areas.
The increased reliance on the use of holding pots to take advantage of peak price periods in the export market or as a response to transportation delays or lack of airfreight capacity prompted the Southern rock lobster industry to commission research and scientific advice in relation to catch handling and longer term storage of lobsters. Fishermen refined onboard handling protocols and redesigned holding pots to ensure very minimal handling and predation damage. In pursuit of quality, and mindful of the increased public awareness and concern in relation to animal welfare, industry at large implemented grading and packaging standards. Export companies carried these through to the market in various collaborations with freight forwarding and airline companies. Markets acknowledge these initiatives by their willingness to have the highest prices for New Zealand rock lobsters.
In the next instalment – unravelling species DNA, opening the door to trans-Tasman industry cooperation and here in New Zealand the initiatives made to protect and enhance spatial access and rock lobster fisheries utilisation opportunities – plus some of the stuff that didn’t work.
