Since the outset, Fish Mainland has highlighted the failures of successive governments to address problems that inevitably arise in shared fisheries. Those where commercial, recreational and Māori (non-commercial) customary fishers have a shared interest, and they value their share quite differently.
This failure perpetuates inter-sectoral tensions and conflicts, which, if allowed to worsen, could adversely affect the management of fisheries to the detriment of all fishing sectors.
This failure is due, in part, to the public right to fish having remained poorly defined compared to the rights associated with quota holdings and Māori customary fishing rights. Ill-defined rights are difficult to protect and easier to ignore when pressure increases for use of the nearshore environment and fisheries resources.
The mismatch in defined rights has resulted in an imbalance in management objectives. Successive governments’ objectives have focused on benefiting commercial fisheries and settling Treaty-based claims to fisheries resources. These objectives include clarifying roles and involvement in management processes and developing organisations to represent their interests.
Furthermore, conservation objectives for the nearshore environment, such as marine protected areas (MPAs), focus on reducing or eliminating fishing, recreational and commercial alike, even though other factors may pose greater threats to the marine environment or explain changes in the availability of fisheries resources.
On the South Island, this imbalance is currently playing out in the proposed Southeast MPAs, which could close longstanding recreational fishing areas, causing fishers to go further offshore to fish in riskier conditions.
While Fish Mainland is respectful of Treaty-based rights and areas set aside for customary fishing, we are concerned about the former Government having made behind-closed-door deals with Ngāi Tahu to receive significant financial gain, while securing their ongoing access and ‘co-management’ of these MPAs.
Furthermore, a proposed Ngāi Tahu application for a mātaitai reserve over the Ruapuke Island Group (east of Bluff) poses another risk to recreational fishing.
Mātaitai reserves provide for Crown recognition of a special relationship with an area for Māori customary fishing and management.
In short, upon establishment of a mātaitai reserve, nothing changes except commercial fishing is banned. Subsequently, bylaws can be put in place to change recreational fishing rules.
Understandably, there have been several mātaitai reserve applications where local communities get behind them to address commercial fishing-induced localised depletion.
There are 45 mātaitai reserves in South Island waters with most in the Ngāi Tahu rohe (area). All these reserves have an average size of just 7 square kilometres, with the largest being 77 square kilometres (Paterson Inlet, Stewart Island).
The Ruapuke application, at 276 square kilometres, eclipses all these reserves as it is three and a half times larger than the largest reserve.
Furthermore, the Ruapuke application enacts a recent regulatory change that allows little or no effect on commercial fishing upon establishment. Commercial fishers may have no direct incentive to object to a no-impact application. However, there is the risk subsequent commercial fishing constraints could be implemented.
The Ruapuke application treats recreational fishing quite differently with proposed prohibitions on public take of certain species, reduced bag limits on other species and areas to be closed to fishing.
Fish Mainland considers the Minister of Oceans and Fisheries should decline this application based on it failing certain regulatory criteria, along with the applicant’s greed and insensitivity to the wider local interests.
We do not want mātaitai reserve applications to become a new threat to recreational fishing, which could cause further divisiveness within shared fisheries.
Instead, we need everyone, including Government, to work together to ensure fisheries sustainability and ongoing access to fisheries resources for all sectors.
