The Bait Box with Retired Fisherman Norm Hawler
Down in the Bay the changes in the seasons are now very evident. The days are shorter, the mornings are getting chilly, the sand has moved further down the beach and covered the boulders on the eastern shoreline. Fishing has been pretty good when we have been able to get out but the crays have been going off as the females go through their moult before breeding. Having done the business with the freshened up ladies the males are now wandering off to feed-up prior to their next moult at the end of winter.
There have been a few fishing competitions in our region over the past month or so – both boat fishing and beach fishing, and the numbers of participants have been up on previous years. That was due in part to some excellent weather and sea conditions and increased interest in chasing the tuna species now ranging well south of their expected range. The buzz at the local fishing club is that there have been marlin landed from the top of Cook Strait and some sizeable yellowfin taken off Castlepoint.
Talking about the recreational fishing situation I see in the media that LegaSea has accelerated its transformation to a fully-fledged environmental protection agency. In several recent media reports it describes itself as a non-profit organisation dedicated to supporting and restoring the marine environment. So much for their original self-declared mandate to represent the recreational fishing industry. The organisation has again ramped up attacks on the New Zealand Quota Management System (QMS) whilst putting its own spin on the proposed fisheries reforms recently announced by Minister Shane Jones.
The government proposed the changes, saying they want to streamline regulations, improve data collection, and enhance sustainability while protecting fishers’ privacy. The LegaSea response is to loudly proclaim “It’s a scam – literally defined as a “fraudulent or deceptive act or operation”.
In summary, LegaSea is alleging that if the proposed changes go ahead, they’ll strip away public consultation from important future fisheries decisions, limit camera visibility on boats (or let fishers turn them off altogether), and hand our coastal fisheries over to private commercial interests.
So I did some reading of the reform proposals as released by Minister Jones, and I concluded that the critics are misrepresenting the scale and intent of the changes outlined. I know enough about commercial fishing and the historical fisheries management regimes to be able to confirm the reform proposals as addressing operational issues. There is nothing that will materially change sustainability thresholds or undermine the quality of information used in decision making.
Quite the opposite. For example, the reforms will help MPI to respond faster when they see fish stock levels going up or down by being allowed to draw on a wider range of data. And there is no undermining of anyone else’s rights. Environment or lobby groups don’t need to worry about the impact on the planet or their ability to continue to fish recreationally. The public will still have an opportunity to have their say on fisheries decisions.
As noted in a recent industry newsletter and confirmed by Minister Jones, cameras were always supposed to be about verification NOT vilification. The sad fact is, if footage of men and women at work is made available, there is a small group of people who will misuse it. Fishers need to have their privacy protected as part of having their safety protected.
The proposal to exempt on-board camera footage from the Official Information Act won’t stop the public having access to the data gathered by the cameras exactly as they do now. The regulator will still be able to view all the footage captured, record what is being caught and then publish that information.
Carefully read the reform proposals and draw your own conclusions – I concluded that the scam is coming from the loudest critics. My grandfather had a few good sayings – one appropriate to the critics of the reforms was that “empty vessels make the most noise”.
One Response
That’s a really good response, Norm, to the Reforms being promoted by Minister Jones; it’s a shame that such a sizeable recreational advocacy group is in line with the mainstream media in giving out false information, I thought their mass submission form was so misinformed, I would be more surprised if the recreational fishers actually took that submission form hook line and sinker if that’s the case Legasea was fishing for gullibles. I guess Legasea needs to be environmental, given their association with Forest & Blurd.