Marlborough anglers sound alarm on fisheries

Marlborough Recreational Fishers Association

News that one of New Zealand’s most popular eating fish, tarakihi, has been over-fished on the east coast to below eight percent of its original biomass is a direct reflection of the failure of the Quota Management System (QMS).

The Marlborough Recreational Fishers Association has been telling Fisheries New Zealand for several years that the east coast tarakihi fishery was in ongoing danger of over-fishing and is collapsed.

West coast tarakihi is not much better, sitting at only 29 percent of its original spawning biomass size.

“But the ministry had ignored the warnings which the association had often repeated in the hope the message would get through,” MRFA President Tony Flood said.

“The association met Ministry officials regularly at usually quarterly intervals in Blenheim and had regularly warned of the precarious and worsening state of the tarakihi fishery.”

Longtime anglers could recall that 40 years ago or more, tarakihi were often over 50 percent of a day’s recreational fishing. Today, it is unusual to catch a tarakihi.

Tony described the collapse as shocking but added it was not the only fishery in a broken state. Like with the tarakihi, MRFA had constantly warned of a steady decline in kahawai, a very popular recreational fish.

The association had warned fisheries from Labour ministers Stuart Nash and David Parker, National’s Nathan Guy and David Carter, and current minister Shane Jones of the kahawai decline.

Commercial over-fishing had drastically reduced numbers, and reports from other parts of the country reported corporate purse seiners, aided by an aircraft spotting surface feeding kahawai shoals, had caught large bulk quantities of kahawai, thus reducing numbers to very low levels.

Research last year revealed deep water orange roughy fisheries’ biomasses had been severely depleted to just 8-18 percent of original numbers.

Crayfish (kōura) populations have experienced severe depletion and ecosystem imbalance in New Zealand, driven by decades of overfishing and the spread of kina barrens.

“The several broken and busted fisheries point to a major problem in fisheries management with the Quota Management System,” Tony said.

“Successive fisheries ministers have lauded the QMS, but the reality is it’s a poor system that heavily favours commercial corporate interests.”

He concluded: “It is the Government’s and minister’s responsibility to urgently address the lengthening list of collapsed fisheries.”