Nick Smith ‘captured by Maui’s dolphin spotters’

Press Statement

14/10/13

Nick Smith ‘captured by Maui’s dolphin spotters’

The Conservation Minister, Nick Smith, has “been taken in and captured by the imagination of Maui’s dolphin spotters off Taranaki”, according to the Taranaki seafood industry.

Nick Smith says new information from amateur reports has ‘confirmed’ Maui’s are in waters off Waitara and so wants to add extra bans on set netting there to protect them.

But Egmont Seafoods’ Managing Director, Keith Mawson, says as Nick Smith considers the public submissions he received last week on the ban extension, “He will need to learn the difference between ‘confirmation’ and ‘imagination’”.

He says to take public reports at face value shows Nick Smith has “been captured by a lobby which is determined to make up evidence where none exists.”

Keith Mawson points out that government researchers have not found any dolphins with Maui’s DNA, south of Kawhia in the Waikato, since 1989.

“We did indeed have officials confidently claiming a Maui’s off Cape Egmont in January last year. Then they got egg all over their faces and had to back down because another dolphin which had died of natural causes nearby was tested and confirmed as the far more common South Island Hector’s dolphin.”

“Off Taranaki, for decades now, we have zero per cent Maui’s tests and 100 per cent Hector’s tests,” Keith Mawson says.

Keith Mawson says he is disappointed that Nick Smith will be ignoring the professional evidence from government observers in DOC and MPI.

“They’ve been all over this region’s waters like a rash in the past year – and have seen neither a Maui’s nor a Hector’s. They haven’t made a single sighting. We had expected a relaxation of the fishing restrictions as a result, not the noose being tightened,” he says.

“There will be some amateurs determined to make history gazing out to sea all along the coast to Wellington and seeing Maui’s dolphins all over the place.”

Keith Mawson gives the example of one report cited by Nick Smith as a confirmed sighting, which was listed on 17th January 2013 as a pod of four or five ‘Maui’s’ off Waitara.

“The account says it was a ‘nice morning’. But if you track down the weather report on that day the weather was far too rough for such a vessel to be out at sea,” he says.

He says DOC classed an observation as reliable, solely because the witness knew what a Mau’s looked like.

”You can get a picture off the internet or out of a book. The DOC interviewers didn’t follow up reported sightings often until sometimes years afterwards. They did not seek corroboration from other witnesses. They got some sighting evidence second hand and they received no photographic evidence.”

“There are some groups and people who passionately insist that fishing is a threat right through a completely fantasised vast Maui’s range. They will now discover if they report a sighting, it will be a far more effective way to get the government to ban fishing, than by making a submission,” Keith Mawson says.

ENDS

ESL_Submission_on_the_Variation_to_the_MMS_Oct_2013.pdf

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