4 April 2007

Fishing industry sinks to new low

The fishing industry has won a battle of smoke and mirrors by getting Government to agree to their self-imposed bottom trawling protection areas, while leaving them free to pillage the locations of most value, the Green Party says.

The release of the Benthic Protection Area Accord today reveals just how much the fishing industry dominates the management of marine resources in New Zealand, Fisheries Spokesperson Metiria Turei says.

"Although there are numerous points in the accord which seem positive, such as the imposition of a buffer zone of 100 metres from the seabed for trawls and fines of up $100,000 for any that trawl lower than 50 metres from the seabed, the trouble with the Accord is that the areas being protected are scarcely fished because there are few fish there and the areas are mostly at the limits of the EEZ - too far away to be worth fishers going there.

"Only 18,300 tonnes of fish have been taken from the areas to be protected since 1989 compared with the roughly 500-600,000 tonnes taken from the entire EEZ in recent years," Mrs Turei says.

"When the proposal was first put forward by the fishing industry last year, NIWA conducted a study into the proposal and found that the areas included in the ban are of minimal biodiversity value and will cost the industry almost nothing to stop fishing.

"Greenpeace also drew the same conclusion from its examination of the industry's proposal.

"Despite these revelations from these experts, the Accord to which the government has agreed has hardly changed from the proposal. Only a few minute areas have been added - equal to about 2 percent of the EEZ - and again these are largely in areas not fished.

"The industry can hardly claim to have made much of a sacrifice when virtually all of the protected areas fall into the categories of having either too few target fish, being too deep or too rough to bottom trawl, already being fished out or already designated as no-trawl zones," Mrs Turei says.

ENDS

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