According to the report a New Zealand company and a Japanese company pleaded guilty today to breaking quota rules and misreporting a $2.4 million catch. New Zealand Fisheries Minister Phil Heatley has applauded the results of an operation into illegal commercial fishing. New Zealand company Aurora Fisheries and Japanese company Kanai Fishing, along with four Japanese nationals, pleaded guilty in Wellington District Court to 54 charges under the Fisheries Act 1996 of making false returns.
The report states the charges involved the companies catching fish in one quota management area and misreporting them as coming from another, in a practice known as “trucking”. The incident took place between 2007 and 2008 and were some of the worst New Zealand’s quota management regime had seen, with the fish having an estimated export value of $2.4 million.
Heatley welcomed the guilty pleas and the Ministry of Fisheries, which had spent two years on operation named “Taskforce Webb” to catch the offenders. He told that the result reinforced the Government’s tough stance against illegal fishing in our waters. Ministry of Fisheries deputy chief executive field operations Andrew Coleman said the outcome was deeply satisfying for everyone concerned.
Coleman informed that the operation ran for almost two years from November 2008 and was a huge team effort by a wide range of people. The offending involved 481 tonnes of ling and 112 tonnes of silver warehou caught off the southern coast of the South Island by the foreign-flagged, New Zealand-registered ship Tomi Maru 87. The fish had an estimated export value of $2.4 million.
