Fisheries Ministry discards the claim that decisions on commercial fishing limits are essentially guesswork and “highly susceptible to influence”. The ministry’s deputy chief executive for fisheries management, Gavin Lockwood, said that every year $20 million is spent on scientific research and stock assessments. He added that the government works on sophisticated and well integrated fisheries research, management and monitoring systems that have been refined over the last 20 years.
The National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (Niwa) chief fisheries scientist, John McKoy, told an online forum on the science behind fisheries management that the information used to set commercial catch limits needed to be improved. He told that it is hard to know all the fish stocks accurately in other words it should be guess work. He says this means the Fisheries Minister’s annual decisions on commercial catch limits are ambiguous, informal and vulnerable to outside pressure.
McKoy claim that the current process is highly susceptible to influence from vested interests. Fisheries research funding has more than halved since the mid 1990s, while the list of commercially fished species is growing each year. Lockwood in his comment said that the quota management system (QMS) is regarded as one of the world’s best, though the nation has to “carefully prioritise” spending on research that best meets fisheries management needs.
He informed that the QMS gets a lot of international attention because it gives fisheries managers effective tools to maintain healthy fish stocks and rebuild depleted stocks when required. But McKoy says in the quota system, research targets the most valuable species as those that interested fishing companies, who pay for the research. An environmental lobbyist, Forest and Bird marine conservation advocates Kirstie Knowles, applauds McKoy for speaking out, and say ministers need to be more cautious when setting catch levels.
