Fishing industry in New Zealand

Sea floor map around New Zealand.

Template:Fishing by country topics As with other countries, New Zealand’s 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zone gives its fishing industry special fishing rights. It covers 4.1 million square kilometres. This is the sixth largest zone in the world, and is fourteen times the land area of New Zealand itself.

The zone has a rich and unusually complex underwater topography. Over 15,000 marine species are known to live there. Many of these are migratory species, but New Zealand's isolation means also that many of the marine species are unique to New Zealand.

Statistics

New Zealand's wild fisheries captured 441,000 tonnes and earned over one billion (NZ) dollars in exports in the fishing year 2006/07. The aquaculture of mussels, salmon and oysters earned another $226 million. This made seafood the country’s fifth largest export earner.

There are about two tonnes of fish in the New Zealand fisheries for every New Zealander. Just under ten percent of this stock is harvested each year. In the fishing year 2006/07, there were 1,316 commercial fishing vessels and 229 processors and licensed fish receivers, employing 7,155 people. About 1.2 million or 31 percent of New Zealanders engage, at least occasionally, in recreational fishing with an annual recreational take of about 25,000 tonnes.

Historical development

Traditionally New Zealand's fishing industry was an inshore one largely confined to the domestic market. Starting in the 1960s, the offshore waters, outside the then 12 nautical mile territorial sea, were exploited by Japanese, Taiwanese, South Korean, and Soviet trawlers.

In 1977 the 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zone was established. The introduction of these zones was driven internationally by countries wanting to protect their fish stocks from foreign fishing vessels. Because New Zealand’s territory includes the Chatham Islands and several other outlying islands, its EEZ is 4.1 million square kilometres, the sixth largest fishing zone in the world.

This was a huge resource, and expectations were high. The inshore fisheries had become over exploited, and it seemed obvious to search offshore for new species. New Zealand companies embarked on joint ventures with foreign companies. Trawling crews from other nations taught New Zealanders how to fish deep waters and in return got a share of the catch.

Deep-water trawling is highly mechanised and massive capital investment is normally required to operate modern factory trawlers. These ships process everything caught on board. Even the guts and heads are processed into fishmeal, which is so valuable it is known as "brown gold". In the northern hemisphere the cod and other fisheries collapsed. This left trawlers lying idle. New Zealand companies purchased them at bargain prices or took long-term leases on modern trawlers. At the same time, the collapse of the northern hemisphere fisheries created a gap in the international market for high quality white fleshed fish. New Zealand orange roughy and hoki were in demand.

A fishing boat in the Cook Strait

In 1986 New Zealand led the world by introducing its property-rights based quota management system (QMS) system. There are currently (2008) 129 species which are targeted commercially. Approximately 60 species groupings have QMS allowances for customary Maori fishers and there are a similar number for recreational fishers. The fisheries are managed through the Fisheries Act 1996, which sets out the rules and regulations and the QMS administered by the Ministry of Fisheries.

The fishery in the 2000s

By 2000, the industry had grown from being a predominantly domestic supplier to one of the nation’s leading export industries. Over 90 percent of all fish landed was exported.

Fishing grounds

New Zealand is surrounded by a rich and unusually complex underwater typography.

Coastal estuaries dot New Zealand's 15,000 km coastline. Coastal fisheries have access to a large continental shelf, and further afield are large continental rises. Together these relatively shallow fishing grounds occupy about thirty percent of the area of the EEZ. Yet further out in the deep ocean lie undersea mountain ranges and volcanoes, and deep oceanic trenches. The 10,000 metre deep Kermadec Trench is the second deepest trench on Earth.

High seas fishing

The high seas are those areas of ocean that not covered by any country’s Exclusive Economic Zone. New Zealand has international obligations to ensure New Zealand flagged vessels are aligned with proper conservation and management of the high seas fisheries. These are met in Part 6A of the Fisheries Act 1996. These obligations come from the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and the United Nations Agreement on Straddling Fish Stocks and Highly Migratory Fish Stocks.

Māori role

Under the Treaty of Waitangi Māori, the indigenous people of New Zealand, were guaranteed “undisturbed possession” of their fisheries until they wished to dispose of them to the Crown. They have been provided with a substantial stake in commercial fishing as part of the Treaty Settlement. After the quota management system was established, the government bought back ten percent of the quota shares and gave it to the Treaty of Waitangi Fisheries Commission for the benefit of Māori. In 1992, the government gave Māori a cash settlement which was used to buy half of Sealord, New Zealand’s biggest fishing company. In addition, the government has given Maori twenty percent of the commercial quota shares of any new species brought into the quota management system, and the equivalent of twenty percent of all marine farming space created around New Zealand coasts and harbours. In 2004, Parliament approved the distribution to iwi of substantial further fisheries assets and this is now being implemented by Te Ohu Kai Moana. Māori have now built their commercial stake to the point where they control or influence more than thirty percent of the commercial fisheries.

Timeline

• 1300s: Arrival of Māori
• 1642: Tasman is first European to reach New Zealand.
• 1769: New Zealand mapped by James Cook, and the Norway rat believed to have arrived in New Zealand aboard his ship, the Endeavour.
• 1790s: Sealers and whalers arrive.
• 1867: Trout and Salmon Protection Act passed - made provision for "the preservation and propagation of Salmon and Trout in this Colony".
• 1875: Seal hunting restricted to a short annual season.
• 1893: Rainbow trout successfully introduced by the Auckland Acclimatisation Society.
• 1894: Protection of fur seal population due to declining numbers.
• 1967: Rudd is illegally introduced into New Zealand.
• 1971: CoEnCo formed
• 1976: CoEnCo renamed as ECO
• 1977: The "Territorial Sea and Exclusive Economic Zone Act" is passed.
• 1979: Marine Mammals Protection Act came into force.
• 1983: Fisheries Act comes into force (establishes a fishing quota system).
• 1986: Environment Act passed (establishes Ministry for the Environment (MfE) and Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment (PCE))
• 1986: Quota Management System (QMS) introduced to conserve fish stocks within the Exclusive Economic Zone.
• 1987: Conservation Act comes into force (establishes DoC, Fish and Game)
• 1989: Mäori Fisheries Act passed.
• 1990: Creation of Te Wahipounamu World Heritage site.
• 1990: Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand is formed.
• 1996: Fisheries Act 1996 is passed (though parts of it come into force only spasmodically over the next few years).
• 1998: Creation of New Zealand Sub-Antarctic Islands World Heritage site.
• 2000: Moratorium on new marine farming applications, initially for two years.
• 2003: Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, Ministry for the Environment, and Fonterra sign the Dairying and Clean Streams Accord.
• 2003: Environment Minister addresses pollution in the Rotorua lakes.
• 2004: Rock snot, an invasive freshwater weed, is found in some New Zealand rivers.
• 2004: 13,000 litre diesel spill in Milford Sound.
• 2004: Moratorium on marine farms lifted after the passing of the Aquaculture Reform Bill. [2]
• 2005: First criminal conviction for killing a fur seal is handed down.
• 2005: Rock snot found in the Buller River.
• 2005: Thirty five squid boats ordered to return to port from their sub-Antarctic fishing grounds for breaking a voluntary code of practice designed to protect seabirds.
• 2006: New Zealand is rated top in the Pilot 2006 Environmental Performance Index.
• 2006: The New Zealand fishing industry proposes limits on bottom trawling.
• 2006: The WWF Living Planet report ranks New Zealand with the ninth largest per capita ecological footprint. [3] [4]
• 2006: New Zealand Fisheries officers' request to be allowed to carry batons and pepper spray is denied.
• 2006: Great white sharks will be protected within New Zealand's EEZ from April 2007.
• 2007: Bottom trawling prohibited in selected areas.
• 2007: The orange roughy fishery is closed to allow stocks of the fish to recover.
• 2008: Environment New Zealand 2007, a State of the Environment report, is released.

External links

External images
EEZ map 1
EEZ map 2

• Ministry of Fisheries
• Aquaculture New Zealand
• Offshore Options: Managing Environmental Effects in New Zealand’s Exclusive Economic Zone June 2005, Ref. ME603.