https://www.beehive.govt.nz/speech/speech-seafood-new-zealand-2015-conference

Get your thinking caps on – this is going to happen fast,going to be high level, and is the first substantive chance in a long time for real improvements. And it could just as easily go the other way. Life is often like that. Our job is to ensure it doesn’t go backwards.

Fish4All smartphone App

There is now and Ap called fish4all available for both android and iphone.   Just go to the ap store appropriate to your phone, and search for fish4all to give it a try.

This ap allows you to record your catch, and if enough people use it, will give advocates working on your behalf useful information to take into fisheries management discussions.

We align with LegaSea in wanting more fish in the water, and there are many factors involved in making that happen.

Knowing what we take will help us build more effective management.   Sometimes recreational fishing is a significant influence, sometimes not.  Sometimes commercial fishing is a significant influence, and most often there are many factors at play, including effects of land based activities through run off and rubbish, competition with other uses (like marine farming) can be significant.

So having good information on recreational fishing effort is not a magic bullet in fisheries management, and it can add significantly to improving outcomes for recreational fishers in many fisheries.   So please give the ap a try.

Ted Howard – President RFC

Ted comes from Kaikoura, is in his 10th year as president of the Kaikoura Boating Club, and has a long history of involvement in both recreational and commercial fishing, conservation, marine science, local and national politics.

Ted comes to the role with a commitment to having a greater abundance in the inshore than is present for many species, to developing local management, and to management that involves whole ecosystem considerations. His experience in the Te Korowai process over the last 9 years has given him some idea of what is involved.

The situation as Ted sees it.

Creating abundance will involve changes in the way all people interact with the ocean:

• changes in behaviour by most recreational fishers, coming from new levels of understanding of the realities, and including all different groups within the sector talking and working together;
• changes in behaviour by most commercial fishers, mainly from changes to fishing practices that kill fewer fish and do less damage to the ocean floor, and in part from automated recording of more detailed information;
• changes in the way conservation groups behave towards fishers, both recreational and commercial, acknowledging the realities they face;
• changes in the way the bureaucracies interact with all sectors, including the wider public, in the speed with which they react to information, and in the scale and scope of management measures (much finer scale close to shore);
• changes in the political system to encourage and resource local management, to resource better science, and to honestly and openly work through the difficult problems.

Crayfish management in the Kaikoura region seems to be a model for fisheries management. Commercial fishers have resisted government attempts to drive abundance down to deliver short term increases in export income, and both recreational and commercial fishers enjoy reasonable abundance as a result.

Crayfish management in the Gisborne city area seems to be an example of everything that isn’t working. The situation there is extremely complex, with many difficult issues that many different sectors are unwilling to face head on. There deep issues of sovereignty, unresolved in 180 years that need to be addressed that will take time and effort to settle fairly. There are issues around displaced effort from marine reserve creation contributing to localised collapse, that no one in DOC or the conservation movement more widely want to acknowledge or address, and embedded in that are issues around commercial compensation that treasury and cabinet want to avoid acknowledging or addressing. All sectors are losers at present. It is about as ugly as it gets politically, and it needs addressing. It needed addressing 20 years ago. There are no simple answers, and there are ways back to abundance.

There is a strong need for integrity at all levels of debate.
The politicians and bureaucrats need to acknowledge that many of the fisheries laws are and always have been a fiction. That is a serious issue for many fishers, as for many it is, and always has been, impossible to work within the letter of the law, as the letter of the law has little relationship to the physical reality fishers face. Acknowledging that reality will be a good start towards creating systems that actually start to deliver what people expect of them.
Fishermen need to acknowledge that some practices really do need to change.
Conservation groups need to acknowledge that most fishermen really do want an abundant marine environment.
All of that is difficult when many people are firmly stuck in an us and them view of the world, and cannot clearly see that we are all in this together.

So it is not a simple journey we have ahead, and it does seem to be a journey worth making. There do in fact seem to be significant gains that can be delivered for all sectors, and it will take some real work to deliver them.

Acknowledging the current realities that exist seems to be step one (however ugly and unpleasant they may be).

Building trust and understanding is step two, and that is likely to involve a lot of time and effort and more than a little misunderstanding along the way. Such seems to be the nature of the process.

Getting from A to B is rarely a straight line when one is on the ocean, not many days are that calm; mostly there is a bit of wind or tide, a few rocks, other boats, etc, and a few changes of course are required. We should all be used to that.

Context:

A national conversation on the future of marine recreational fishing in NZ is taking place from 14-16th February 2013 in Nelson. This conversation is part of the Future Search project. It is an opportunity for the people who care about fisheries in New Zealand to dialogue, discover common ground and agree on action plans for recreational fishing.

Given the sheer number of recreational fishers in NZ (around 1 million) and the rich diversity of beliefs, values and ideas held by all these people, a planning tool called Future Search has been chosen to guide the national conversation.

Expressions of Interest (EOI):

The ad being placed in key print and online fishing publications in addition to being widely disseminated to recreational fishing networks around the country – is an opportunity for anyone interested in participating in the February 2013 event to put their hand up.

Process to consider Expressions of Interest:

The Future Search Project Manager will receive all the Expressions of Interest and work with people to get details of their interest and experience in recreational fishing. This information will be provided to the multi-stakeholder steering committee for consideration.

Final decisions on the 70 participants in the February 2013 event will then be made by the steering committee at the end of August 2012.  The steering committee’s decisions will be guided by pre-agreed criteria and knowledge from their own stakeholder networks.

Invitations to selected participants will then be sent in early September. An explanation will be sent to non-selected participants about the process and ways they can still provide their input to the project.

Future Search website:

A website dedicated to the Future Search project is currently in development and will be live sometime in September 2012. This site will have information on the selection of participants process and ways for fishers to learn more about the project and have their voices heard.

Multi-stakeholder steering committee:

The steering committee make-up is purposely diverse to best ensure the diversity of the recreational fishing sector is catered for in the February 2013 event. The 10 members* on the steering committee have connections with the following interest groups:

• Recreational fishers in the North and South Islands with particular interests in sportfishing, angling, diving and sustenance fishing
• Recreational fishing advocacy
• Tackle and marine industries
• Fisheries media
• Youth interests
• Science and Environmental interests
• Maori interests
• Government

Members: Daryl Crimp, Bruce Hartill, Keith Ingram, Tania McPherson, Kate Mulcahy, Mike Shepherd, James Stevenson-Wallace, Scott Tindale

public notice ad for FS5

Contribute to Future Search: http://fishinfuturesearch.co.nz/contribute/

According to the World Bank, 85 per cent of ocean fisheries are fully exploited, over-exploited or depleted [EPA]
A coalition of governments, international organisations and other groups have joined forces with the World Bank to confront threats to the health of the planet’s oceans.

Launching the Global Partnership for Oceans on Friday, Robert Zoellick, the president of the World Bank said marine life was threatened by over-fishing, loss of habitat and environmental degradation.

“Send out the S-O-S: We need to Save Our Seas,” said Zoellick, speaking at the World Oceans Summit in Singapore.

“The world’s oceans are in danger, and the enormity of the challenge is bigger than one country or organisation. We need co-ordinated global action to restore our oceans to health. Together we’ll build on the excellent work already being done to address the threats to oceans, identify workable solutions, and scale them up.”

The bank hopes to raise $1.5bn in the next five years to protect oceans.

Zoellick said the partnership would bring together “countries, scientific centres, NGOs, international organisations, foundations and the private sector to pool knowledge, experience, expertise, and investment around a set of agreed upon goals”.

About 85 per cent of ocean fisheries are fully exploited, over-exploited or depleted, including most of the stocks of the top 10 species, according to Zoellick.

“The facts don’t lie and the statistics are we are not doing enough, we are not accomplishing enough and the oceans continue to get sick and die,” he said.

Zoellick proposed several 10-year targets for the partnership, including rebuilding at least half of the world’s fish stocks.

Marine protected areas should be more than doubled, he said, noting that less than two per cent of the oceans’ surface was protected, compared to about 12 per cent of land.

On the economic side alone the implications were enormous if little was done, he told the gathering.

In developing countries, one billion people depend on fish and seafood for their primary source of protein and over half a billion rely on fishing as a means of livelihood, Zoellick said.

For developing countries, including many island and coastal nations, fish represent the single most traded food product, and for many Pacific Island states fish make up 80 percent of total exports.

Source: Al Jazeera and agencies

Gareth Morgan and co-writer Geoff Simmons have produced a ‘must read’ for all Kiwis who value their fishing. Hook, Line and Blinkers is written in a casual style that enables the well researched message to be understood by all. The book is informative, it is challenging and it is inspiring.

For over a year the NZRFC have been calling for a national conversation on a better future for all who fish in NZ. The information in this book will ensure that conversation is well briefed. The Board of the NZRFC don’t always agree with the authors 100% but they do wholeheartedly support the book’s call for Kiwis to get engaged in the issues.

NZRFC advises all Kiwis to get a copy of this book and read it this summer. We reckon there is so much information and so many ideas in the book that it will be one to read and re-read. Recreational fishers may wish to dive deep by going straight to Chapter 7 that peels back the myths of recreational fishing in NZ.

Then go back to the start of the book and enjoy the unfolding journey from ocean to plankton to fish to man’s impact on it all. Then learn more about the origins of the QMS. Understand these bones without getting stuck in the rights and wrongs of the historical decisions, then get an assessment of how well we are really doing in NZ in sustainably managing fisheries. There are some exciting ideas to explore for doing it better including a formal move to aim above MSY. NZRFC is supportive of such an approach that focuses on abundance instead of fishing down the fisheries resources.

Having read chapters 1-6, you are now ready to take on Chapter 7 again. We look forward to debating the ideas in this chapter in a national conversation and give credit to Gareth and Geoff for putting this book together.

Note, there is also a website www.blinkers.co.nz to enable readers to debate the issues.

WRFC for website August 2011

New Zealanders managing their recreational resources

Tramping, hunting, fishing are part of the Kiwi birthright – a further example of the outdoors lifestyle that makes our country the envy of the world – and why so many people seek to come home to give their families and children the opportunity we too often take for granted.

Of course, we have to conserve our precious natural environment for future generations to enjoy – that will come through judicious and proper management of our physical and natural resources – not through locking them away so they can only be viewed from afar, or worse, commercially exploiting them now to the point of virtual extinction.

The Game Animal Council – which was agreed under our confidence and supply agreement with National and which we are now working through the detail on – and opposition to 1080 are part of a comprehensive resource management approach.

This is all about recognising the need for the highest standards of environmental protection on the one hand, and the capacity and abilities of New Zealanders to take a responsible, natural self-management approach on the other.

It is time to extend that approach from the land to the seas around us – we will push for an integrated approach to recreational marine fishing to ensure that the million plus Kiwis who like to fish can continue to do so, and have their voice heard clearly, and without having to play second fiddle to commercial interests.

The image of a family fishing together is a potent metaphor for all that is good in our country.

Click here to listen in.

Martin’s presentation is based on his report, “Keep Australia Fishing” commissioned in Australia by the Australian Fishing Trade Association in 2010.

Click here.