Te Ohu Kaimoana supports changes to Fisheries Act
Te Ohu Kaimoana has thrown its support behind a proposed change to the Fisheries Act that could result in a greater level of certainty when the Minister of Fisheries sets the Total Allowable Catch each year.
The Bill proposes to amend Section 13 of the Act and comes about as a result of legal judgements overturning recent decisions by the Fisheries Minister when he set the TAC for particular fishstocks.
In supporting the Fisheries Act 1996 Amendment Bill (No 2)’s introduction into Parliament last month, Te Ohu Kaimoana said the amendment would clarify the existing law where the maximum sustainable yield (MSY) of a particular fishstock could not be reliably estimated.
It is under Section 13 that the Minister makes most TAC decisions to hold fishing at levels that can be sustained over time or generally at a level either at or above MSY.
The amendment is to overcome problems as a result of the recent court judgement in Anton’s Trawling Company Limited v The Minister of Fisheries in the High Court at Wellington. In that case, the court overturned the Minister’s decision to reduce orange roughy catches in OR1 because the decision was made without taking into account all of the available information.
The revised Section 13 of the Act will operate in situations where the fishing level for a particular fishstock cannot be reliably estimated.
In these situations it requires that the Minister makes a decision using the best available information and sets a TAC that is consistent with the sustainability objective.
Parliament has fast-tracked the process for this legislation to be approved and Te Ohu Kaimoana was asked to be an “interested party” to provide advice to MPs on the change. General Manager Policy and Operations for Te Ohu Kaimoana, Laws Lawson, said Te Ohu Kaimoana supported the proposed amendment and recommended that the Bill be passed without any changes. “The country’s fisheries management system uses various strategies to assess the sustainability of fishstocks, including modelling estimates of biomass levels or using alternative indicators of the relative state of the stock, which have been used for the majority of the 629 quota management stocks where information on biomass was not readily available.”
He added that these approaches are commonly used in other countries with similar fisheries regimes such as Australia, Canada and the United States.
“The technical amendment aims to restore the status quo for fisheries management so that the complete range of approaches that have been used in New Zealand and overseas to assess that a fishstock is being managed so that its biomass is at or above that needed for the maximum sustainable yield remains possible,” he said.
Laws said that the change was not “Section 10 changes in another guise”. Te Ohu Kaimoana opposed changes to Section 10 because they were not necessary to ensure sustainability. Recent commentary by the Courts in two recent court cases – on Kahawai and Orange Roughy – has reinforced the position of Te Ohu Kaimoana that no change was needed.
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Protecting Māori fisheries assets for future generations