Fight the Fisheries Act reforms
The fishing industry kills more Māui and Hector’s dolphins than any other known cause. And now the industry wants their minister, Shane Jones, to change the Fisheries Act, to hide the evidence, to weaken camera coverage and erode the priority of sustainability in fisheries management decisions.
The Minister, as we know, has been notoriously unprofessional in his political career. He’s the wrong person to be in charge of fisheries decisions when our oceans and all sea life are under threat.
76 Māui and Hector’s dolphins have been reported dead since 1 October 2022. In the last year, on four known occasions, fishing boats have killed at least one Hector’s dolphin, then gone back out and killed them again.
The main reason that there’s been an increase of over 600% reported dolphins killed by the fishing industry since 2023, is because there’s been a roll out of cameras on boats. No wonder the Minister, at the behest of the fishing industry, wants them gone.
Other proposed changes to the Fisheries Act under the most backward reforms ever, are:
- Less camera coverage across all fishing boat operations
- Stopping the roll out of cameras on boats over 32m and smaller than 8m, and on ‘mothership’ suppliers, foreve
- More secrecy about camera footage so what’s caught can’t be seen even through Official Information Act requests, though access to footage is already prevented because of ‘privacy’ and ‘commercial sensitivity’
- Catch limits set every five years instead of annually
- Minister makes decisions on catch limits taking into account ‘socio-economic’ factors (economics) rather than sustainability, which removes the current statutory duty to reduce catch limits when fisheries are depleted
- Allowing the fishing industry to catch twice as much in some years to make up for years when catches are low
- Allowing fishers to dump unwanted catch at sea (when it’s low value or non-target species - “high grading”, and/or bycatch)
These are all disastrous moves for ocean ecology, fish stocks and bycatch. They’re also dangerous for transparency and the integrity of ocean management.
Please write a quick submission opposing these changes. Ask for more scrutiny, transparency, camera coverage, and oceans fisheries, and non-target species protection, not less. Send your submission to [Enable JavaScript to view protected content] today.
You can find the full proposals here - though they are dense and complex - perhaps designed to overwhelm us!
We also recommend sending an email to the Prime MinisterChristopher Luxon, calling on him to protect Māui and Hector’s dolphins from the fishing industry. The Fisheries Minister doesn’t currently have sign off from Cabinet for these proposed changes, and we need to stop them before they go any further, and that means going to the top! The PM’s email address is [Enable JavaScript to view protected content]
Posted: 14 March 2025