Commercial fishers who follow the lead of a Northland man and dump excess catch will be hit by heavy fines and risk losing their fishing boats, Fisheries Minister David Carter warns.
Mr Carter was outraged, as were many Northern Advocate readers, that a Northland commercial fisher had left a three-kilometre long trail of dead snapper after dumping about five tonnes of the fish because he did not have the appropriate quota.
The scale of the case, and the sheer waste it represents, angered Northland recreational fishing experts and enforcement agencies who fear commercial operators are dumping massive hauls of fish to avoid paying a charge when exceeding their quota of $13-$26/kg.
Northland commercial fisher Kelly Scoles was fined $25,000 and lost his family's fishing boat Diana after admitting illegally dumping an estimated five tonnes of snapper, with a retail value of up to $75,000.
Scoles pleaded guilty in the North Shore District Court to a charge of abandoning legal-sized fish at sea after the snapper were found floating in a net south of Kawau Island, in the Hauraki Gulf, on December 13, 2010.
One commercial fisher spoken to by the newspaper said he felt Scoles had got off lightly as the penalties for landing that amount of excess catch would have been far greater than the fine and forfeited boat were worth.
Others have called for changes in the law to allow excess fish caught like this to be handed to community groups to help feed the poor.
But Mr Carter said he was happy that the Fisheries Act, and accompanying Quota Management System (QMS), were effective in protecting the country's precious sea resources.
"The QMS and Fisheries Act are recognised throughout the world as being very good systems of ensuring sustainable fishery resources and is much admired," Mr Carter, the Minister for Primary Industries, which includes the fisheries portfolio, said.
"The QMS is all about fishing sustainability recognising the interests of all. This man had the ability to catch fish and overshot it dramatically and got caught with fish he shouldn't have been fishing for."
He said Scoles did not have quota for the snapper and should not have been fishing for them at all, with the penalty for dumping fish - fines of up to $250,000 and forfeiture of any vessels and/or equipment used - heavy and appropriate.
"I don't see anything to suggest that that [the penalties for landing excess fish] is encouraging them to dump fish rather than land it," Mr Carter said.
He said MFish could not redistribute seized fish as that would be breaching the QMS, which the ministry was set up to enforce. It may also encourage excessive fishing if there were no effective penalties.
Mr Carter said
there were several more cases of commercial fishers dumping excess fish being investigated and anybody else convicted could expect heavy fines.