Hoki's green credentials for review

New Zealand's hoki fishery will be reassessed on whether it is sustainably managed, according to a British environmental report.

The allowable catch for the fishery - one of the first major fisheries certified as sustainable by the international Marine Stewardship Council - has been more than halved in recent years in a bid to preserve future stocks.

"All four of the certified fisheries that are up for renewal in 2005 have applied for reassessment, including hoki," said Jonathon Porritt, author of the report Fishing for Good published in Britain in the weekend. The council produces an "eco-label" used by fishing companies and retailers to show specific products have been assessed as being produced through environmentally sustainable harvesting.

He said that as a whitefish with the potential to replace cod - on the brink of commercial extinction in some fisheries - it was a vital certification for the Marine Stewardship Council when it was becoming established.

"Hoki was finally awarded its certificate in March 2001, to the surprise and outrage of some, such as the Forest and Bird Protection Society," he said.

Some conservationists said at the time that about 1000 fur seals a year and large numbers of albatross and petrels were killed as a side-effect of the hoki fishing.

Porritt wrote the report for a sustainable development charity, Forum for the Future, mainly as a review of the "fish sustainability initiative" of multinational Unilever. He said that when hoki was certified, the New Zealand industry was presented with a list of "corrective actions" it should carry out to improve the sustainability of the hoki stock.

"In this case, the corrective actions were not made public".

But the director of policy at the Marine Stewardship Council, Chris Grieve, said in the report: "Hoki was certified in the black box days. Scientists went into a room and, after a while, hoki popped out certified."

The report said that any process that claimed to be part of the solution to unsustainable fishing needed to be transparent.

Changes in fishing practice as a result of certification had had a positive effect, with seal by-catch down by 90 per cent, and the population of fur seals actually growing at 4 per cent a year.

But the report also said conservation groups continued to be unhappy with the hoki fishery, and Forest and Bird said there was evidence that bottom trawling was causing damage and the by-catch of seals and marine birds was still too high. Others worry about the state of the fish stock.

The initial annual quota of 250,000 tonnes of hoki has been slashed repeatedly.

Fisheries Minister David Benson-Pope last year cut the quota by 80,000 tonnes to 100,000 tonnes, saying such a reduction was needed to preserve stocks.

"Depending on who you listen to, this is either a sign that the fishery has been persistently overfished for years, or that it is being fished within sensible limits," the report said.

- NZPA