KEY POINTS:
Tighter restrictions on bottom trawling in the high seas look set to further reduce the dwindling returns for New Zealand fishing operators.
Interim measures that emerged last week from an international summit in Chile were likely to result in a "decrease in economic return generated by New Zealand high seas bottom trawling in the South Pacific", said the Ministry of Fisheries.
Trawling is blamed for widespread destruction of vulnerable marine species.
The new rules confining bottom trawling outside national waters to existing volumes and areas - subject to an environmental impact assessment - follow research showing a marked decline in the returns from high seas bottom trawling.
Between 2000 and 2005, the practice - which targeted hoki and orange roughy - netted an average $15 million a year but that fell to $9 million last year, the ministry said.
Fisheries Minister Jim Anderton thought this year's catch would drop further.
"This year the indication is it could be even less."
Anderton said small operators would feel the effects of the measures, but he expected many would be relieved that it was not an outright ban.
But he warned that a ban could still come.
The Seafood Industry Council's Alastair MacFarlane, who represented an international coalition of fishing industries at the meeting in Renaca, Chile, said the major impact on the New Zealand fishery was likely to be a requirement to assess the impacts of bottom trawling.
"The other thing that's required is likely to be the carrying of official observers on board vessels fishing in the high seas - and that's going to be a cost."
But Anderton said the fishing industry already funded observers on fishing boats and paid for scientific investigation, acknowledging the sector paid more on a user-pays basis for the development of their industry than most others.
Anderton has said that New Zealand fishing boats could find it a challenge to satisfy the new controls agreed on at the third round in Chile last week of talks to establish a South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organisation.
New Zealand Federation of Commercial Fishermen chief executive Pete Dawson said he had not yet analysed the measures but feared the outcome would place another burden on the small operator, on top of recent agreements to restrict fishing within the country's exclusive economic zone.
"Not only do we have a high exchange rate, high fuel costs and a depressed fish market - but now we've got the burden of reduced access to fisheries as well.
"What it does deprive a nation of is investigating and exploring its continental shelf for further resources."
Eric Barratt, managing director of Sanford Fisheries, said the controls would have no impact on the operations of his listed fishing company.
"It basically restricts fishing to the same footprint you've used in the past five years.
"It stops you going exploratory fishing and we haven't engaged in exploratory fishing in that area anyway."
Sealord would not comment and Talleys said it would adhere to the Seafood Industry Council's view.
