Paua poacher used bogus Maori fishing permit

The permit was falsified to allow for a catch 600 paua instead of 60. Photo / Glenn Taylor

A man who used a falsified Maori customary permit to poach paua has been sentenced to 250 hours of community work.

He also faces pressure from the Ministry of Fisheries to say whose boat and scuba gear he was using.

A forfeiture order was made against Christchurch invalid beneficiary James Andrew King, 61, at his sentencing by Judge Philip Moran in the Christchurch District Court yesterday.

Ministry prosecutor Grant Fletcher said fisheries inspectors would give King a directive under the Fisheries Act to name the owner of the boat and the underwater breathing apparatus he was seen using.

"If he chooses to disregard that directive, consequences are going to flow from that," Mr Fletcher told the court. King denied three charges of paua poaching, but was found guilty.

Judge Moran found that King altered a figure on a Maori customary permit allowing him to take paua at Akaroa on the Banks Peninsula for a function.

He was found to have about 400 paua on board his boat after being stopped by a fisheries officer.

King produced a permit to catch 600 paua.

But when the fisheries officer later checked with the official who issued it, he was told the permit had been for only 60 paua.

Fisheries estimated King took about 60kg to 70kg of paua worth about $3500.

Judge Moran described the offending as a breach of trust.

"This breach of the customary fishing permit really has an adverse effect upon the integrity of the management of the fishing resources by the tangata whenua."

He said King was not involved in "flogging off black market paua" but may have been able to make some money from sales at pubs.

A woman who was on the boat at the time, 55-year-old executive assistant Kay Christina Jenkins, was found guilty of being a party to the poaching and fined $500.

- NZPA