The controversial Fisheries Amendment Bill has its first reading in parliament tomorrow. Photo / NZME
Recreational fishers say they’ve been blindsided by tomorrow’s short‑notice first reading of the Fisheries Amendment Bill, leaving no time to discuss further controversial issues only discovered last week.
Recreational fishing advocate and television host Matt Watson said several significant changes in the bill – including the removal of minimum legal‑size limits for many commercial species – were not flagged in earlier fisheries reform discussions and were only identified when the legislation was released on Thursday.
And tomorrow’s first‑reading date, which was only revealed this morning, meant there had been “no opportunity” for public discussion before the bill enters Parliament.
Watson said some earlier contentious proposals had been openly debated and that the minister had already backed down on others, including allowing reef fish and marlin as commercial bycatch.
These further issues arose because they were only found when LegaSea volunteers read the newly-released legislation line by line.
“I thought it couldn’t be real ... this whole no‑size‑limit thing,” Watson said of the discovery that commercial size-limit restrictions were being removed.
Neither could he believe that the opportunity to challenge fisheries decisions in future was being curtailed by a proposal to cut the appeals window from several months to just 20 days – a change Watson said was also “buried deep in the document” and that would make it impossible for opponents to gather evidence, given Official Information Act responses routinely take longer than that.
Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones defended the moves, saying recreational groups had already agreed to the commercial size‑limit changes during 2022 reforms led by the previous Government. His opponents must be suffering from “saltwater amnesia”, he said.
“They may have conveniently forgotten, but I have the actual submissions they made at the select committee where they agreed,” Jones said.
On the proposal to reduce the appeals window to 20 days, he said stricter timeframes were needed to curb “vexatious and time‑wasting litigation” brought by “jilted stakeholders” attempting to relitigate past seasons at public expense.
Watson said he also feared the changes would legitimise what currently happens out of public sight – the discarding of small fish at sea when commercial operators do not believe they can sell them.
The most significant practical impact of removing commercial size limits would be on juvenile fish, already a growing part of catches, he said. Recreational fishers, he said, accept higher size limits because they understand the need to let fish reach reproductive age before being taken.
Allowing the commercial sector to legally harvest fish of any size would undermine that principle.
“As fish stocks deplete, the larger fish disappear first ... there are more small fish. Instead of ensuring enough fish are going into the future, we’re now taking the little ones too,” Watson said.
He disputed the minister’s argument that enabling the landing of undersized fish would reduce wasteful dumping. Watson said if the minister genuinely wanted to stop dumping, he could simply outlaw it.
He said bottom trawling was at the heart of the issue. Instead of reducing reliance on the practice, he said the bill would “legitimise it and make it profitable”, creating an incentive to catch smaller fish rather than avoid them.
Watson said commercial skippers make “an economic decision, not an environmental one”, choosing to keep undersized fish only if there is a market and dumping them otherwise, with the amount dumped recorded only as an estimate and camera footage not publicly accessible.
Without a requirement to land all catch, he said the public had no way to verify what was being discarded at sea.
Jones rejected that interpretation, saying critics misunderstood the reforms and that the bill would require commercial fishers to retain all targeted species and have them counted against their quota.
He also took aim at divisions within the recreational sector, saying some advocates wanted all catch landed, while others opposed it.
“They seem to be speaking from different orifices in their body,” he said.
Watson emphasised that recreational fishers could not fully assess the newly-discovered changes in just 24 hours.
Today, he urged the public to contact their local MPs: “You need to tell that MP that if they do not oppose this at its first reading, you will not vote for them,” he said.
“If the bill gets through the first reading ... it will go through.“
Watson said National’s claim that it cannot intervene because it is not its bill was “nonsense” – the party voted down Act’s Treaty Principles Bill at its second reading.
Jones rejected suggestions the changes had blindsided tangata whenua or Northland communities reliant on kaimoana (seafood).
“I’m from Tai Tokerau and I’m a Māori, so I consulted myself,” he said, noting he had been involved in Māori fisheries rights matters since the 1980s.
Jones said formal consultation occurred in 2022 and that iwi fisheries forum bodies are regularly engaged by officials.
Sarah Curtis is a news reporter for the Northern Advocate, focusing on a wide range of issues. She has nearly 20 years’ experience in journalism, most of which she spent court reporting in Gisborne and on the East Coast.