Meetings look at future of recreational fishing

The future of fishing is to be discussed at a series of meetings.

The future for recreational fishing will be the central question asked at a series of public meetings in the North Island, hosted by The New Zealand Initiative.

The meetings will give members of the public the chance to share their views, and learn more about the initiative's latest consultation document on the subject, The Future Catch.

The Bay of Islands Swordfishing Club in Paihia, with guest speaker Dr Andrew Rowland, CEO of Recfishwest, recognised by the Western Australian Government as the primary representative of recreational fishers in Western Australia, will be the only Far North venue (on Tuesday, September 19, 7pm). Five meetings have already taken place around the South Island.

Dr Randall Bess, author of The Future Catch, will speak about his research both in New Zealand and overseas to find better ways of managing fish stocks of importance to recreational fishers.

In May The New Zealand Initiative sent a delegation of fishers to Western Australia to learn about how their fisheries were managed, alongside representatives of customary, commercial and local recreational fishing. Members of that delegation will share their insights.

People in the South Island had taken the opportunity to raise their concerns about the future of recreational fishing, Dr Bess said, and the initiative was keen to continue that level of public engagement in the North Island.

"The feedback we received in the South Island was clear. Recreational fishers are frustrated about their voices going unheard. Many of them agreed the best approach would be to establish a professional, well-funded organisation to represent their interests at the highest levels," he said.

Following the consultation process, The Future Catch's recommendations would be finalised, and presented to the Government.

The first report in the series, What's the Catch? The State of Fisheries Management in New Zealand, highlighted the majority of management attention and research had focused on commercial fisheries, with too little attention directed at improving recreational fisheries.

It concluded that if changes were not made, New Zealanders could expect increasingly stringent constraints on their access to fisheries resources, and risked the type of "catastrophic depletion" that had often characterised recreational fisheries in other coastal nations.

That level of depletion had already occurred in the blue cod and scallop fisheries in the Marlborough Sounds, the rock lobster fishery in the Hauraki Gulf, and the finfish fishery in Hawke's Bay.

The second report, The Overseas Catch: The State of Recreational Fisheries Management Abroad, provided examples of how other nations had grappled with problems.

The initiative has also released a video featuring some of the delegation to Western Australia. It can be seen at youtube.com/watch?v=6jxfEp4Z8A&t=3s. The report can be seen at nzinitiative.org.nz/insights/reports.