Fishing: Increased patrols set to sink poachers

Early morning high tide on the Manukau Harbour, and some extremely undesirable characters are about - poachers with a simple scheme to elude the Ministry of Fisheries compliance officers.

In large groups, the men either use long drag nets or elect two or three to use a small boat to set a net across a channel. Their catch is mainly mullet and kahawai, with the occasional snapper, dogfish or flounder.

As it is brought to shore a vehicle is made ready and within minutes the fish are in bins under ice and on their way to South Auckland.

In many cases, it has been to Pacific Island churches where the catch is either sold or raffled to provide funds for church activities.

The ministry is reluctant to talk specifics a) because of the racial issue and b) because of cases pending in court.

But it has upped its targeting of such operations and the results are coming. Boats, nets and other fishing gear have been seized, in some cases from the same faces.

The ministry is getting good results from its increased patrolling of the waters around Auckland, with 74 prosecutions listed in November.

They range from the family man with kids on board who kept three well-undersized snapper that simply should have been returned - first fish for the kids or not - to divers with undersized and excess-limit scallops, to the two men caught with 15 times the legal number of mullet (30). That's each. So that's around 900 fish.

And the same pair were caught again within days with excess mullet. Prosecution is pending, their gear was impounded and MFish will seek its forfeiture when the case goes to court.

In some cases, infringement notices will be waived if there is no history of offending and there is cause to accept a genuine mistake or a one-off breach that is not excessive.

Unfortunately, the officers continue to find poachers with well over all legal limits and clearly taking fish for profit. "We've been hitting the right people," said Auckland recreational compliance manager Matt Cowan, who had officers out on the Waitemata Harbour until 3am last Saturday and others back at 6am.

But Cowan said they were learning rapidly about the methods and boat ramps the poachers used and the extra resources put into policing would achieve good results.

The compliance staff are also learning more about etiquette with the great bulk of fishers who do respect the law, and public co-operation was reflected in that, Cowan said. They'd taken on board criticisms of the approach made by some officers, including comments in this column a couple of weeks ago.

Fishers may also be approached in coming weeks by data collectors for the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, which has been contracted by MFish to provide greater information on the recreational catch. On given days between now and April, four small planes will be airborne counting numbers of boats actively fishing.

The new information is likely to play a part in the ongoing kahawai issue. The NZ Big Game Fishing Council, Recreational Fishing Council and option4 are preparing affidavits for a High Court case early next year in which they will seek to force the Fisheries Minister, David Benson-Pope, to review his decisions on the kahawai quota.

In coming months any serious angler is likely to run into a mate trying to sell him a coupon from a fundraising book. Buy one. Twenty dollars multiplied by an estimated 300,000 regular fishers and a further 500,000 casuals will go a long way to getting the right result for the fish our kids catch from wharfs.

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The fishing has been extremely patchy thanks to the howling winds, which have cooled water temperatures. It was 18C and dropping in the Far North this week until the weather changed.

The Bay of Islands Swordfish Club's Icebreaker tournament last weekend had an unusual result. There were 75 anglers and they weighed 74 snapper. Some found it hard to get a fish, others had multiples. Kerikeri angler Tony Poulson won the contest with a 10.1kg fish. But the interesting thing was that average size was 4.2kg, well up on previous years.