Editorial: Sea change on marine farms most welcome

Nearly a decade ago the previous Government set a brave new target for marine farming, aiming to lift aquaculture exports to $1 billion a year by 2020. Unfortunately it accompanied this declaration with a three-year moratorium on new farm applications while it reviewed the environmental implications. At the end of that freeze it decided marine farming would be confined to designated "aquaculture management areas", if district councils could be convinced to designate them.

The industry warned that this system would not work and so it has proved. Not one management area has been established. No new marine farms have appeared since 2004. Annual exports remain at $360 million. The $1 billion target has been postponed to 2025. The years since 2001 have been called the "lost decade" for aquaculture.

National came to office determined to revive the industry. It set up a technical advisory group chaired by a former Fisheries Minister, Sir Doug Kidd, and it issued its remedies this week. They are likely to be contentious. No longer would marine farming be treated very much differently from other maritime industries when resource consents are sought.

Rather than the twin hurdles proposals faced when they needed a designation for the area as well as a resource consent, aquaculture applications would be considered with other uses of the sea in the normal way. The Auckland Regional Council, for example, can no longer pursue a policy of pushing marine farms far from its coasts.

Sheltered harbours such as the Kaipara and popular boating and recreational fishing areas such as the Hauraki Gulf may come under renewed pressure for fish farming if the group's suggestions are adopted. They go further than normalising consent procedures. Where regional councils remain resistant to marine farming a minister would have power to override them. And at appeal hearings against consents, no new material could be considered.

These and other boosts for the industry have brought a warning from the Environmental Defence Society that marine farms could appear in the wrong places, spoiling pristine views and popular boat anchorages. The society is not averse to aquaculture, noting that the industry has a powerful interest in clean water, but it believes these suggestions would relax environmental safeguards too much.

The Kidd group's report says its suggestions are in line with the Government's general changes to the Resource Management Act. It also believes councils will develop aquaculture zones in places where there is likely to be greater demand for space, and that the zones will give the industry more confidence about where and how it can develop.

If the zones sound like the old designated management areas, the group says there is an important difference: aquaculture would be permitted outside the zones, which was not the case previously. A restrictive designation would be replaced by one that encouraged development in the right places.

This country is not so rich in economic resources that it can afford to forgo one. It is, though, rich in unspoiled coastline, clean water and unused tidal inlets. It can accommodate many more marine farms than it has, leaving plenty of empty sea for recreation and scenic value.

It is important that aquaculture applications are balanced against competing uses and the advisory group's proposals provide carefully for that to happen. It is to be hoped the Government speedily puts them into effect next year. Released from its long hiatus, the industry should contribute well to our new exports of fine food.