DO WE REALLY KNOW HOW MUCH FISH RECS CATCH?

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    Posted: 06 Dec 2017 at 11:06am
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It has been on the news lately with a number of commercial fishing representatives saying we don't know much about recreational fishers - how much they take, how many are there etc.....Just need to say - whoever says 'but we don't know how much recs catch' - has not done much research of their own OR are throwing out a red herring to keep the focus off the real issues. This lie/myth has been going around for a while now. 

Lets put it to bed and look at some relevant facts at the same time.
 
  1. Research by MPI and NIWA shows that overall participation in recreational fishing is stable despite recent population growth. 
  2. We know there are around 600,000 Kiwis and around 100,000 tourists who fish at least once every year. 
  3. NIWA conducts a survey of the number and size of fish harvested. In areas of significant catch this survey is backed up by NRB research (a household study) and aerial overflight surveys. 
  4. The last National Panel Survey in 2011-12 delivered credible results that have been peer reviewed by a panel of international and local scientists. 
  5. The next National Panel Survey is underway now. 
  6. NIWA’s Bruce Hartill explains the survey methodology well in this short video.https://youtu.be/sr3Ai8WZBiw

 

How much fish do we harvest?

Excluding aquaculture, recreational fishing conservatively represents – 

  1. Less than 3% of the total harvest from New Zealand’s marine waters ie. including the EEZ.
  2. Less than 20% of total harvest from the inshore fisheries in which the public has an interest. (inshore is generally referred to as inside 12nm)
  3. Less than 10% of total harvest from the inshore fisheries in which the public has an interest and when snapper and kahawai are excluded. 

 

Recreational harvest has a significant impact in some shellfish fisheries and a few inshore finfish stocks such as snapper and kahawai on the northeast coast of the North Island and blue cod at the top of the South Island. Most other inshore fish stocks are dominated by commercial harvest. 

 

Existing controls have proven to be effective in managing recreational harvest. Generally, harvest is less than the allowance set aside by the Minister to provide for recreational fishing. Many fish stocks do not have an allowance set aside by the Minister because they have not been reviewed since at least 1986.


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Post Options Post Options   Likes (2) Likes(2)   Quote krow Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 06 Dec 2017 at 9:40pm
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Niwa were doing survey at Tutukaka on Sunday. All species even puka, Bass, bluenose, Tarakihi and Gemfish got measured and counted. Surveyor said we'd done a lot better than most others that day. Personally I believe rec fishing is a drop in the bucket compared with the tonnage caught commercially. When I see one net haul and compare with how many recreational boats it would take to capture the same quantity I can't see how they can be compared. I'd say we are way under that 20% above. 
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Originally posted by krow krow wrote:

Niwa were doing survey at Tutukaka on Sunday. All species even puka, Bass, bluenose, Tarakihi and Gemfish got measured and counted. Surveyor said we'd done a lot better than most others that day. Personally I believe rec fishing is a drop in the bucket compared with the tonnage caught commercially. When I see one net haul and compare with how many recreational boats it would take to capture the same quantity I can't see how they can be compared. I'd say we are way under that 20% above. 


Add to that QMS legalized wastage, including legal sized specimens, juvenile mortality. I would agree, recs are but a drop the bucket.
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Post Options Post Options   Likes (1) Likes(1)   Quote Muppet Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 07 Dec 2017 at 4:56pm
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Agree with krow. look at how many comm species recreational guys never go near hoki, whiting, orange roughy etc the real big money earners. You could take away snapper from Comms it would not hurt them.
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Originally posted by Muppet Muppet wrote:

Agree with krow. look at how many comm species recreational guys never go near hoki, whiting, orange roughy etc the real big money earners. You could take away snapper from Comms it would not hurt them.


I dont agree with you as I have a guy at Coromandel I play bowls with. Hes out of Whitianga and has a smaller longliners.  Dont really see him being able to go after roughy. What your saying is in essence OK but the smaller longliners rely on snapper as their main income
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Post Options Post Options   Likes (8) Likes(8)   Quote Tagit Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 08 Dec 2017 at 2:11pm
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If we long lined Snapper just for the domestic market (which is something the public want in the fish shops) we could have a decent, stable business for a good number of small operators supplying fish fresh to their local markets. Damn, isn't that sort of what we had prior to the QMS? The trouble is that the comms moved to more 'industrialized' fishing to increase their profits (quantity over quality) and the QMS didn't constrain that enough to protect the stocks.
We now have the horrible situation that a very small group of people control all the Snapper quota and many of them don't even fish for it themselves. Just sit at home/office collecting the lease fees from the poor fishermen who get heavily squeezed. You want to know why Snapper is so expensive to buy - it starts right there!!
Stop trawling and exporting our shared fisheries and 99.99% of NZers will see it as an improvement in their life. The 0.001% are the ones that are currently making the profits from industrialized rape of our inshore stocks.
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But, with NZ Snapper isn't it only something like 30 million in export $$, if so why then the huge fuss, why do comms send the 25cm models overseas for a small market? Why risk by catch which is intended to be dumped amongst this export Snapper?
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Good point tagit. Also the ky they send to Ozzy at a buck a kg or so,when we have to pay $13 a kg at the supermarket. Pretty ballsed up really. Some buggers are getting rich while a lot of people can't afford to eat fish.
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Back to the topic for a moment and a good topic it is too Scott. Yes, we do have a very good idea of the amount of fish caught recreationally and the science behind it appears solid.

Recreational catch reporting would be massively expensive to roll out and only useful if everyone reported everything they landed. 100% reporting simply wouldn't happen and the implications of that would likely be a significant under-reporting leading to potentially more pressure on our fragile stocks.

Not a good idea at all in my view.
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Tell me if I’m out of line but rec fishers catch by numbers and dare I say not high numbers... comms catch by the tonne, is this me or just my imagination that the people that do it for a living would catch way more fish, due to the fact that there livelihood depends on it.....
Can u imagine rec guys saying “how’d u go today?”.... “yeah mate did awesome got my 1500kg limit.... yeah boi!”......
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Flawed logic there though Puff and I'm guessing it was a bit tongue in cheek. The problem is if you get one angler catching their daily limit  (which we will work with the SNA1 of 7) at say 2kg average weight, that's 14kg. I'm rounding it up cos 15 is easier to add in my head. Put 1000 anglers in the Hauraki Gulf and that's 15,000kg.

That's the flawed logic a commercial lobby group may use (they will emphasise the sheer numbers). While 1000 anglers is probably light by the time you add up all the kids and dad's fishing off wharves etc, there are an awful lot of us. The flaw is the amount of fish caught. I don't fish the Hauraki Gulf much but in my home ground out the west side limit catches can happen more readily, but there's certainly no way a given thing. If I catch 7 snapper in the harbour I'm pretty happy.

It would be very interesting to know what we catch. I don't see any effective way of determining that. One thing is clear though, we have to be very smart to prevent being railroaded into a ridiculous set up like they have in Australia
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Post Options Post Options   Likes (0) Likes(0)   Quote pjc Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 09 Dec 2017 at 9:50am
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3 fish per angler once a week x 500 boats/anglers average through out year,1500 x 52=78000 fish at 1.5kg =  117 tonne  conservative?  sna1 only
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Post Options Post Options   Likes (0) Likes(0)   Quote puff Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 09 Dec 2017 at 10:06am
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So how many kgs does 1comms take per year?
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I rec you would be high on that PJ.

General saying and talking to ppl it is pretty close.. 5%  rec fishermen catch 90% of the rec fish.
 And when go thru MPI check points, and on water inspections, chatting to them, also confirms.
We always bring home a feed.. usually 8 to 12 fish for 2 to 3 ppl  ave in last yr  out  3 to 4 weeks..( far less weather windows )
talk to guys at the ramp, they are pushing to bring home any more than 2 to 3  small fish , or any fish.. with 2 to 3 ppl on board.
 The condition of the Hauraki inshore means in general one has to have seasonal logs, know your tides, etc to catch on a regular basis.

Damaged (gut hooked/ blown) undersized fish... 1

The add the charter catch on top.

Out of interest.. just what is the cost of rec fishing ..with historical logs etc.
Last trip about 11 in the bin ( mid 30s to mid 50cm).. filleted down.. about $140 worth of fish @ supermarket prices, +74 muscles.. Around $90.....frames heads (to neighbours) $25 = $255
 cost of day.. gas, oil bait, traces approx $150  (sounds a lot, but cruise is around the 38/40mph)


 West cosat.. yep getting out there now is totally differentiation.. it is more go out harvest , back in rather than a day on the water.
 1/ the bars have to be good.. and prevailing winds swells are from the west, which makes opportunities even less
2/ limited by tides as to cross bars, limits time out there
3/Get 1/ and 2/ opportunities on a weekend to suit most doesn't happen often
 But in those short times out there, it is generally all on, bigger fish , and close to or bin limit.. 4 guys thats 40 mostly  40/50 cm fish.

And that is what the east coast used to be like up to the early 70s...

'They' rec the east coat is recovering well... hell they have been at it for how many decades now, and it is way off
 Not because of the rec catch.. they are not catching, but because of the inshore since pre quota days..and since... because of regulations, not the comms who fish by them legally.



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Do not forget surveys are mainly done at ramps,need to include marinas,moorings and tucked away places.
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Originally posted by pjc pjc wrote:

3 fish per angler once a week x 500 boats/anglers average through out year,1500 x 52=78000 fish at 1.5kg =  117 tonne  conservative?  sna1 only


And that's being conservative PJC. I'd say true figure would be much higher, over double.
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Post Options Post Options   Likes (2) Likes(2)   Quote Tagit Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 09 Dec 2017 at 4:33pm
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I think you guys are being pretty optimistic with a 1.5kg - 2kg average in the HG.A 30cm fish is around 0.75 kg and a 42cm fish is around 1.5kg. Whilst we are seeing a lot of bigger fish right now on the charter boats (normal Spring fishing) I am not sure that the average fish caught by the rec fleet will be 42cm. To average 2kg the average fish would need to be 47cm and a 47 fish would be the fish of the day on most rec outings over the summer.
I would estimate that the average HG rec caught Snapper will be between 35cm and 40cm (around 1.3kg) over a 12 month period so would use around 1.25kg for calculations and guess that it might even be a little lower than that based on what I observe. Average number of fish per angler per day fishing is pretty low according to the NIWA ramp inspector I talked too last season. Might use 2 or 3 fish for doing these calcs I guess.
As for the number of boats and anglers, I think the NIWA/MPI estimates are hopefully more accurate than anything we could guess. What we can do however is work backwards from the MPI estimated Rec take of around 3500 tonnes (or is the estimate higher now?) in SNA1 using the figures above.

Do the maths and it goes sort of like this -
Lets allow what is probably a generous 500 tones for the landbased and kayak etc catch which there aren't many figures for. So now 3000 tonnes for rec boaties. So using say 1.25kg average weight you get 2400,000 rec boat caught Snapper. Divide by say 200 days where people will be fishing (allowing for Winter, bad weather etc) and that is 12000 fish for every day of those 200. So then allow our optimistic 3 fish per angler trip average and you get 4000 anglers on the water for everyone of those 200 days. Then lets say the average boat has 3 anglers and you get 1333 rec boats on the water for 200 days a year. Now personally I have very serious doubts about that many boats being the average per day over 200 days, so what is the error in my calculation here?
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Originally posted by Tagit Tagit wrote:

I think you guys are being pretty optimistic with a 1.5kg - 2kg average in the HG.A 30cm fish is around 0.75 kg and a 42cm fish is around 1.5kg. Whilst we are seeing a lot of bigger fish right now on the charter boats (normal Spring fishing) I am not sure that the average fish caught by the rec fleet will be 42cm. To average 2kg the average fish would need to be 47cm and a 47 fish would be the fish of the day on most rec outings over the summer.
I would estimate that the average HG rec caught Snapper will be between 35cm and 40cm (around 1.3kg) over a 12 month period so would use around 1.25kg for calculations and guess that it might even be a little lower than that based on what I observe. Average number of fish per angler per day fishing is pretty low according to the NIWA ramp inspector I talked too last season. Might use 2 or 3 fish for doing these calcs I guess.
As for the number of boats and anglers, I think the NIWA/MPI estimates are hopefully more accurate than anything we could guess. What we can do however is work backwards from the MPI estimated Rec take of around 3500 tonnes (or is the estimate higher now?) in SNA1 using the figures above.

Do the maths and it goes sort of like this -
Lets allow what is probably a generous 500 tones for the landbased and kayak etc catch which there aren't many figures for. So now 3000 tonnes for rec boaties. So using say 1.25kg average weight you get 2400,000 rec boat caught Snapper. Divide by say 200 days where people will be fishing (allowing for Winter, bad weather etc) and that is 12000 fish for every day of those 200. So then allow our optimistic 3 fish per angler trip average and you get 4000 anglers on the water for everyone of those 200 days. Then lets say the average boat has 3 anglers and you get 1333 rec boats on the water for 200 days a year. Now personally I have very serious doubts about that many boats being the average per day over 200 days, so what is the error in my calculation here?


There's the truth & 'the truth'. I think that is pretty close to the actual truth Tagit. Thumbs Up
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Do not forget surveys are mainly done at ramps,need to include marinas,moorings and tucked away places.

 Current survey is very complex.. includes random households, then random person in that household.. and that household may or may not be fisher ppl, and if is may not be the person who catches fish on a regular basis.. or never actually catch a fish...
 Covered in an older post
 Our household is in the survey, the person surveyed has yet to catch a fish.. or even been fishing since easter..
 Sounds all screwed up, but in the complex world of statistics if coverage extensive, it would be quite accurate
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Post Options Post Options   Likes (1) Likes(1)   Quote krow Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 09 Dec 2017 at 7:51pm
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Over 150 snapper PP for the year. I fish a fair bit and wouldn't get to that. Probably more than 500 boats out and about though on a good day but lots of days with very few out too. 
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