Recreational Fishing Licences - have your say

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Originally posted by Clutch Clutch wrote:

Most of us just want to head out into the harbour and be able to catch fish. $100 or $200 for a licence? No thanks. I catch SFA as it is but I consider it my right to do so.

Is it a right? I consider it a privilege, and without careful management it's a privilege we'll lose. If we continue to go out and catch catch catch just because we consider it 'our right' then we'll just destroy it.  
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Originally posted by LegaSea Community Builder LegaSea Community Builder wrote:

In response to Clutch 
LCB, I may be being a little harsh but to me it looks like you are becoming part of the bureaucracy that is becoming more and more complicated.

Come down to HQ and have a chat and talk to us face to face. The more I think about it the more a few beers for all fish net members is sounding a good idea to me. All questions answered and you can see for yourself. How does that sound? I will be putting up some more info in due course on what we are doing here the next week. (LegaSea sub forum). Please have a read and do some more research on us  LOL

The Govt. clearly have an agenda and they pander to the punters by offering public consultations and submissions which amount to naught when the appetite for helping us rec fishers is not there.
Completely agree. They honestly don't want our feedback, that's one of the reasons LegaSea seldom attends public consultation (although we have discussed recently and decided to turn up more often, even if it's to talk to the other keen rec fishers and try to work with them).

Sea change is a good example where Legasea was basically given a take it or leave it option according to yourselves.

We are currently working on a response paper to clear this up and explain what went down. Watch this space, or better still watch the space on the LegaSea sub forum.

When your average joe complains the govt. will say ..."Hey Legasea was part of the process...."
Most of us just want to head out into the harbour and be able to catch fish. $100 or $200 for a licence? No thanks. I catch SFA as it is but I consider it my right to do so.
Completely agree. LegaSea believes the fishery belongs to the public. The comms should be paying a royalty from the exploitation of a public resource. Rec fishers shouldn't have to pay. We say Nay......

Thanks, for the response bud.
I try to, and surely will read, all info in the Legasea sub forum.
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Quote." Rec fishing licences being a key part way fishing should be managed."

Since when has our inshore fishery been managed. Exploited would be more to the point. So why would a licence bring about good management.
When the quoted 1 million undersize fish crushed in trawl nets in Sn1 ,or fisheries such as sounds and Tasman bay scollops closed due to neglect and overfishing are actually addressed  properly,then maybe people can talk management.

To date management includes us having cuts in increased size and in limit numbers and we want to thank them by paying for it by way of a licence.

So what would a licence achieve. Cant see anything on the table yet.

Like it or not our fisheries are a political issue.When a fishery is run by the government for economic benefit of fishing companies then it cant be anything but .
For me it is a decided NO. I expect value for money,and not illusion or maybes.

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Without significant enforcement/compliance it won't work. Question is, how much are we prepared to pay for enforcement/compliance, plus the cost of the administration, plus the costs of making licences available (tackle shop fees etc) BEFORE we start putting anything towards creating benefits for the rec fishing sector in terms of quota buy-backs etc, or even just money for political lobbying. Unlike many countries, our Coastguard are not an enforcement agency, our maritime police setup is extremely small, and we have a pretty light, mostly volunteer fisheries enforcement group. On the other side we have a massive marine area and huge coastline to cover. Then we will have huge Treaty of Waitangi issues that may not even be resolvable, but will have to fund what will no doubt be years of legal actions as some groups fight the need to pay and others try to work out how they can claim a share of licence sales in 'their' areas.
There are also significant issues around managing the licences for people who fish just once or twice per year. Too expensive and we disenchant a big part of the fishing community. Too cheap and the costs outweigh the income.

The idea of a fishing licence fee to directly benefit the rec fishing community doesn't bother me. The practical issues around seeing more than a tiny fraction of that fee disappear into 'overhead costs' to me seem almost insurmountable. Inevitable result will be a fee so high that we will 'criminalise' huge numbers of otherwise law abiding citizens and end up having to stop for licence checks everytime we head out. I just can't see how it can really work for our benefit.

The reality would have a pattern like this (actual numbers are arbitrary guesses). The term used is "Price Elasticity" -
No fees - 1,000,000 anglers fish each year in NZ
$20 annual fee - 800,000 anglers fish each year in NZ
$50 fee - 600,000 anglers fish each year in NZ
$100 fee - 400,000 anglers fish in NZ each year
$200 fee - 300,000 anglers fish each year in NZ
$300 fee - 200,000 anglers fish each year in NZ
as the licenced angler number decreases (fee goes up) the number of 'illegal' anglers increases and we need more enforcement and we criminalise more otherwise good people who didn't want to pay $100+ to go out on the one fishing trip for the year.

Imagine the new standard over the fence chat with your neighbour - 
- Hey Bruce. Going fishing tomorrow but my mates had to pull out. Want to go? 
- Sounds great, haven't been fishing for years. Got my Father in Law visiting from Dunedin and they don't go fishing down there so can I bring him along. 
- No problem, got plenty of gear. 
- How much should we chip in for fuel and bait etc. 
- Probably cost around $50 each if you want to help out. 
- Cool. What time are we off? 
- Early bite at the mo, so lets get away at 6.00am. 
- Great. 
- Oh, by the way, don't forget to buy $100 fishing licences for each of you before we go out and make sure to bring some ID with you on the boat for when the police stop us to check our licences.

What part of the above scenarios have I got wrong?
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Post Options Post Options   Likes (0) Likes(0)   Quote Clutch Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 30 Dec 2016 at 10:10am
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Originally posted by herby herby wrote:


Is it a right? I consider it a privilege, and without careful management it's a privilege we'll lose. If we continue to go out and catch catch catch just because we consider it 'our right' then we'll just destroy it.  
Yeah, a bit of both I guess. It is a privilege and I personally feel that it is in jeopardy of being taken away. Not because there are no fish but because of who gets the fish and how it is managed.

I seriously take home 4 snapper maybe 6 times a year max.
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Originally posted by cirrus cirrus wrote:

Quote." Rec fishing licences being a key part way fishing should be managed."

Since when has our inshore fishery been managed. Exploited would be more to the point. 

Cirrus. Our inshore fisheries have been managed for quite a while and we are in a much better place now than we would be if the QMS had not been implemented. QMS is Quota MANAGEMENT System.
No, it is not perfect, but it is much better than nothing. 
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Post Options Post Options   Likes (0) Likes(0)   Quote herby Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 30 Dec 2016 at 10:14am
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Originally posted by Tagit Tagit wrote:

...................................

What part of the above scenarios have I got wrong?

A $5 24 hour licence option?
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No. It has worked in Aussie? Mate you're dreamin'! People in remote communities won't get a license. The people we used to see on coast watch won't get a license. The People that fish our local boat ramp that leave behind piles of rubbish while their kids go a scribble on things won't get a license.

And the revenue from that system? They will rebrand a couple of officers from MPI, employ a couple of others and there will be no more enforcement than we already have.

If LegaSea were to support licensing they will alienate the people that they desperately need the support of.


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A licence fee will do absolutely NOTHING to increase abundance. Many mechanisms already exist to manage abundance (manage commercial take via TACC and ACE, manage recreational catch via daily bag limits and minimum size limits, method restrictions, seasonal closures, non-take areas etc.) If abundance is the end goal, any number of these measures could be implemented WITHOUT the introduction of a complex licencing system.
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Post Options Post Options   Likes (1) Likes(1)   Quote letsgetem Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 30 Dec 2016 at 10:27am
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I think the purpose(s) of any license should be clearly considered.
1. To raise money, would be good, provided it went solely to a body who's objective was solely protection of fishing. The fresh water fishing body Fish and Game, appears to achieve worthwhile protection - and even though it exists at the pleasure of government, it still appears to give independent advice.
2. To regulate and police fishing - now this is done by a government department MPI. So its paid for by all taxpayers, which does not seem fair. User pays is fairer I believe, ie paid for by a license fee. Further - MPIs regulation is conflicting with its commercial fishing responsibility. So, naturally  recreational fishing can lose ground. This tends to be worse, with a national government heavily favouring "business" dogma. An independent body would give fairer consideration to recreational, that would be an improvement.
3. But, bringing in a license, where there has been none, would be hugely offensive to many people, including me. The insidious creep of new regulation is a I think obnoxious. Therefore, I assume that there would be huge resistance, which would result in ever-expanding management cost in trying to control things. I see  disaster, with the fee sky-rocketing.
 
In summary - even though I see benefits, I think "peoples traditional rights" are more important, and I oppose it.
 
 
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Post Options Post Options   Likes (1) Likes(1)   Quote Tagit Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 30 Dec 2016 at 10:47am
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Originally posted by herby herby wrote:

Originally posted by Tagit Tagit wrote:

...................................

What part of the above scenarios have I got wrong?

A $5 24 hour licence option?

Closest example would be the trout day licence at $20. That is with a tiny fraction of the enforcement issues to fund and all the Treaty etc stuff settled years ago at the governments cost. Also no quota to buy back, and a fraction of all the legal/political issues to work through as there is no commercial fishery.
Another issue is that if we assume an annual licence with any sort of contribution to improving our fisheries is going to be $150 plus (I figure more like $200. You issue $5 day licences and only a fraction of anglers will buy the annual licence because they don't fish more than 30 times per year. So you cannibalise your main income stream and then the price has to go up again because your income model has failed. Reality is that a $5 day licence will contribute nothing back to the fishery after costs are taken out and actually hurt the whole attempt to achieve improvements.
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Post Options Post Options   Likes (1) Likes(1)   Quote Capt Asparagus Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 30 Dec 2016 at 10:54am
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I think we definitely need a licensing system. A thirty dollar a year licence with funds going to an independent rec fishing body, NOT govt coffers.
Licence to apply to all fishers including Maori , who however have a free licence if at point of sale can produce evidence they are on the Maori electoral role... Maybe even so, if free, there will be a proviso on the licence to allow them to donate their $30 to the cause anyhow. (Although that would be seriously difficult to administer.) Applying online would make donating the equivalent to the fee easy, and by ticking that box would include them in the draw for prizes. Basically, make it easier for them just to buy the licence really.
Kids under 13 free, kids under 18 half price. Full adults, say $30-$40, or roughly the price of a day's bait and berley.
Funds collected to be used for enforcement and education, , and a contribution to the HFO system, coastguard, but mainly to fund rec fishing research and POLITICAL CLOUT.
Include in the licence a chance to go in the draw for a new boat and trailer packag or something, as per the annual coastguard fundraiser, only paid licences are eligible...ie, not free kids or any Maori who claimed free licences.
Licences could easily be sold online, easy to do, as trout licences and hunting licences are done now. Once you buy your licence you have an electronic receipt on your phone or whatever, print out if you want, and in due course, a proper plastic licence will be mailed out to you for your wallet.

The benefits.... MONEY, and therefore lobbying clout, for rec fishing interests.
A database of nz rec fishers, to get some decent information on the numbers of rec fishers out there and contact details for them, to help in rallying support for rec fishing interests.
It would hugely help research into rec fishing itself. Simply ticking a few boxes in the licence form, ie, how many times you fish a year, where mainly, main target species, usual catch (ie, how many you normally expect to get), it'd be a massive help.
If half a mill fishers got paid for licences , that is 15mill to fund rec fishing causes....if admin etc ate up 90% of that money, and left only a tithe of the licence money (10%) to actually go to rec fishing organisations, that'd still be the biggest support to rec fishing bodies by orders of magnitude than is currently funded.
Should it be even more efficient and return say a third of the fees to rec fishing, then those funds could be used for enforcement, coastguard, maybe even some ramp building/fish handling facilities a is done in W.A.

What it could not do is buy back or retire quota, sorry guys, that is not how the system works, as I am sure you are aware. Quota works on tacc, total allowable commercial catch. If recs were to buy and nit take say half the quota, the tacc would be reallocated to those holding the remaining quota, so they would get to simply catch MORE. However, if rec fishing actually had the funding, and therefore the political clout (yes, in politics, as everywhere, money talks, bull-spit walks), then perhaps changes could be effected in the halls of power to change things.

The main point of the licence is not to control fishermen, it is to fund fishing interests, to give us the political clout. The other stuff, like Maori licensing, kids, family tickets, prizes etc etc, are all secondary.
I buy my trout licence every year for $130 or whatever it is, I buy a W.A. Fishing licence for I think $30 every year, it is not big deal. I surely would be happy to fork out $30-$40 for a saltwater licence, to give nz rec fishing interests the teeth to fight for us properly.


Edit, just read the above....re $5 day licences. Nope, none, for exactly the reason Tagit gave, it dilutes the income stream too much. Keep the licence fee small enough, $35 say, make it payable online, so it is in your smartphone or whatever, that'd be easy as.
Kids licensing, although technically kids would need a licence to fish, it is free, so no one is gunna bother about checking kids fishing off wharves etc for their licences, it just ain't worth the bother.

So what's one more?
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Post Options Post Options   Likes (0) Likes(0)   Quote mowerman Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 30 Dec 2016 at 10:59am
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Originally posted by LegaSea Community Builder LegaSea Community Builder wrote:

MM - If we all got together we could change govt policy simply by voting, which is free, OR if we all got together and got behind one organisation that represented rec fishing interests, that would also work without the need for licensing? The other part of the equation which seems to be missed is that quota has to be AVAILABLE for sale before it can be sold, do you really believe the comms industry would sell all their quota to recs? 

Regarding the comment about '<span style=": rgb251, 251, 253;">Seachange won't do it as Iwi are pro Commercial  and are in with them ,Legasea are connected'</span>
<span style=": rgb251, 251, 253;">
</span>
<span style=": rgb251, 251, 253;">Please substantiate the statement LegaSea are connected?? By connected I assume you meant we sat at the same table with them? </span>
<span style=": rgb251, 251, 253;">
</span>
<span style=": rgb251, 251, 253;">As you are already aware, LegaSea are working on a clarification paper to explain our part in Sea Change. There are a lot of gaps around the process and our part in it. </span>


Go ask Scott Macindoe..While there ask him about Mooks Honeck..Ngatiwai and NgatiManuhiri connections and testing of the new psh net 2 years ago..By the way none of the Iwi groups were voted in by their own tribes..
Mooks Honneck is a self appointed Mouthpiece piece..and has very dirty underwear..Enjoy sitting down at the table with them..
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Originally posted by herby herby wrote:

Originally posted by cirrus cirrus wrote:

Quote." Rec fishing licences being a key part way fishing should be managed."

Since when has our inshore fishery been managed. Exploited would be more to the point. 

Cirrus. Our inshore fisheries have been managed for quite a while and we are in a much better place now than we would be if the QMS had not been implemented. QMS is Quota MANAGEMENT System.
No, it is not perfect, but it is much better than nothing. 
So what you are saying is that stopping unrestrained commercial rape of our fisheries to the point where the comms had almost completely devastated whole species was really clever. I think we can all agree with that. 
Trouble is, if you bother to research the history of the QMS, and look where we are at today, it has shifted $Billions of publicly owned assets into private ownership. It has lead to incredibly slow improvements in the shared inshore stocks, but rapid improvements in some of the comm only offshore stocks. It has lead to massive cuts in recreational fishing rights on the basis that the inshore stocks need improving, but virtually no cuts on the commercial take. Our government can't even make changes to the commercial take without the comms agreement because of how they set the system up. For years we had systematic rape (to build catch history) of any new species as soon as it was known that it was going to be introduced to the QMS. We have the small commercial fisherman today controlled by the large quota owners and 'allowed' just enough income to survive whilst the non-working quota holders take most of the value.

What an awesome QMS we have. Yes it eventually stopped the unrestrained destruction of our fisheries, but the cost to the public of achieving that has been devastating. Hence where we are all at today trying to work out how to save our inshore fisheries again.

Do you know that when Quota was first given (yes free) to the comms, the government subsequently decided that they had issued too much quota (I think it was in Snapper but not sure) and then paid them over $40m in 1980 dollars to buy back the quota that they over-issued! To put that in perspective, govt stats say that would be around $200m in todays dollars. If the government gave rec fishing $200m today a quota buy back would solve a big piece of our inshore problems. I guess that won't happen though huh!!

The more you read and understand the real history of our QMS, the more you realise that it is probably the biggest example of gross mismanagement and quite possibly corruption in the history of this country. Over $4B of public assets given away to a small group of people along with our right to properly manage for fisheries for the future. It is a wonder that the profanity checker on this forum still allows us to type QMS.
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Post Options Post Options   Likes (2) Likes(2)   Quote herby Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 30 Dec 2016 at 11:23am
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What would you prefer - no management, or poor management? 

It would be nice to have a government with the balls to just reduce various TACCs and be done with it.


 
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Awesome to see some serious dialogue about an issue we all clearly feel strongly about. Some good reasoning and well thought out answers. Licensing is a tool to help manage an industry/resource. Theoretically people would support if they knew the desired results could be guaranteed. That unfortunately is not the case.
We all pay taxes to a govt who is mandated to look after our country and it's resources for the people. They should be doing a better job for the people. 
LegaSea is looking for people to back us in our efforts to make govt do a better job, subscribe if you can lend your support. Try our our newsletter, if you don't like it, unsubscribe, it comes out about once a month.
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Yes definetly to a license. It won't solve everything straight away but over time it will help and give us a voice in government. Guys it would need a central government branch and people overseeing it, sorry but that is the only way it will work by paying our way in to those in the Beehive. I would rather that than say pay Auckland or any other regional Council Dead Fair for one and all top to bottom, Maori, P.I.ers, Asians whoever all in no discremintations. It can also help tidy up a lot of the mess we see in rec fishing and untangle ourselves away from anything to do with comms and MPI.       
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Originally posted by Capt Asparagus Capt Asparagus wrote:

I think we definitely need a licensing system. A thirty dollar a year licence with funds going to an independent rec fishing body, NOT govt coffers.


The trouble is that $30 per licence would probably only cover the setting up and running of the independent body you want, with nothing left over for enforcement.  And without heavy enforcement no one would bother paying.
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Absolutely true herby...but they know they would then face a legal challenge they'd likely lose, and the size of the compensation package is just too massive for them to be able to "sell" to the NZ public. Sadly it is far easier and cheaper to nail the disorganised rabble known as the recreational fishing community.
Muppet, I hear what you are saying. The W.A. license has money going to the govt, there is a lot of niggle by recs to this, however it does mean then that enforcement is carried out by the oz police/water police, something we don't have here, but to my mind, we should. These guys keep an eye on idiots on the water....ie drunk, overcrowded, no or insufficient safety equipment etc etc, and they have tacked on to this the checking of licences.
Pretty much every trip I have done to W.A. we have been checked for licences, fish sizes etc etc, and I have to say, it is not a bad thing, I think.
To help fund something like this, I would also support a basic boat registration scheme, say $30 a year tacked onto your boat trailer rego, that'd give you a list of boats to owners etc, and help fund water police just a little. But boat rego only, NOT boat licensing!
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Originally posted by Capt Asparagus Capt Asparagus wrote:

I think we definitely need a licensing system. A thirty dollar a year licence with funds going to an independent rec fishing body, NOT govt coffers.

I just don't think that you are going to run effective nationwide enforcement, run and administer the licence system, buy political lobbying, and do some form of effective commercial take buyout, pay GST and whatever other 'tax' the government demand, deal with Maori interests etc etc with $10m - $15m per year. I don't think that number is even close. Just for a start, we currently have 220 HFO's in Nz according to MPI. How often do you see one. Once every 10 trips maybe if you live in a big city. How often if you boat in rural NZ? Not a reflection on their efforts, just a reflection of the funding being applied.
 For licencing to be effective would we need to double, triple, or quadruple that number of Fisheries Officers? I am figuring maybe 500 to 1000. More if unpaid due to varying availability, and less if paid due to programmed availability. Even if you could get that many volunteers (might be a struggle) who can be regularly active, what is the cost just of hiring, equipping, training (and ongoing training) those people plus of course providing the paid management layers, plus all their out of pocket expenses, plus any sort of prosecution management, fine collection etc etc. Maybe some of that would come from government coffers, but I am guessing that isn't how the government would see it once they identify a new income stream. 

I am guessing that we without any government support we will need closer to $50m than $15m. Trouble then is 'price elasticity' and less people having to pay higher licence costs. If we could achieve our goals with a $150 annual licence I would be delighted. I would save that in fuel not having to travel miles each trip to hunt out the small stock of fish.
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