Snapper Plan meeting Whangarei Cruising Club 26 September 2016

About 27 members of the public attended.

There were several conversations underway around the room. The ones that I heard included.

There were questions about the process to get feed back on the Plan. Was there a process to gather formal submissions on the Plan content or an opportunity to change some of the proposals.  For some people who were interested they had very little time to review the plan. It seems impossible for groups that had not been represented in the planning group (eg Environmental NGOs) to get their views included.  Poor advertising was an issue. Why not use F&B, Greenpeace, WWF to circulate information?

There was a view that to restore the intrinsic values and ecosystem services from the snapper population then the biomass needed to be much higher than required to meet commercial objectives and higher than recreational and customary fishers required. B40 was too low and 25 year time frame was too long.  Snapper were a keystone species that needed to be abundant.  The example of kina barrens was a case in point.  The same could be said of rock lobster and inshore shark populations that are less resilient than snapper.

The quote from the SNA1 Plenary Report, “Current catch is Very Likely (> 90%) to cause overfishing to continue” was highlighted (This is based on the high exploitation rates plotted in the Plenary Report). There were also pointed questions about why the TAC was not reduced. The commercial view was that the snapper population had doubled since the low point and that was enough. The environmental view was that the model shows that last time snapper was close to B40 was in the mid-1980s. At the time the stock was believed to be in crisis and the QMS was introduced to rebuild the stock, but it has not.

How can we trust commercial catch per unit effort to provide trends in snapper abundance when there has been so much technological change across the years?

The best data is long term independent monitoring but cost cutting sees has stopped trawl surveys and the annual catch at age studies that had a long time series.  Now the research priority is a vastly complicated and expensive tagging programme using new technology that may not be ready.

There was the usual concern about fishing during the snapper spawning season.

Some customary fishers see the allowance for customary catch was way too small.

Some interesting comments from the commercial trawl fisher.  There are about 15 trawlers fishing in SNA1. They could catch the snapper quota easily but are having trouble making the snapper quota last.  All the other species are getting harder to catch now.

Fishers concerned about discarding and lack of action from MPI. Some discussion about camera trials, and an appropriate response to discarding caught on camera.  MPI intend to release and consult on a range of measures as part of their management systems review in a month or two.

Overall this was an interesting couple of hours discussing a wide range of issues.

Not sure anyone could answer that. Some of these trawers would be owned by the big boys who also have big quota holdings, they also own longliners, seiners etc. 

I attended the Whangarei meeting. It was a very low key event. 27 members of the public turning up is just pathetic. Nearly everyone I know in Whangarei goes fishing, albeit with varying degrees of dedication. If that was the turnout in a town like this, we can expect to be fully trampled on by the government. 

I agree Doug.  Progress is being made.

the facts right now point out that those in charge have hidden the true figures.
this criminal behave "which you an i would be locked up for" definitely loose our job, be prosecuted or made accountable,
if you take the numbers dumped, over fishing, species that have targets which have never been reached since the day they were introduced,
a department with a stringent sign-up that nothing is to be leaked to the public/media,
now a video surveillance scheme that is owned and operated by the very crooks which are ripping us off.

what i hate is Tourism is a far better approach, with the chance of doubling in 5 years the revenue that MPI believe is possible to make from killing millions of fish and sending them overseas to be filleted, nothing in it for NZers or the Country, just a reduction in fish numbers for diddy S*!# in returns,

anyone thinks they can change this situation and make those accountable for this mess we are in, please stand up now.

if not God help your Kids and their Kids

John H wrote: ]I agree Doug.  Progress is being made. This is a new type of process where we have representatives at the table for two years trying to get agreement on the way forward.  I don't believe it is a numbers game but we do need to get some feedback on whats in the plan and what is not. LegaSea are working on ways to get that feedback and it will probably have to be online.  Once the process is over do we get to talk about all the options that were discussed but didn't make it into the plan, or do we prepare to get them included in the next round of talks?   MPI intend to use more of these stakeholder working groups for local and regional issues. So we also need to think about how to have a more inclusive process as a plan is developed and how we can get more people to take an interested and give their opinion.

herby wrote: mowerman wrote: herby wrote: mowerman wrote: Reduce the size back down to 27 or to 25 in line of commercial and make high grading an offence would make a huge impact on waste ? Nah, Increase the size to 500-600mm so we can at least give them a chance to breed for a few years before we kill them Im sure your wrote that just for something to say ... But in reply its a no brainer .... There would be a huge recreational wastage of fish and many would never catch any to keep.just catch to kill or whatever their survival rate would be  If The biomass was supporting a huge amount of fish like this size fair enough, but its not .Effectively the bulk of recreational fishers would be shut out  Yes there would be recreational wastage, but the overall numbers killed would drop, and yes there would be many people who won't get to come home with a snapper.... But only for a while. The only reason there aren't huge numbers of fish this size and bigger is because we're killing them before they have a chance to grow. No one would be shut out.

no size limits on coms ? ..there isn't now as they take 25 up..the rest are dead and floaters ..so your saying leave coms as they are ? I  don't follow ..

mowerman wrote: If everything they took was PSH netted and the balance of returned alive ,it may work ..But it shut the bulk of the recs out except for a few months of the year when they come into shallows and Channels

PSH doesn't address barotrauma, and still catches small fish. I have photos of gurnard about as long as your finger caught in PSH gear.

herby wrote: Any fish covered in the QMS needs to be landed. Currently this is not 'snapper' it is, in fact 'snapper over 250mm'. By taking size limits away they'd have to land the babies which they have to chuck over the side, and they'd catch their quota faster with less total mortality.