Jail for poaching Orange Roughy

An Auckland commercial fisherman was jailed for 18 months, and banned from fishing for three years, after forging his orange roughy catch returns. Stephen John Krynicki filed false returns between March 2003 and 2004, claiming he was catching fish in one location while doing so in another.

Krynicki is thought to have illegally caught almost 200 tonnes of orange roughy in the Tauroa Knoll, an area of the Tasman Sea closed to protect against over-fishing.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries says Krynicki deliberately turned off his Automatic Location Communicator, which allows the organisation to track his position via satellite. It says he claimed the device was broken and filed false reports about his location.

Keith Ingram, President of the NZ Recreational Fishing Council had the following comments.

"Poaching should no longer be regarded as an acceptable past time to make a quid. The sentence handed down by the courts in jailing a fish thief for stealing 190 tonnes of orange roughy is justified and welcomed.

All to often we are seeing the greed of fish thieves plundering our fish stocks to the level where it is no longer sustainable and to turn a blind eye is just condoning the practice. Recreational fishers are asking for tougher and more sensible sentences for offenders as these thieves who are just robbing the public of New Zealand he said.

We look forward to the courts following this judges example in coming down hard on all fish thieves be they under the guise of commercial, recreational or customary.
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