Winston Peters says new snapper allocation system needed.

New Zealand First has called for a new approach to setting the bag and size limits for the recreational fishers catch in the Snapper 1 Fishery to stop the haphazard and controversial decisions by the Minister.

This follows the uproar caused by the latest plan by the Minister to reduce the limit from nine to seven snapper and to increase the minimum size while making no changes to the commercial catch or preventing the practice of “dumping”.

Rt Hon Winston Peters says the process followed to set the limit was deeply flawed because the Minister first intended reducing the catch from nine to three per angler, then finally bumped it up to seven.

“This wide variation of numbers in the catch limit shows that allocations of precious marine resources are decided on a political whim, rather than solid scientific research. First the limit goes to a third, then it more than doubles, commercial operators keep their quotas and nothing is done about them dumping their by-catch."

”The rules for commercial operators have to be changed so that the incentive to dump by catch is removed. After a quarter of a century of the quota system surely New Zealand can produce a solution to this festering, unsustainable anomaly.” Mr Peters says it is simply not possible to manage a fishery using a process of selecting numbers at random.

“There must be a proper survey of fish stocks and a regular flow of catch information from both recreational fishers and commercial operators to ensure that the fish stock is rebuilt. The Government must also listen to the voices of experience among the recreational fishers who often have a better idea of what is happening in a fishing area, simply because of their local knowledge. We suggest that everyone take a deep breath and think of the future of the fishing and what we are going to leave for future generations,” says Mr Peters.