Time to get improvements in our fishery.

Increase the numbers of fads.

Instead of countries scrapping ships for metal let's take over the market for a while strip them clean and dump them to create artificial reefs around our coast.

The sealife spin offs would be impressive.

A few sunken vessels out west would be great too. Even if it was a no take zone it would certainly be worth it - it would draw fish in from all over - somehow, dunno if there's a Reef Gazette or something that the fish read but it would certainly help the fishing around it. FAD's would be great but yeah we would need someone with a bullet proof constitution and a real fire in their belly to achieve it.

waynorth wrote: smudge wrote: we would need someone with a bullet proof constitution and a real fire in their belly to achieve it. Deep pockets would help too. A Leander class frigate is probably worth $1m plus in scrap value, less the cost of getting it to the breakers yard of course. Then there's the costs involved in de-oiling and de-plastic'ing & whatever else need to be removed to sanitise the vessel, and then scuttling. Great idea Mattoo, but a few artificial FADs like the old Queens Buoy off the BOI might be more achievable. Of course, the best ones in NZ have got names like Maui A and Maui B, but having to stay 500m away reduces their usefulness

The same topic comes up every few years. Here is the last one I recall.

https://www.fishing.net.nz/forum/is-there-a-place-for-fads-in-nz_topic121944_page1.html

I also found this that may be of interest to some.

http://coastfish.spc.int/Fishing/FAD2_E/FAD2E.pdf

We are really talking of two different things. Surface Fads work just fine for your pelagics. The sunken frigates etc won't do much for them, but would work for our coastal inshore fish. The surface Fads are cheap and would be easily in the price range of any number of gamefishing clubs. In Vtu we have a dozen or more scattered around at any one time. They cost about $3-5k each. The biggest cost is the rope - several kms. They are generally in about 800m of water. Our coastline is not so steep so would cost less. Easily do-able.

Insight.

https://www.dpi.nsw.gov.au/fishing/recreational/resources/fish-aggregating-devices/use-of-fads-in-nsw

Wonder when our MPI is going to deploy their Fads for Reccs??

I have taken a bit of time to learn some things about fads.

There effectiveness is unquestionable.
Which is why commercial fleets use floating ones for commercial benefit and why green peace appropriately challenges them.

The use of inshore fads for recreational uses and limited islanders survival rewards has the same great results worldwide with no discernable detriments.

So there effectiveness is irrefutable.

So the use is ok for recreational if managed.
Managed requires them to be robust in construction and appropriately placed in consideration to commercial and recreational traffic. With a well publicised awareness to there locations with gps notifications on all charts.

Let us ignore at this point the rma, that's a too hard basket.

The costs to deploy in productive zones for nz are more than reasonable and don't require the need for licences for recreational fisherman to fund.
In fact the costs could be easily met by our existing game clubs.

Our advantage to reduce financial costs is the shallow depths of suitable deployment.

I also believe that with modification on the many options of design available that we can create a unique design that suits our environment and needs.

I suggest a large base format with mid water bouys or floating zone. The.subsurface requires a connection point within twenty metres of surface that is removed for the winter period and replaced for the summer period.

This system allows lower congregation of many species with a subsurface that suits our kings and others with the addition of the topwater component for attraction to the summer pelagics.

It can increase longetivity of maintenance and maintain a uniformity of attraction year round.

Those are my considered thoughts on a fad system and design.

I believe with the future advancement of tourism these benefit recreational and charter formats.
And may play a part in man made reef formats to increase our depleted fish resources.

Yes I do.

Can't have a conversation about everything that distracts the focus on the topic at hand.

This is not a conversation for the" briny bar".

I think you can contribute better than that.

Respectfully.

Matt

Fish Addict,

Great insight and clearly a valuable component to a successful tool.

Appreciated.