Research by Dr Glenn Simmons of Auckland suggests that between 1950 and 2010 commercial fishers dumped more than 14 million tonnes of unreported catch. Working Paper.

In 2014 the Ministry’s Director of Fisheries Management admitted discarding [dumping] was a systemic failure and something the Ministry had not been able to get on top of from day 1 of the Quota Management System. He went on to say they “can’t quantify the tonnages involved but we suspect they are significant to the point that they are impacting on stocks”…Discards [dumped catch] is “the single biggest issue we face in our wild stock fisheries”.