March 8, 2019
Crayfish are an important species in the marine ecosystem so when we hear stories from experienced divers in the eastern Bay of Plenty who have only taken three crays in two years it’s pretty scary for all of us. Over January and February we worked with Spearfishing New Zealand to develop a submission responding to […]
March 3, 2019
Stuart Nash the Minister of Fisheries has issued the ‘Fisheries Change Programme’ to tweak the way commercial fishing is managed. He awaits public feedback by mid-March. Meanwhile, we wait for meaningful changes that will rebuild abundance in our fisheries and restore the health of our marine environment. Fiddling around the margins of a broken Quota […]
February 28, 2019
The governance of our marine fisheries is under increasing scrutiny because maintaining highly productive ecosystems has given way to transactional advocacy targeting every possible fish that can be justified. Local depletion and inter-tidal reefs stripped bare sees coastal communities and Kaitiaki [guardians] crying out for effective restraints. Clearly the current system is not working and […]
February 27, 2019
The world of fisheries management, research and advocacy has become increasingly complex. So, it’s encouraging for LegaSea and our parent body the New Zealand Sport Fishing Council that there is a growing number of organisations willing to step up and help resource the necessary work. In the past year LegaSea has worked on five new […]
February 26, 2019
Toby and Venita Simcox have been at the forefront of LegaSea Hawke’s Bay since its inception in 2014. They are your typical volunteers, willing to take on any task that needed doing just to get the job done and make it better for everyone else. They remain passionate about the cause, but after five year’s […]
February 26, 2019
Kiwis are naturally offended by wastage and fish dumping is at the top of the pile. It is particularly offensive when commercial fishers are involved while their industry leaders continue to bombard us with messages of guardianship. Dumping is illegal and a blatant waste of our collective, precious marine resources. We must do better if […]
February 22, 2019
Senseless waste and dumping of commercial catch has been in the spotlight since 2013. Electronic monitoring of at-sea activity is underway but the rollout of onboard cameras to monitor fishing and discards has been stymied by fishing industry opposition. The latest proposals in MPI’s Fisheries Change Programme seeks to “simplify” the rules applying to commercial […]
February 15, 2019
Talk is cheap. On the one hand we have fisheries managers and companies espousing value creation yet all we can see is the Quota Management System being used to benefit the supply chain while paralysing fisheries management and innovation. After 30 years of this QMS experiment we now realise quota control ought to have remained […]
January 25, 2019
Fake news is fiction no matter how it is spun in print, online or via flash television adverts telling us how great the commercial fishing industry is at restraining themselves. At the same time, they are resisting cameras on boats because of privacy issues – yeah right. In contrast, when it comes to knowing what […]
January 20, 2019
There are growing calls to ban purse seining in our coastal waters. There have been numerous attempts to keep the seiners away from areas important to recreational fishers, to reduce conflict and protect forage species for seabirds and predatory fish. The New Zealand Sport Fishing Council has called on Fisheries New Zealand to better manage […]
