New Zealand’s fishing industry is confronting a growing scandal following the publishing of details from two leaked reports detailing illegal and unsustainable practices dating back to 2011 and 2012.
The government reports from the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) – a 2011 review of the country’s offshore hoki fishery and a 2012 overview of New Zealand’s blue whiting fishery – revealed companies including Sanford, Talley’s, Maruha, Sealord, Independent Fisheries, and Amaltal all misreported catches or illegally discarded fish. In the hoki fishery, some firms deliberately targeted areas for fishing that should have been off-limits due to high juvenile fish counts. And in the southern blue whiting fishery, nearly 10 percent of the total catch may have been thrown overboard after it was damaged by poor handling or cutting procedures.
Responding to the reports, New Zealand Fisheries Minister Stuart Nash said both reports are now several years old and that has much changed with fisheries oversight in the meantime.
“There are things that happened in the past that we know are wrong and that we know need to change,” Nash told New Zealand publication Stuff. "I have huge faith in Fisheries NZ. I am keen to make sure this stuff is stamped out completely across the industry."
Both fisheries have Marine Stewardship Council certification, and the organization has given no indication that the certifications are in jeopardy. However, Greenpeace New Zealand Director Russel Norman challenged the sustainability of the fisheries in light of the new information. The hoki report showed malpractice by the industry meant quota levels may have been set too high, putting the entire hoki stock at risk of being overfished.
"It is one of the first big whitefish fisheries in the world to get Marine Stewardship Council certification and New Zealand goes around telling the world what a great fishery this is,” Norman said. “But the truth, as has been revealed by the government's own secret investigation, is that it's anything but."
According to Radio NZ, the Ministry of Fisheries 2011 report said Talley's alone failed to report an estimated 780 metric tons (MT) of hoki in one season. It also said the captain of a Sanford fishing vessel gave misleading information to an onboard observer about what species the vessel was targeting in order to fish in an area with a high level of juvenile hoki. Then, when undersized fish were caught, they were hidden by being ground into fishmeal. Other vessels in the offshore fleet used the same technique to rid themselves of fish that would have put them over their quota.
The report said, in total, 2,000 MT of fish was discarded illegally in the 2011 season alone.
The total amount of unreported fish illegally discarded in the blue whiting fishery in 2012 was even higher, at an estimated 2,678 MT, according to Newshub.
The report, which investigated the practices of 13 trawlers in the southern blue whiting fishery, also documented carton weight underreporting; vessels fishing beyond their capacity to process their catch, and inadequate measurement of weight of glaze they added to their fish.
As the reports have become more widely circulated in New Zealand and abroad, Greenpeace and several other environmental-focused non-governmental organizations have called for further investigation into the country’s fishing industry. WWF and the Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society of New Zealand have both called for an independent inquiry into MPI and the country’s fishing industry.
"The key issue with this report is about trust, because the public needs to be able to trust the industry and we need to be able to trust the government department that is responsible for regulating the industry and every time a report like this becomes known about it just undermines that trust,” Hardstaff told Newshub.
In a video recording posted on his agency’s website, Gary Orr, MPI's manager of compliance investigations, categorically denied MPI was “in bed with industry.”
“If you want to achieve behavioral change across a fishery fleet, you have to use alternative methods,” Orr said. “The best way to do that was to use the information from these reports to work with industry, identify behavioral changes that needed to be made, and then monitor, as we have done, to ensure that those change are made and that compliance rates are improved.”
Trade industry body Seafood New Zealand Chief Executive Tim Pankhurst said the issues raised in the reports had been addressed.
“This industry has admitted publicly that it hasn’t always got it right in the past but it is constantly upping its game and striving to do better,” Pankhurst said. “We are proud of the advances we have made and we stand by our Promise campaign. We suggest that those who seek to undermine us through half-truths, misinformation and the leaking of documents without context examine their motives and instead work with us to further improve our performance and reputation."
In his own statement, Sanford CEO Volker Kuntzsch guaranteed his company is not overfishing.
"We are driving sustainability into this industry and creating a company that does the right thing when it comes to fishing,” Kuntzsch told Stuff. “It's an endless battle I have to admit, we have a lot of bad reputation to combat but I think we've come a long way."
Photo courtesy of Greenpeace
