Turei Metiria: Fisheries Act 1996 Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Turei Metiria: Fisheries Act 1996 Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:637;Page:8057] 
METIRIA TUREI (Green) 
: 
 The Green Party welcomes this Fisheries Act 1996 Amendment Bill. This amendment is intended to put sustainability at the forefront of fisheries legislation. Ever since the introduction of meaningful regulation of fishing in the 1980s the fishing industry has been characterised by extreme litigiousness at every turn with fishers seeking to increase catches without adequate regard for the long-term sustainability of the resource. 
It is well known that over the years there has been considerable under-reporting of catches trucking—which is the reporting of catch as having been taken from one area when it has actually been taken from another such as has happened with hoki—and other deviations from the law. That is not surprising when only a portion of the total fishing fleet typically has scientific observers on board to bear witness to what fishers are doing. This is not to say that are all fishers are crooked; it is just that there are some bad apples if you like in the bunch. 
There are examples—in fact many examples—of fishers leading the way in trying to lessen the adverse effects of their activities on non-target species such as Dave Kellian’s invention of an underwater bait-setting device. In some cases such as those cited in  
Southern Seabird Solutions 
 there are collective efforts to clean up the industry and its impact on the environment. 
In some specific fisheries fishers have taken quite a strong stand on managing the fishery to ensure that it is sustainable but often that has not occurred until well after the fishery has already been overfished. In fact it turns out that fisheries are most profitable when they are fished to only 75 percent of the level of biomass that will support the maximum sustainable yield which is under the levels that fish stocks need to maintain themselves as sustainable. That is the highest level of profitability so it is not good for fisheries as a whole. 
Time and time again we have seen fishers defeat the Ministry of Fisheries in court when the ministry has attempted to uphold sustainability measures. Similarly Ministers of Fisheries have repeatedly retracted their decisions that promote sustainability in favour of economics and at times Ministers have bent to sheer economic opportunism irrespective of the environmental impact. One example of course is the setting of a much higher catch limit on squid in the last fishing season despite that resulting in an increased numbers of deaths of endangered New Zealand sea lions in the SQU6T quota area. 
This bill should help to address those problems. For the first time it will put environmental sustainability ahead of economics in the Fisheries Act 1996 and this is long overdue. There can be no economic sustainability without environmental sustainability. Environmental sustainability is a precondition to a secure economic future for our country. It is not the other way around as many of those who have been responsible for trashing the planet in various ways whether through overfishing or soil degradation would have us believe. This bill takes the position that if the information about a fish stock or about the effect of exploiting it on other species—such as with the sea lion issue I raised earlier—or on the marine ecosystem is uncertain inadequate or unreliable then decisions can be made to ensure sustainability. I would have thought that that was an absolute no-brainer. 
If one takes a look at stock assessments over recent years remembering that the state of the stock is just one aspect of marine sustainability one sees numerous cases where information is clearly inadequate uncertain or unreliable. For example there are estimates of paua biomass in only half of the areas where stocks exist so how can sensible limits be placed on catch in the areas where there are no estimates of that biomass? That can be done only by erring on the side of caution and by putting sustainability ahead of economics. For spiny dogfish there is so little information available that even the maximum constant yield cannot be estimated. Even for those fisheries where there is much more known such as the tarakihi fishery the data on which the maximum constant yield is based is in some cases over 20 years old. 
The lack of information about fish stocks and their environments is all the more significant in current times. It is still unknown just how climate change will affect the marine environments. Will the increasing sea temperatures affect larval survival? Will inshore spawning beds be destroyed by the constant and increased sediment deposition that comes as a result of increased storm intensity over land which increases soil erosion? Will currents and nutrient movement be affected by climate change? Will stocks and associated species be more susceptible to disease as a result of changes in temperature and other climate change impacts? How will the acidification of the oceans impact on the carbon shell - dependent species at the bottom of the food chain and how will that therefore affect the fish stocks that rely on those small creatures as their source of food? 
How will any of the changes that result from climate change affect the overall sustainability of marine ecosystems and fishing activity? We simply cannot afford to ignore these concerns. With climate change and the continued incessant overfishing in domestic and territorial waters it is a fact that the state of the marine ecosystem is increasingly uncertain. The Green Party believes that the provisions of this bill are a small step but a crucial one to making sure that those potential effects are properly considered for the benefit of the sustainability of our marine environment for the future. Thank you.