| Regulation
Review Submission
by
Raglan Sport Fishing Club
11
September 2006
Raglan Sport Fishing Club,
10 Smith Street,
RAGLAN
Submission on Proposal to Amend Aspects of the Amateur Fishing
Regulations (Part 2) Initial Position Paper 11 July 2006
The Raglan Sport Fishing
Club takes this opportunity to submit on proposals to change various
Amateur Fishing Regulations. We congratulate the ministry
of continuing with the Amateur Regulations Rule review and long
may it continue.
The club is made up of 704
members who predominantly fish the West Coast between Port Waikato
and Aotea Harbour.
Amendment
of the Recreational Scallop Fishing Season
Scallops are a species important
for the social and cultural well being of all New Zealander's.
Amateur fishers place a high value on providing a feed of scallops
for family and friends.
We support
Proposal
30
- Amend regulation 24 of the Fisheries (Amateur Fishing) Regulations
1986 to shift the season when the recreational scallop fishery
is closed from 15 February – 14 Jul (inclusive) to 1 April
– 31 August (inclusive).
We realize that this shift
will not suit all the country, especially those areas where management
plans are in place for the specific management of the scallop fishery
i.e. Tasman Bay.
This shift for the North
Island region will allow more Amateur fishers to have access to
this fishery, when Scallops are in better condition and the weather
is warmer.
Red
Gurnard (GUR), Blue Cod (BCO) and Trumpeter (TRU) Recreational Size
Limits
Red Gurnard
Red Gurnard are considered
one of the top eating fish, by recreation fishers. With the
present rules on take, we wish to legalize something
that presently takes place. That is the release of small
Gurnard back to the sea. We wish for these fish not to count
against our mixed Daily Bag Limit as does presently happen.
Recreational fishers in the
Raglan Region also want to take responsibility for the sound management
of this fishery in allowing Gurnard to reach sexual maturity before
being taken from the Bio Mass.
We support
5
- Specify a recreation minimum legal size of 25 cm for red gurnard
in the Fisheries (Amateur Fishing) Regulations 1986.
Trumpeter
Trumpeter is only occasionally
caught off the Raglan Coast. Mostly these are mature fish
taken from deep offshore reefs. All fish landed by the club
have far exceeded the proposed new size limit. Juvenile fish
in shallow water do not seem to exist in our area.
We support
5
- Specify a recreational minimum legal size of 45 cm for Trumpeter
in the Fisheries (Amateur Fishing) Regulations 1986.
Blue Cod
Blue Cod are becoming more
and more plentiful to fishers off the Raglan coast, but sadly very
few are of legal size.
We wish for the Ministry
of Fisheries to take into account the variation between the North
Island and South Island Blue Cod fisheries. We feel it is
important that legal size limits are placed at sexual maturity of
any species. We note that the sexual maturity of Blue Cod
is around 28 cm.
We support
5
- Amend relevant regional amateur fishing regulations to decrease
the Blue Cod recreational minimum legal size from 33 cm to 30
cm in the North Island.
Recreational
Issues Related To Taking Bag Limits
Undersize Fish
and the Recreational Daily Bag Limit
We support
- The Ministry of Fisheries (Mfish) proposes to clarify that undersize
fish do not count towards the recreational daily bag limit.
Releasing fish above
the minimum legal size
It was with extreme surprise
that members of the Raglan Sport Fishing Club found themselves in
breach of the law for imposing onboard their boats or within our
club an arbitrary size limit above the minimum legal size and not
counting these fish against our daily bag limit. Our club
provides information on best practice when releasing fish and for
those reasons
We support
4
- That a recreational fisher's daily bag limit applies only to
the number of lawfully taken fish that are actually retained
.
Tagging and releasing
fish for research purposes
Once again our club was horrified
when club members who had engaged in a personal crusade to tag Yellow
Tail Kingfish off the West Coast, where little or no data exists
for this species found themselves the subject of an inquiry for
taking more than their daily bag limit of this species, which is
within the Ministry of Fisheries tagging programme.
Any fish that is within the
Ministry of Fisheries tagging programme should be able to be tagged
and release in good health to the water for research purposes.
The fact that recreational fishers take part in these programmes
shows recreational fishers to be taking responsibility for these
fisheries.
The species within the tagging
programme could change as time goes by, so we require a ruling that
will allow for future development in the tagging of fish within
the tagging programme.
We support
5
- Provide a defence for tagging and releasing certain stocks or
species in the Regulations.
Regulation
19A Of The Fishing (Amateur Fishing) Regulations 1986
We realize that this ruling
is to amend a change made in last year's rule review. For
which the ministry must be congratulated for implementing.
We support
Proposal 21
- Amend the Fisheries (Amateur Fishing) Regulations 1986 to ensure
that when divers take less than three times their individual entitlement
under r19A, it is not considered to be a serious non-commercial
offence in law.
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