In many of our inshore fisheries there are simply not enough fish in the water to meet the needs of us and our families. For 20 years we have waited for the Ministry of Fisheries to do their job and rebuild shattered fisheries back to healthy levels.
There has been too much fishing pressure for too long. Much of the excessive fishing effort has been commercial, with export as the goal.
The Minister of Fisheries, Jim Anderton, is about to release the Shared Fisheries public consultation document. This is it! It’s all about who gets what.
Our fear is that the policy proposals in the document will pay little or no attention to rebuilding our fisheries. The last time the Ministry ran a similar process the objective was all about restricting how many fish we catch, just so the Government could avoid paying compensation to reduce commercial fishing. |
