Having been involved quite deeply in this discussion with LegaSea, its interesting to hear what many here have to say.

For some of you the result of this proposal as it stands will have little effect on you directly, right? WRONG. For ALL of us it has a large effect. So, lets look at it in terms of what we can really do here.

MPI claim they have a target of 40% of original, unfished biomass. Currently, Northland stands at 24%, Hauraki Gulf stands at 19% and and BoP stands at a staggering 6%, with an overall average of 20% throughout all of SNA1.

The current interpretation of this by MPI is that as recreational catch has increased and exceeded allowance set in the 1990s, this is the cause of lack of gain of stock levels. Information was gathered by conducting a 6000 participant telephone survey, boat ramp survey and spotter plane collection of boat numbers over the area in question.

Recreational, as a whole reject the proposals in whole as set out by MPI. Not one of the 3 proposals benefit recreational at all. In every case recreational allowance is reduced, and one option reduces that by a full 30%, and offers an increase in commercial catch by 7%. Past reductions in recreational allowance have been sold to commercial as quota, and that appears to be part of the deal here.

Minister Nathan Guy was invited to attend a public meeting to discuss these options and the result of that was a response from the minister "It would be inappropriate to engage in public debate". Instead a group of MPI representatives have been tasked with the job of presenting a display type drop in meeting where one on one discussions can be had with these representatives. At no stage was it possible for them to address the entire audience and the entire thing seemed somewhat pointless. These drop in meetings were met by people expecting to be able to ask questions, and instead were left feeling cheated.

LegaSea have since created a series of meetings where they intend to discuss this issue with an audience. There are many of these meetings taking place throughout SNA1.



It is widely accepted that commercial fishing has a large affect on snapper numbers. It is also accepted that recreational fishing has an affect also. The issue is that the additional capture and slaughter of juvenile snapper is believed to be at 450 tonne, with an error of margin of a further 15%. On top of this it is widely accepted that dumping of high graded catch occurs. None of this catch is recorded as part of quota. Deemed catch is in excess of quota. So, when we consider the additional catch we arrive at a staggering discovery. Commercial have poor practice methods that require addressing in the form of monitoring and a system that requires honesty and transparency. When economic figures take precedence over the ecological effect these practices are having on the fishery then we see that there is very definitely a problem, and recreational should not, and will not take responsibility for practices in an industry that decimated the stock to begin with in the 80s and then continue with poor techniques that are not in any way in the interests of sustaining the fishery.

So, what do we do about it? We, as the people of New Zealand make a stand against what we know is wrong. We join LegaSea, a recognised voice for recreational fishermen is advocacy, education and action. We make a contribution in support and we make a submission so that we as recreational fishermen have a loud, combined and recognised voice.

You can view the entire proposal from MPI at

http://www.fish.govt.nz/NR/rdonlyres/E562E1FD-56AC-4DEB-860B-D553E8F22F40/0/201331IPPReviewmanagementsnapper1.pdf

You can join LegaSea at www.legasea.co.nz, and either make your own submission to MPI, or if you agree with what LegaSea say then sign their submission electronically at

http://www.legasea.co.nz/sos/

This is our one chance to show the minister just how strong a voice recreational is. If you choose to sit and do nothing, you stand to lose much more than you ever believed possible.