Environment – Few fish left in the sea

Like many pre-election promises, the pledge to protect fish stocks of the Hauraki Gulf from commercial overfishing looked good on the surface but fails to deliver. Instead, the Government’s draft proposals to review marine protection legislation have drawn fire from all interests in the debate. Commercial and recreational fishing interests, iwi, and conservationists all apparently feel let down by a ‘solution’ that fails to address the problem.
It’s common in public policy that responses to challenges are misdirected. Whether it’s the war on drugs that fails to treat addiction as a social and health issue; the war on terror that alienates and radicalises young people around the world; or, closer to home, the TPP that throws out the rights of our country to regulate in the national interest in favour of free trade; there’s often cause to wonder how good (?) intentions get so waylaid.

Access to clean waterways and flourishing fish stocks are a sacred expectation for New Zealanders. Most Kiwis would love to catch their bag limit any day of the week, and feed the family with a healthy, sustainable resource. Others would just like to know there are healthy fish populations sustaining the rest of the food chain in balance.

Present fisheries management, while lauded as the best in the world, still only supports fish stocks within 20 per cent of its pre-harvest population, leaving no room for rebuilding species or ecosystems generally. In some areas the sea is like a desert. Kina barrens reflect a tradition of over-concentrated, overfishing and other environmental pressures. ‘There are plenty more fish in the sea’ has become an outdated and inaccurate saying. These days, it would be more precise to say ‘there’s hardly any more fish in the sea’, and it’s only going to get worse.

It seems hard to believe, and no doubt some readers will reject the notion of limits to the ocean bounty, that the resource might run out. Even those who can see proof of this, in their empty catch bags after a day out with the rod and line, point the finger at others rather than their own behaviour. Often the stories go ‘we used to be able to catch so many fish we couldn’t eat them all and had to feed them to the cat, now you’re lucky to go home with enough for a feed’. But most of the time, these stories aren’t accompanied by reflection that the overharvesting and wasted excess catches that were fed to the cat, may be part of the problem.

Like many conservation issues, unless we’re part of the solution, we are part of the problem.