Many of you will know Rosa Edwards, one of Seafood New Zealand's inshore fisheries managers and our Inshore Protected Species Programme Lead. Recently, courtesy of the Australian-based Minderoo Foundation, Rosa travelled to San Diego to participate in a newly established international working group to further explore better bycatch solutions. Rosa reports back on her experience below.
It's not every day I get to be in a room filled with people who are as passionate about fisheries bycatch mitigation and management as I am. That's exactly what this workshop was, two days of talking solutions with bycatch experts from around the world.
The in-person workshop was attended by experts from Australia, Finland, Hawaii, Mexico, Peru, Argentina, Papua New Guinea and more.
Over the course of the workshop, alternative, low cost, fisher-centric solutions to bycatch problems were explored, guided by the overarching idea that optimal management of bycatch in our fisheries can and should be addressed without overburdening the fishers themselves.
In New Zealand, bycatch management is typically implemented through fleet-wide controls embedded in legislation and, more often than not, that includes fishing area closures. In our experience, these measures always come with some extra burdens for our fishers.
So, it was great to hear that Australian researchers have been focusing on putting fishers at the centre of the problem solving for bycatch issues, offering incredible insights.
In most fisheries these Australian researchers reviewed, there was an obvious pattern of certain operators maintaining high target catch rates while having low bycatch rates. We know that here in New Zealand, this story rings true too, and we have always advocated that fishers need to be a part of the solution.
We heard examples from all over, including non-target fish bycatch in Mexico and dolphin catch reductions in South Australian purse seine fisheries. I presented our story of seabird risk reduction in our southern surface longline (SLL) fishery, where our own fishers have implemented additional mitigation above and beyond regulations as a proactive industry initiative.
What was clear is that what we're doing in New Zealand, putting the fishers in the centre of the solution, is quite rare. As mentioned, our neighbours in Australia are doing this too and are a little ahead of us in terms of backing the approach with science. We agreed that we have a lot to learn from each other and should keep working closely on similar fisheries going forward.
Following the sharing of examples, there was a fair bit of discussion about how we can empower and support a fisher, fleet or a company to take action. The "Skipper effect" was also discussed at length. It's something that we see happening in our own fisheries - while the majority of fishers/skippers are doing the right thing (many going above and beyond), there are usually a small few who are slower to step up. It's these slow adopters that we need to be helping along but the big question is… how?
This is where I began to realise the value of our working relationship with Government. To have a government that is involved and invested in the management of our fisheries, is clearly an advantage in the bycatch space.
While we don't see eye-to-eye on every approach, this relationship enables us to be ahead of developing countries, some of whose governments that have no interest in supporting meaningful fisheries management. It is good to know that if we can't figure out how to bring the last slow adopters along, our government has regulatory tools to help with that. But I want to emphasise we want this to be our last resort.
So, where to from here for us?
Putting the fisher first is what our industry has always advocated for and I think it's now about fine-tuning that approach in a way that doesn't try and reinvent the wheel, is backed by robust science, on-water experience and is industry-led.
Over time, if we can demonstrate that we can do this ourselves, I think the government's role of regulation in regard to bycatch mitigation can become a little less heavy handed. This is what we were attempting with the Southern SLL fleet and, while we're not quite there yet, this is where we see the trajectory of our fisheries bycatch work going.
We've got a bunch of opportunities to be more proactive in a few of our fisheries, we have a lot that we can learn from the deepwater fleet who have tried and tested embedding the fishers within their bycatch solutions, and with increasing transparency on protected species captures (we are about to have some of the best data in the world), I think it's only going to get easier to see where our efforts need to be targeted and when they are having a positive impact.
Finally, one of the greatest takeaways from this workshop was that we're not alone in facing these challenges. There are people out there, in fisheries all over the world doing some really cool things in the bycatch space. We need to continue to build on these relationships and learn from each other.
I am grateful to the Mindaroo Foundation for enabling me to gain this global perspective and establish these relationships. While we have a ways to go, I think we should be celebrating how far we've come - none of which would be possible without the support and keen involvement of our fishers.
