Sometimes it's hard to get the good news out there about commercial fishing, but there are things we can all do to address that. Here's how.
In the last few weeks, we've had some great news to share about how our hard work in the seafood sector has been reducing bycatch in a couple of key areas.
Firstly, Sealord put out a media release about how seal deaths on their vessels have dropped by around a third in the last year. This is thanks to a combination of measures their crews have been using in the Cook Strait. The measures included underwater cameras to understand seal behaviour, avoiding fishing when seals are most active, binding the top of the net when deploying the fishing gear and introducing SEDs (Seal Exclusion Devices) to give the seals an escape hatch. The result? Forty-nine seals were captured in the 2023/24 fishing year, down from 68 in 2022/23 and 78 in 2021/22.
Then, on Labour Day, Seafood New Zealand had some more good news about bycatch. Our figures show the jack mackerel 7 fishery (JMA 7) has achieved zero bycatch for the 2023/24 fishing year. Zero - no dolphins, seals, sea lions or seabirds.
Every fishery is different of course, but as with Sealord's work on seals, the jack mackerel result is due to a combination of measures. In this case, time of day is also important, plus the use of bird bafflers and dolphin dissuaders and, crucially, a lot of information sharing across the fishery and pulling on the knowledge of the skippers, company science experts and MPI observers.
It's an incredible result and it took a lot of hard work and coordination between the companies that fish in JMA 7. Congratulations are due to the teams at Maruha, Sealord and Independent.
Those two bycatch results are such good news that in both cases they were shared by press release with all New Zealand's main media outlets.
In the case of the story about jack mackerel, it ran briefly on Radio New Zealand (RNZ) in their Tuesday lunchtime bulletin. Sealord's story was picked up by Newstalk ZB and RNZ.
The list of outlets that did not run either of the stories is too long to bother you with here. But it's a start. We aren't grizzling about this.
We are realists. We understand the state of the modern media landscape and we know it is as hard on the journalists and editors as it is on the people and organisations that have good news to share, because good news doesn't get as many clicks or "eyeballs". It doesn't matter what the journalist, editor or executive producer might want to do, what they need to do is compete in a shrinking media landscape and they need stories that get a strong emotional response. That tends to be bad news stories which humans are more wired to interact with and share.
But for us in the seafood industry it is frustrating. We feel like we get hit hard whenever there is bad news and ignored when it's good. We hear those comments from our people all the time.
So let's do something about it. This will require a group effort and that means we need you. Yes, you. Here's how you can help.
- We need to be our own biggest fans. Seafood New Zealand will share the good news on social media (as will most of the industry players on their own accounts). Let's get involved by all sharing that good news. Yes, we know the social media algorithms also like bad news and will amplify it. Don't worry about that - keep pumping out the positive stories to all your friends and contacts. Like and share. If you're not already following Seafood New Zealand on your social media platform of choice, you'll find all the links you need below.
