Welcome to 2025 and a "summer" which wasn't really the way most of us like it in many parts of New Zealand. Despite the less-than-great weather, our fishers were still out on the water, doing their jobs, bringing in the summer seafood. And at this time of year, we find ourselves sharing the water with many more recreational fishers. Something we usually enjoy.
From time to time, our fishers have had to come to the rescue of a recreational fisher in trouble. Sometimes (not often) rec fishers express their frustration with the commercial sector on social media, because they aren't sure of the regulations or think our guys are fishing when they are actually steaming or some other misunderstanding has occurred.
We support the rec fishers getting out on the water because it helps spread appreciation for the oceans. Most of our guys don't just fish professionally, they do it for love and they're often back on the water on their days off to catch a few fish of their own.
For all these reasons and because we just want to be helpful, we've been on the radio in some of the particularly busy fishing spots up North to share some helpful tips for our mates in recreational fishing.
The tips were brought to life by the voice of Chase Saunders-Loder, who is a really good bloke and an experienced fisherman. He's not an experienced radio announcer, but you wouldn't know it - he did a fantastic job. Play the video on YouTube to listen for yourself.
We're grateful to Chase for doing this work, trying something new and being part of the effort to reach out and help our fellow ocean-loving Kiwis. Those are the approaches we're bringing to 2025 - being willing to try new things and keen to connect with people outside our industry to work with them to get better outcomes for our oceans.
We are also happy to work with the regulator, Fisheries New Zealand at the Ministry for Primary Industries, in a cooperative and appropriate way. You may remember we talked last year about the significant work we have done with MPI over the last year to look at how we can make some improvements to how we manage our fisheries. The Minister for Oceans and Fisheries, Shane Jones, asked us to do this work. The aim is to make commercial fishing in New Zealand sustainable in every sense of the word. We need to look after the ocean environment and carefully manage how many fish we take, nothing about that will change. But the ideas that came out of the group discussion can help introduce more efficiency for fishers, so they can also have sustainable businesses.
The reality for many of them now is it's too hard. We don't like seeing good fishers having to leave the industry because they can't make ends meet. We don't like our money or taxpayer money being wasted on unnecessary bureaucracy. That doesn't help anyone and it doesn't help the oceans we rely on.
The results of this work are still being considered by the Minister and MPI and we haven't seen the final product yet. While the inputs, discussion and suggestions were a cooperative process, the final proposals are coming from Government, not us. Once an announcement is made, there will be a period of public consultation and we want to encourage all in our industry to have a voice.
When the time comes to speak up in any context, we'll have some material to help you. In a couple of weeks, we will put out Seafood New Zealand's first Year in Review. This booklet will be stuffed full of facts about our industry. It is intended to be a tool for industry people, with great reference material for any of those conversations you have about how commercial fishing works, what we do for New Zealand's economy and all the innovations we are using to minimise our impacts.
Whether we are speaking on the radio, talking to friends or being good citizens by taking part in the democratic process, using our voices to talk about our industry is a good thing. Cheers to more of that in the year ahead.
