POLICY & SUBMISSIONS

The pāua industry supports the incorporation of ecosystem considerations into fisheries management. The Fisheries Act already provides for an ecosystem approach to fisheries management (EAF) and ecosystem obligations are inherent in the Quota Management System – i.e., all commercial harvest rights come with responsibilities to safeguard the environment that sustains the productivity of our fisheries.

PIC is implementing EAF for pāua fisheries by:

• Identifying and filling knowledge gaps about the role of pāua in marine ecosystems;

• Incorporating ecosystem considerations into pāua fisheries plans; and

• Identifying habitats of particular significance for pāua lifecycles, such as good juvenile habitat. The pāua industry advocates for protection of these habitats from threats such as dredging, debris or sedimentation (e.g., by urging regional councils to avoid, remedy or mitigate the adverse effects of terrestrial activities on pāua habitat under the Resource Management Act).

The pāua industry supports the effective protection of marine biodiversity. However, we do not support the presumption that marine reserves or other forms of marine protected areas (MPAs) are the best way of achieving marine biodiversity protection objectives for New Zealand.

Effective biodiversity protection requires careful definition of objectives and identification of threats, followed by selection of the least-cost tool for managing the identified threats and achieving the objectives. For example, an MPA cannot manage the effects of land-based threats to marine biodiversity such as urban runoff or siltation. These types of threats should be managed under the Resource Management Act (RMA).

If fishing is posing a risk to marine biodiversity, measures implemented under the Fisheries Act or directly by fishing sector groups will usually be the most appropriate management response.

The pāua industry promotes legislative amendment to enable pāua quota owners and harvesters to act collectively to manage commercial harvesting activity in a responsible manner.

While the industry has successfully implemented measures such as minimum harvest sizes and catch spreading arrangements on a voluntary basis, the effectiveness of voluntary collective action is limited by:

1. The need to obtain 100% agreement to management measures among quota owners and harvesters, and

2. The absence of effective sanctions for non-compliance. We believe that enabling quota owners to act collectively in a structured and binding way to manage commercial harvesting activity will allow for a more localised scale of fisheries management that government is not equipped to address.

Importantly, the authorised management model that we are promoting is designed as an adjunct to existing fisheries management (not a replacement). It does not entail any delegation or transfer of existing powers of Government or the Minister.

All industry management activities would occur within the bounds of the TACC and existing regulations, ensuring that there is no additional risk to fisheries or environmental sustainability, and no adverse impacts on other fishing sectors.

The pāua industry is highly aware of the shared nature of pāua fisheries – pāua are a taonga for tangata whenua and are also prized by recreational fishers.

It is important that all fisheries sectors can work together to ensure the long-term productivity of pāua fisheries. To achieve this, it is essential to have:

• Accurate, comprehensive and timely information on the catch of all sectors;

• Mandated representatives of each sector who are able to engage with each other;

• Common understandings of pāua management targets and how to achieve and maintain pāua stocks at or above target levels;

• Common understandings about how catch will be allocated among sectors, so as to ensure that all sectors have genuine incentives to participate in stock rebuilding initiatives on a ‘shared pain, shared gain’ basis; and

• Effective mechanisms to constrain recreational catch within the allowance set for recreational fishing.

Inshore coastal waters increasingly face multiple competing demands for the protection and use of marine resources and ecosystems. New uses of coastal space are often established only at the expense of existing fishing rights – for example, a new marine reserve displaces customary, commercial and recreational fishing.

Pāua is a fully utilised fishery with a strong spatial dependency, which means that any displaced fishing effort will lead to localised depletion outside the closed area as fishers compete to take their existing catch entitlements from a reduced area and, consequently, a smaller resource.

Localised depletion can, in turn, lead to stock-wide sustainability risks. For this reason, the pāua industry supports the need to ‘re-balance’ the system and ensure sustainability if an area is closed to pāua fishing. This would entail:

1. A fisheries management response to remove the displaced catch from the fishery and rebalance the biological system (e.g., a reduction in the TAC, TACC and daily bag limits); and

2. A market-based response to rebalance the economic incentives for the effective operation of the QMS by ensuring that affected quota owners are no worse off.