UCLA Seeks Greater Limits On Gulf Commercial Fishers

A Coromandel conservation group has called for an expansion of the government’s proposed Hauraki Gulf Recreational Fishing Park to include all inshore areas along the Firth of Thames, around Cape Colville, and down the peninsula’s eastern coastline.

The Upper Coromandel Landcare Association (UCLA) is seeking a ban on all commercial fishing activity, excluding mussel farming and crayfishing, within three nautical miles of shore.

UCLA spokesperson and Waikato Regional Council Coromandel Catchment representative Reihana Robinson put the proposal to last month’s zone committee meeting in Thames. The proposal was accepted and passed to full council, which has taken it under consideration in formulating WRC’s formal submission to the government discussion document.

The fishing park was proposed earlier this year by the Ministry for the Environment, which seeks to limit some forms of commercial fishing in both the Hauraki Gulf and the Marlborough Sounds. In the Hauraki Gulf, the proposal would create a customary and recreational-only zone in the inner Firth of Thames south of a line roughly from Waiheke Island to Coromandel Town.

However, the proposal would still allow seining activity north of that line and would continue to permit both seining and trawling in the bulk of the Hauraki Gulf Marine Park, including around Great Barrier and down the eastern Coromandel seaboard.

UCLA spokesperson Robinson said both WRC and Thames-Coromandel District Council need to take strong positions with government to protect fragile inshore marine environments and the district’s tourism-dependent economy.

“While a customary and recreational fishing-only zone in the southern and western Firth sounds attractive at first blush, it does little to address the long-term sustainability of our already depleted local fisheries and a degraded marine environment throughout the bulk of the Hauraki Gulf.”

“As proposed, the fishing park would do almost nothing to limit the destructive and wasteful trawling activity that is concentrated in the northern and outer Hauraki Gulf, through the Colville Channel, around Great Barrier, and down the east coast”, Robinson said. “Significant extensions to protected-area lines of demarcation, specifically along our coastline, are urgently needed.”

According to UCLA, consistent reports from experienced recreational fishers and long-time northern Coromandel residents increasingly point to depletion of local fish stocks, with a potential for eventual fishery collapse. Concern about the threatened fishery spurred a petition back in 2007 with over 1,000 signatories, and presented to the former Ministry of Fisheries, seeking a total ban on trawling along the entire Coromandel coastline.

The deadline for individual submissions to the government’s consultation document on the proposed Hauraki Gulf recreational fishing park is 5:00pm March 11. The full proposal and submission guidelines can be found on the Ministry for the Environment web site (www.mfe.govt.nz) section on the Marine Protected Areas Act.

ENDS

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