The theme of this year’s Seafood New Zealand Conference, which started in Auckland this morning, is "Champions of Sustainability", a title that Greenpeace Aotearoa says is ironic at best, and misleading at worst.

Greenpeace campaigner Ellie Hooper cited continued destructive bottom trawling, high bycatch rates, and carbon disturbance, as examples of fishing practices that undermined any industry claims to sustainability.

"Time and time again we see the fishing industry trying to greenwash its practices as ‘sustainable’, tinkering at the edges of change while failing to address the most pressing issues like destructive bottom trawling," she says.

"Right now New Zealand bottom trawlers are out bulldozing the seafloor, ripping up precious coral and catching and killing marine life like dolphins, fur seals and endangered albatross as ‘bycatch’.

"Far from being sustainable, the New Zealand fishing industry is putting profit above ocean health, continuing to trawl in New Zealand waters and shamefully, remain the only fleet to trawl in the South Pacific High Seas.

"Over 80% of New Zealanders want trawling gone so the ocean can recover and thrive, and it’s time for the Government and industry to listen."

"We’ve seen these attempts before, where the industry paints itself as sustainable but really it’s anything but. Last year it claimed to have a low carbon footprint, without factoring in the carbon disturbed and released into the water by bottom trawling."

Australian environmentalists were last month raising concerns about a New Zealand super trawler, Talley’s Amaltal Explorer being allowed to fish for endangered orange roughy off the coast of Tasmania.

"Every year we read about the enormous amounts of coral being ripped up by trawl nets, which is the backbone of whole ocean communities. But the fishing industry does not care.

"Destroying critical habitats in the name of fishing industry profits can never be sustainable. And even the most expensive greenwashing campaign cannot convince people of that.

"For the ocean to recover and thrive bottom trawling has got to go from where it does the most harm," says Hooper.

© Scoop Media