Passion for paddle crab - Seafood New Zealand · Golden Bay crabs are different. In May, June and July, Golden Bay paddle crabs eggs. In Kapiti the same thing happens in October,

AUGUST 2013 | VOLUME 21 | NO.4

Inshore fishing: collective action

From the front line

Passion for paddle crab

SEAFOOD NEW ZEALAND | AUGUST 2013 | 15

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When it comes to their business, Mark and Lisa Roach are quite literally hands on. As I interview them in their new factory premises on the edge of Golden Bay’s Waitapu Port wharf, they’re preparing their catch for sale: purging, chilling, cutting, cooking and cooling crabs, then pushing them through a meat extractor to be rewarded with a modest amount of flesh.

Although small in size, the final product is big in impact, and Golden Bay paddle crab meat is now on the tables of some of New Zealand’s best restaurants.

When the couple behind Pursuit Fishing bought the paddle crab business in 2011, with 24 tonnes of quota and 80 pots, it revolved around selling whole live crab, and drew marginal returns.

They knew value adding was the only way forward and, having sourced and priced an extractor, Lisa contacted Cuisine magazine’s top 50 restaurants and sent them samples of the meat. The positive response motivated them to take the step forward, and the move to processing and selling New Zealand paddle crab meat has doubled their returns.

A lot of the former customers who took live crab are not interested in the meat, but Lisa has developed a raft of new customers who clamour for their crabs. Pursuit has 14 restaurants and clients ordering a combination of crab meat and whole crab, with the highest demand for extracted meat. They also sell to Air New Zealand via an accredited supplier, which Lisa describes as “totally awesome”.

Other clients include Al Brown, posh Auckland restaurant SPQR, and Simon Gault’s new Wellington venture The Crab Shack, attached to Shed 5. The Crab Shack Head Chef Geoff Ngan calls

Passion for paddle crabFrom a small factory in a quiet port, Mark and Lisa Roach have total control of their fishing enterprise. Sophie Preece hears of taking paddle crab from pots, through processing, to posh restaurants and palates.

Lisa and Mark Roach

16 | SEAFOOD NEW ZEALAND | AUGUST 2013

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the Golden Bay crab a “fantastic and delicious” product. “The crab meat is sweet and so delicate, a real pleasure to cook with and even more so to eat.” And he says the team at Pursuit Fishing are great to work with and their service “impeccable”. The people of Pursuit Fishing Mark’s mother’s parents owned the Te Mahia Guest House on one shore of the Kenepuru Sound, and his father’s parents owned the Raetehi Guest House on the

other. Fortunately for Mark, the stretch of water between didn’t keep the pair apart and he was born and raised on the edge of the Sound. After some years living in Picton, Havelock and Nelson, the call of the Sounds drew the family to d’Urville Island, where Mark started fishing at the age of 15, working for his father Graham.

Lisa has spent 14 years in the seafood industry, including crewing on the Hans for its leg between Portugal and Panama, and a stint fishing for hoki and orange roughy that took her as far as the Chatham Islands. More recently she’s been known to jump aboard seafood controversies,

and was a vocal part of the anti-basa campaign in 2010, visiting supermarkets to protest against the sale of the imported Vietnamese fish. She has also opposed Foreign Charter Vessel arrangements, and her licence plate makes that point clear, reading NO2FCV.

Mark and Lisa moved to Golden Bay from Nelson in February 2011, deciding to make a change from a busy life that included owning three trawlers—all fishing into Talley’s—an engineering business and a net-making business. “This was a step back to take it a bit easier,” says Lisa. Mark describes it differently, as he looks

Lisa checks on crabs being purged in saltwater bins

Mark cuts the crabs in half on a stable blade before partially cooking them

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down over a barrel of crabs. “It was Lisa’s fault,” he says with a small smile.

The idea of motels appealed to Lisa, and when they saw one in Takaka for sale she had to find something for Mark to do as well, he says. The paddle crab business drew them in, they set up the operation out of their home, and eventually the motels were given up for the busy life of a paddle crabbing couple.

The Roaches still have two trawlers fishing out of Westport and are not reliant on the crab business and its relatively modest returns. But Mark says there is a lot of potential to expand, and as time goes by Golden Bay paddle crab might be a bigger part of their income. “It’s one step at a time, really.”

In the meantime, they are perfectly happy running Pursuit Fishing—as fishers, Licensed Fish Receivers, processers, marketers and sales people—from a region they enjoy.

They love that there’s nothing between them and the restaurants, says Mark. “This is the first time for quite some time that we have done anything but fish to Talley’s, so we are in control of our own future.”

Talley’s taught them much, and the relationship between the couple and

the company remains strong. It was the fishing giant that allowed them to step up their business when they moved it out of their home and into the empty Talley’s factory at Waitapu Port in June this year. Talley’s had reduced its use of the port and deregistered the factory when it withdrew from the scallop fishery in 2000, but still landed cockles on the wharf until 2009. Alf Reid manages all Talley’s facilities in Golden Bay, and says it is “excellent” to see Waitapu used again.

Processing paddle crab Lisa and Mark are involved together in all aspects of the business, except driving the boat (which Mark does) and doing the marketing (Lisa’s realm).

Tackling the laborious process of extracting meat is certainly a team effort. As anyone who has eaten a crab knows, they are tricky little fellows to approach, and producing just a kilogram of product is a time-consuming and fiddly business.

Mark fishes their 80 pots, then pulls his boat up to the picturesque wharf to unload his catch for processing just metres away. In the height of the season they catch approximately 200kg a day, and can currently extract the meat from 100kg in the factory, with plans to up that capacity.

The crabs are purged in bins of saltwater for 24 hours, then the live crab allotment is calmed through chilling before being packed and sent straight out in poly bins.

The remaining crabs go from the saltwater purge into water chilled to two degrees Celsius to pacify them before processing. Mark then cuts them in half on a stable blade before partially cooking the crabs, then plunges them in cold again to ensure they don’t overcook. The carapace and viscera are removed before the rest is hand fed through the meat extractor, which rolls the meat out of the shells and drops the waste into a bin below.

Those shells, along with anything removed earlier, are sent to a local organic farm to be dug into the soil as a natural fertiliser.

Mark and Lisa then examine the crab meat, ensuring that no shell remains, before vacuum packing it in 500-gram bags. It’s a time-consuming process, with 15 to 20 percent recovery, but the final product is one for which they’re winning high praise.

Being in the factory with a sound risk management plan in place, the couple can now court the attention of supermarkets and other clients, although Lisa wants to ensure that she doesn’t over-commit the company then fail on supply.

Examining the extracted meat is time consuming, but vital for quality control


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“The crab meat is sweet and so delicate, a real pleasure to cook with and even more so to eat.” - Geoff Ngan

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And they go to great lengths to ensure that their clients are never disappointed. The morning I met with them, they had already scrambled to supply a Wellington restaurant that had run short of crab, with Mark driving to Nelson to get poly bins of product on a plane.

Their desire to be reliable has led them into a partnership with a Kapiti-based company, which covers both businesses against seasonal shortfalls.


Paddle crab partnership When Kapiti fisherman Scott McNeil injured his shoulder, he faced a crisis in his small, family-run business. Awatoru Enterprises already had tight margins selling live paddle crab to restaurants, and the prospect of three months being unable to pull pots seemed to spell disaster. Out of desperation, he put a “cheeky call” through to Mark and Lisa in Golden Bay, asking for a lifeline. “To be honest I wasn’t expecting them to give me the time of day, but instead they sent crabs on request so we could continue our supply to the restaurants.”

So began a new partnership, with Scott and his wife Maaike supplying Pursuit Fishing in Golden Bay when its seasonslows, and calling on product when required. “The key to a paddle crab supply is being able to offer consistency of catch to clients. With our working together, we are now able to do so,” says Scott.

Lisa says that treating the North Island company as a partner rather than a competitor has been win-win because the seasons of the Kapiti and

Golden Bay crabs are different. In May, June and July, Golden Bay paddle crabs are put back if they have soft shells or eggs. In Kapiti the same thing happens in October, making the two businesses perfect supply partners.

The McNeils were so impressed with the time and care the Roaches put in to extracting meat that they developed a crab meat arm to their business as well. “We could see that the finished product was second to none in the market,” says Scott.

They now sell a proportion of their crabs to Pursuit Fishing, and Lisa and Mark extract the meat before sending it back to be sold under the McNeils’ brand Pāpaka, which is Māori for paddle crab. “The finished product is pure, firm, beautiful crab meat,” says Scott.

He says the Kapiti and Golden Bay crabs each have their own distinctive flavour, so as well as being able to ensure consistency of supply, they can give chefs and other clients a choice. Looking forward, they hope to develop other added-value seafood products through the partnership.

Sustainability

Sustainability is in their interests, says Lisa. “We want to catch the next year and the year after that.” The TACC for paddle crab in Area 7, which includes Golden Bay, is 100 metric tonnes, but she says nothing like that amount is ever caught due to the relatively modest returns.

A self-imposed management plan sees them throwing back two or three times the amount that they keep, because the crabs are under 90mm across the shell or have eggs or soft shells. Meanwhile, frequently checking pots means they don’t have any issues with by-catch, says Mark.

Scott McNeil has a similar perspective. There is no set size limit in Area 8, which extends up the coast through Taranaki, but he imposes his own management regime working to a 90mm minimum across the shell. “Anything smaller is better to leave to catch the next year.”

He mainly uses lift-pots that he works all day, pulling each one every 20 minutes, meaning zero by-catch. The male-to-female ratio throughout the year is 40:1, so he leaves the females alone, and he also avoids staying in any one spot along the coast.

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Maaike and Scott McNeil of Awatoru Enterprises on the Kapiti Coast have struck a strategic partnership with Lisa and Mark Roach in Golden Bay


“My catch has consistently increased. I can’t be sure if this is because I am getting better at finding them or if numbers are climbing.” That said, he never knows what the day will yield in terms of crabs. “There can be a big difference in catch sizes. Some days I can be lucky to scrape up a bin; other days the gear can be heaving.”

The TACC for Area 8 paddle crab is set at 60 metric tonnes, and nothing near that amount has been landed since the species entered the quota system in 2002, he says.

The crabs in the area have a “massive” stretch from Mana to Whanganui, with only two boats targeting them. They also have the prevailing westerly to keep them safe, he says. “Sometimes we can go a month without getting off the beach.”

While he says he’s not qualified to comment on the sustainability of paddle crabs in the area, discussions with other commercial fishers have led him to believe his catches are consistent with those fishing 15-20 years ago.

The taste test

At the Penguin Cafe in Pohara, Golden Bay, diners eat their crab cakes within sight of the pots in which the crabs were caught. Owner Kim Gill says that for tourists in particular, the proximity of pots to plate is a huge selling point, and in the summer season the restaurant’s crab cakes are in hot demand.

While they use crab meat for the dish, they also garnish the meal with crab claws. “We find people are eating them. They’re not big, but they’re tasty.”

Chef Murray Herbert loves working with the product, and has developed his fish cake recipe through trial and error, using Thai flavours such as ginger, chilli and coriander, while ensuring that the sweet flavour of the crab flesh is not overwhelmed.

“You have to be very careful with the flavours you put with it. You have got to let seafood speak for itself.”

While the only crab dish the restaurant serves is crab cakes, he has experimented

using the same mix in wontons, smoking crab lightly with ginger and tea, and using fresh crab meat in Vietnamese rice paper rolls.

He says the flesh is delicate and beautifully sweet. “It’s the best there is.”

www.pursuitfishing.co.nzwww.papaka.co.nz

The only area of the business where Lisa works alone is marketing the NZ Paddle Crab brand

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Feature

The outcome of New Zealand research on tori lines has been adopted as international best practice. The Seabird Bycatch Working Group of the international Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels, meeting in La Rochelle in France in May, adopted the recommendations that came from New Zealand trials in trawl fisheries.

Minimum standards were set for attaching bird-scaring lines above and outside warp lines, which the standard states “greatly reduces the access of birds to the danger zone”. Besides a recommendation that Kraton, or a similar material, be used for streamers, the ideal is to anchor tori lines with buoys or cones, and that there be five metres of backbone for each metre of trawl block height.

Igor Debski, Department of Conservation Science Advisor, who represented New Zealand at La Rochelle, says of the streamers’ trials, “Work such as ours contributes to ongoing improvement. In particular there was a strong operational focus on finding materials that increase the

durability and colour-fastness of streamers, and reduce tangling. This means fishers can have access to cost-effective, long-lasting and efficient mitigation options”.

Seabirds avoid Kraton curtainsTrawler operators have bought out completely the first consignment of imported Kraton tubing, to use as streamers on tori lines, in the past two months.

Kraton is a bright orange, high-performance elastomer tubing. It is looking to be an ideal replacement for the luminous tubing that has been standard in the New Zealand fleet as streamers for scaring seabirds, such as albatross and petrels, away from trawler warp wires.

Tori lines, also known as streamer lines, are used worldwide. A length of backbone rope is towed on the outside of each of the two warps, with a drag weight on the end to keep the rope taut and the streamers suspended. The streamers hang down at intervals, creating the illusion of a curtain for the seabirds. The birds stay outside the

curtains, away from the warps and out of danger.

But the plastic tubing streamers, which have been in widespread use throughout the New Zealand deepwater fleet, are simply borrowed as a familiar material from use as a protection for long-line fishery nylon traces. When used as a tori line this tubing quickly fades, gets blown away from the warps by high winds, is brittle and tangles.

Since 2007, regulations have required all New Zealand trawlers longer than 28m to use at least one of three approved mitigation devices: tori lines, warp deflectors or bird bafflers.

Warp deflectors, where lines are attached to the warp itself, are the third option, although rarely installed. Bafflers are droppers set on rigid booms extending from the stern and are deployed for the duration of the voyage. But despite this convenience, the bafflers are less effective and more expensive than tori lines.

Trials last August set out to see how tori systems could be made to work better, and included an investigation of various

BEHIND THE HEADLINESSome issues facing the seafood sector live a long life in dramatic media headlines. Don Carson reports from the front line on the latest measures to protect New Zealand’s seabirds, and research into Hector’s and Maui’s deaths, bringing you the truth behind the ‘news’.

New Zealand tori line research adopted as international best practise


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streamer, backbone materials and anchor devices, as well as an analysis of different lengths, drag weights and the resulting orientation of the tori lines over the warps. The longer the backbone, the heavier the drag weight has to be to keep the backbone aerial and the streamers a steady height above the water. Streamers sagging into the water, because of not enough drag on the backbone, can tangle the birds instead of scaring them. But a heavier drag weight makes it harder for the crew to pull the line back on board, which they have to do each time they pull the trawl net.

Alaskan vessels use toris made from Kraton, so samples were imported to see how well they would work here.

Streamers made from 10-millimetre Kraton tubing were clearly the best performing. They held their bright orange colour far better and showed up well in all conditions, including under the stern lights at night. Kraton was flexible and easy to thread directly into the backbone. It tangled less often, hung well in the wind and broke less often.

Shortening the spacing from the standard five metres to three metres appeared to be optimal, as was replacing the windy buoy with a 360mm trawl float, which deviated off the warp less often and gave a steady and constant pull.

The evidence for an ideal backbone length was more inconclusive, as this needs to be a specific length for each vessel, based on how high the warp is when it leaves the trawl block, its attachment height and trawl depths. However, a 30m backbone performed the best across different conditions and would suit most deep-sea

BEHIND THE HEADLINESEru Puata (Sootie), First Mate on the Ocean Dawn, holding Kraton and assembly instructions

Kraton tori lines in action

trawlers, while 40m was sufficient for larger vessels with higher trawl blocks.Based on the sea trials, an optimum ‘formula’ was calculated, using the individual vessel’s trawl block height, so each crew can construct a superior tori line, with correct drag weight, length of backbone and number of streamers. Further trial work is to be done on various bird bafflers and deployment methods forthe tori lines.

The Deepwater Group’s John Cleal says that while the cost of 10mm Kraton is five times that of the material it replaces, it is far more effective and durable, so needs replacing much less often. A vessel only needs 70-80m to make a tori line. All up, with some spare, Kraton will cost about $350 for three rolls.

Cleal tested Kraton among four other options after he had seen it trialled by international seabird expert Professor Ed Melvin, Marine Fisheries Senior Scientist at the University of Washington in the United States.

“Once the team from the Department of Conservation and Johanna Pierre from JPEC had established the clear superiority of Kraton, I went to the two major suppliers

and distributors of tori line materials in New Zealand and convinced both companies to import it as a replacement for the other inferior stuff.

“Around a third of the deepwater trawl fleet is now using Kraton, and within the next few months I expect all 30-odd of these trawlers to replace their worn-out materials with these streamers,” Cleal says.

Ed Melvin says the US doesn’t regulate for seabird capture mitigation in the US trawl fleet, but all the long-line fleets use bird-scaring lines with Kraton or its equivalent.

“We got this all sorted in our research in 1999-2000, so Kraton is a pretty old long-line story here. I’ve used it in lots of places around the world at this stage and still find it is the best material for bird-scaring streamers.”

For Cleal, Kraton, while a major step, is only part of an answer to reduce seabird incidental captures. “Without an understanding of many critical aspects of tori line deployment, such as the aerial extent, length and tension of the backbones, and care and attention to deployment, the Kraton would be just ineffective bits of plastic in and over the sea.”


Feature

It was one of the most protracted pos-mortems that Dr Wendi Roe had ever done on a Hector’s dolphin.

Not because the Massey University pathologist had lost her surgical touch after 13 years of cutting them up. But rather, the film crew from Prime’s new documentary series ‘The Animal Files’ was making her do, and say, the same things over and over again for different filming angles. The crew was also waiting for me to take my still photographs for this article.

And there she was, directing the vet students to stand in the right place in the Veterinary School post-mortem enclosure, so they would block the camera’s background shots of something fluffy and ginger on a nearby dissection table that too obviously was once someone’s pet. “Not a good look,” said the film crew director.

For Wendi Roe that’s a message that’s been sent in her direction before. Not because she cuts up dead animals too publicly, but instead her pathology work is raising awkward questions for those who have the seafood industry in their sights for endangering marine mammal species, in particular Hector’s dolphins and New Zealand sea lions.

Last year, Dr Roe identified the protozoa Toxoplasma gondii as the cause of death for seven of 28 Hector’s and Maui’s dolphins fresh enough to be examined. Two of the three Maui’s had died of the disease, and 61 percent of the dolphins that had died of other causes also had the infection.

A few months earlier, without the benefit of this research, an expert panel assembled by the Ministry for Primary Industries and the Department of Conservation to look at Maui’s dolphin threats had concluded that the frequency of a Maui’s being killed from such a disease was less than one per 100 years.

The panel concluded, moreover, that fishing killed 4.97 Maui’s each year. This figure was based on its collective estimates, not hard evidence. There has not been a recorded set net mortality in the Maui’s range since 2002 and not one reported killed in a trawl since records began in 1921.

Toxoplasmosis remains the elephant in the Maui’s threat room, which is still dominated by demands that fishing restrictions be increased to protect the Maui’s. The Scientific Committee of the International Whaling Commission recently generated a huge amount of international media coverage when it rebuked the New Zealand Government by demanding that it stop looking at the science questions and immediately expand the scope of fishing bans.

For Roe it is frustrating trying to find funding to investigate how or if an infected cat population has created the toxoplasmosis threat for Maui’s out at sea. Funding is drying up, not increasing, and the most likely remaining funders are overseas. Roe has submitted grant proposals for work on tracing the source of transmission. “Every one of them has said,

‘This is really great, but not quite.’ We’ve done well in the rankings but we haven’t quite made it over the hurdle,” Roe says.

The strain of toxoplasmosis in Hector’s and Maui’s is unusual. It is a known type-two toxoplasmosis with an allele of a known type-one. Domestic cats are a known vector of toxoplasmosis. This is where the sexual reproduction stage occurs. Roe’s team is working to see if the toxoplasmosis in the dolphins originates in the region’s cats, or maybe a subset of these cats.

The work is just starting, with the team “getting hold of cat poo from feral cats, urban cats, rural, SPCA unmanaged populations, to see what type of toxo they have”.

If Roe and her team can trace particular localities where the cats are that carry the strain the Maui’s have got, prevention might be possible. She says it is unrealistic and possibly pointless to cull entire populations of cats. The effectiveness of preventing them defecating where the toxoplasmosis will get into watercourses and down to the sea would depend on how the infection actually enters the marine environment.

How it gets from cats to the dolphins is currently unknown. Toxoplasma oocysts from cats could survive in the marine environment for months and concentrate in marine invertebrates such as mussels and oysters.

Overseas, otters are known to be infected by shellfish: “You see them lying there with little shells on their bellies, cracking them open”.

Finding the smoking guns in dolphin mortality

Dr Wendi Roe, Massey University, performing an autopsy on a Hector’s dolphin


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But Hector’s and Maui’s are not known to eat shellfish. She suggests that Maui’s might get the infection via finfish that have eaten shellfish.

Roe was surprised at how vulnerable the Hector’s and Maui’s are to toxoplasmosis. The literature for overseas dolphin species with toxoplasmosis mainly describes brain lesions. “With the Hector’s and Maui’s what we are seeing instead is a disease throughout all the internal organs. So it’s a more severe and rapid course of disease—throughout the lungs, liver, lymph nodes and adrenals.” Roe says she doesn’t know why the infection rate and severity are both so

high. It might be that the dolphins lack immunity or it might be the toxoplasmosis strain, or both.

She dismisses any idea of dosing the Maui’s for the infection. “Just one shot of an antibiotic wouldn’t do it. Treating humans and cats with toxo needs a whole course of treatment.”

Roe seems a careful scientist. She is coy about speculating when I ask questions outside her direct, although considerable, expertise. And she jokes at a suggestion that she has become the poster girl for toxoplasmosis in dolphins, and doesn’t see her results as a reason for taking bans off fishing.

“We’re finding dolphins dying of infectious diseases like toxoplasmosis, which we might not be able to prevent. That makes it even more important to have strong measures in place to decrease preventable mortalities such as accidental capture in fishing nets,” she says.

And as for the particular Hector’s that Roe was cutting up that day of the interview? Timaru beach cast, #H241; no evidence of fishing-related injury, and the probable cause of death was some infection (not toxoplasmosis) in the kidneys. The lab tests will confirm.


Right now the inshore fishing business can be a tough one. Notwithstanding all of the internal challenges, the increasing external pressures can be considerable. Lucy Brake talks to some of the inshore fishing businesspeople who are successfully facing these, and discovers that their secrets lie in smart thinking, building good relationships and having a deep passion for fishing.

When I spoke to Dave Moore I was captivated by this man’s absolute love of fishing. He tells the story of his father Graham fishing out of Auckland for 30 years, so naturally he worked with him during school holidays. This solid grounding has supported Moore in growing a successful inshore fisheries business. He now has five vessels in his fleet and sees a bright future ahead.

his team together and mean they are doing well. “We just love fishing and I have tried to foster a family culture. I carried on developing this with the idea that we are here for the long haul, 100-year thinking.”

Fostering long-term relationships, increasing skills and the development of crew are vital in the fishing industry. “We have done this all in-house. The skills I learnt from my dad I have taught to my skippers. They have added to this

From Moore’s perspective, if you have a stake in this industry you need to become involved in the decisions that are being made, otherwise you start to lose ground. It’s all about being proactive. “We’ve gone about our business, kept a low profile, but we are seen as a long-term player and so I now get asked what my views are and how to do things from a fisher’s perspective when the industry comes together on an issue.”

The power of many

Golden snapper is one high-value inshore species that is worth more when there is greater comitment to quality control

His love of fishing, and being in it for the long run, are clearly what hold Moore and

then passed the collective knowledge on on to their deckhands,” says Moore.


Feature

Future proofingRichard Wells knows his stuff when it comes to New Zealand’s inshore fisheries, having worked on fishing boats in the South Island since he was young. After completing a degree in fisheries he spent some time on an inshore trawler, followed by more than a decade in deepwater fleet management, a period of time in Auckland’s inshore fisheries, and a number of years as an independent fisheries consultant. Most recently he started working on a part-time contractual basis for Fisheries Inshore New Zealand, a national collective of finfish interests.

Wells has seen a lot of change in this time. “When I first started working in Nelson’s inshore fisheries there was no such thing as a QMS, and when I finally returned after many years managing deepwater fleets there had been a QMS in operation for 20 years. It changed the industry forever.”

With Wells’s extensive experience he has some interesting ideas about what makes a successful inshore fisheries business. “Proactivity is the big one. We need to understand and confront the issues facing the industry before they become painful and we have no choices left.”

The big issues, he points out, are certainly not new—market competition, environmental concerns, lack of scientific knowledge, competition for space and so on. But his opinions on how to deal with these things are thought-provoking. “We need to be future proofing and forecasting right now. The fishing industry is not historically good at doing this.”

With growing transparency, all sectors of New Zealand’s industry are facing increasing public scrutiny, and inshore fishery is no different. “Clearly public examination of the fishing industry is very intense and we are a high-profile sector,” Wells says.

He is positive about the ways in which the industry can think more boldly and innovatively in such an environment. The first, and most important, is ensuring that the sector has rational thinking and collectiveness. “The industry needs to have a far more coherent framework in which to discuss matters amongst themselves and with all the other stakeholders—essentially a common voice on common issues.”

Such an approach for an industry that is historically owner operated can be challenging, but there are some great

fisherman from Whitianga, says is being addressed. Fishers are doing smarter business through improved feedback from the product developers and sales people about what is driving the market. They are getting a lot more information now from marketers on what fish the consumers want and when it needs to be landed.

Right across the industry everyone is trying to add value to products. “In recent years the majority of fresh fish landed and not sold was mostly frozen and while this is still an important option, fishers are more likely now catching for markets," comments Clow.

The power of many

Dave Moore, inshore fisheries operator

examples of where this is making a difference to fishers. The refocusing of Seafood New Zealand in 2012/13 and the launch of its strategy in October should go some way to addressing Wells’s expectations in this area.

Many inshore fishing businesses have taken on this challenge by jointly investing in Trident Systems, an industry owned independent science provider. Trident is working on a number of initiatives that are of particular relevance to inshore fisheries, including catch sampling in processing plants and on vessels that has enabled inshore fishing businesses to get more directly involved in providing the scientific data required for fisheries management.

Concentrating on quality and being aware of incoming challenges to our fishing areas is what makes it important to be doing smarter business is one of the areas that Phil Clow, an experienced inshore


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A common voiceDave Moore believes that getting some traction on the big issues requires a big voice, and that means getting everyone working in the business of fishing around a table and talking openly and respectfully. This in turn leads to the inshore fisheries industry having a more influential say on the direction of decisions in matters like policy, regulations, gathering of knowledge and science before they are forced upon the fishers.

This has led him to get involved in the Hauraki Gulf Fishers group. This diverse group of commercial fishers, quota owners in the SNA1 fishery, and fish processing companies has been coming together for more than a year in an effort to develop a cohesive view to deal with the growing pressure on the Hauraki Gulf fisheries.

What they share in common is that they work among protected species, with large numbers of recreational fishers, under the shadow of this country’s most populated city, and they fish in the most valuable inshore wild-harvest finfish waters in New Zealand. They could be called competitors but they like to think of themselves as collaborators. This is a

truly great exampleof where a common voice for the industry is starting to reap its rewards.

The best thing, according to Moore, is that the group is relatively informal but includes the majority of the quota owners and fishers, so when they sit around the table, close to 90 percent of SNA1 stakeholders are there. “We are not just talking as a little group, so we can actually get some traction. Our ideas begin from the ground up. The people on the water now have a direct voice and we are being valued for the knowledge we have gained over many years.”

Originally meeting over a single, very challenging problem, this group has since expanded its discussions to cover more issues that are affecting SNA1. Its members have been talking about key topics like catch and allocation limits and coming up with innovative ways that fishers can contribute their knowledge to support better science. All of them are united in their vision about the leadership role.

“The fact that we are actually starting to be identified as a group to talk to on these issues is exciting,” says Moore. “Small operators like me are being listened to—in terms of both the internal group and the wider stakeholders.” He believes the group has enough collective power to exert some strong influence and set a positive direction.

Phil Clow and fellow fisher Wayne Dreadon, who represent the Whitianga/Coromandel Peninsula Commercial Fishermen’s Association on the Hauraki Gulf Fishers group, agree. Clow has been fishing commercially in the Great Barrier to Waihi Beach area for decades and says that for many of those years he felt like they were constantly dealing with issues, which was hard to manage given limited money and time.

He sees the Hauraki Gulf Fishers group as a real chance to change this. “This collaborative group helps us to be more proactive and transparent, and I believe it has given the Ministry for Primary Industries more confidence in dealing with us, as well as non-government organisations and the general public,” Clow says.

Whilst attending the Auckland-based meetings result in lost income, Clow and Dreadon believe their involvement in this initiative is necessary as for changes in fishing practices to work you need information from people at the coal face, and this helps with good buy-in from those out there actually catching fish. “The support of the large corporates in this initiative, including Sanford, AFL and Leigh Fisheries, has been essential to get it off the ground.”

Cindy Bailey has been involved in an inshore fishing business for almost 30 years and has a passion for the industry.

Bailey is certain that the fishing industry absolutely has to work together and this group is a positive way to ensure that small owner-operators have strong representation. “It is amazing to see all the different groups, fishers, the big companies, and quota owners, all meeting and helping by sharing their ideas on ways to support fishers and the fisheries in our area. It is a great start and very positive.”

The LCFA has certainly had to fight some battles in the past, including attempts to close a fishing area without any consultation with the fishers, and Bailey thinks that a collective industry voice like the Hauraki Gulf Fishers group can really support and promote the best interests of commercial fishers. “Whilst we might not agree all the time, we are able to work through our differences to ensure a better future for the regional inshore fleet.”

Not even a fisher gets tired of ‘snapper and chips’—the Hauraki Gulf Fishers group taking time out between meetings


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Alison Undorf-Lay, Industry Liaison Manager at Sanford, has been involved in the Hauraki Gulf Fishers group since its inception and certainly sees the importance of a collective voice. “Our group has identified some great ways that fishers can engage in science and use their on-the-water knowledge to help improve fisheries management. I believe we have been bold and creative and have shown ourselves to be willing to take some huge leaps forward – like becoming strong advocates for electronic monitoring and data collection” She ultimately sees that its work will be instrumental in finding smarter ways to prove it is a sustainable and responsible industry.

Thinking smarterAn example of where smarter business is being developed through collaboration is Southern Seabird Solutions, an innovative alliance that includes representatives from the seafood industry, the New Zealand Government, the World Wide Fund for Nature, Te Ohu Kaimoana and the recreational angling sector, that was set up to take a cooperative and practical approach to seabird conservation. Workshops, supported by funding from various fisher associations and companies, are held where wildlife

ecologists provide fishers with insights into bird ecology and migratory patterns. Good numbers from the Hauraki Gulf Fishers group have attended these and attest to their value.

Clow says that 10 years ago these initiatives were limited and it was difficult to bring people up to speed with science: “It was just a big stick from the Government rather than trying to work alongside us to inform, educate and hear our views”.

However, this doesn’t mean the industry wasn’t proactive about the issue back then; just not as a cohesive body. Cindy Bailey notes how the LCFA recognised a problem with seabirds in 1992 and prepared a video and code of practice for its members. She sees that its founding involvement in Southern Seabird Solutions is all about taking proactive steps as an industry.

This programme, Clow says, is a great example of what has happened in the industry to bring about change. “Crew and skippers go to these workshops and then the word gets out among the young people. Then they are keen to make a change because they now understand why it’s important.”

While the Hauraki Gulf Fishers group has many meaty issues to deal with, it is ultimately attempting to work out ways in which the industry can best help itself. It is finding that as a collective group the members can put their heads together to develop good, constructive advice that is increasingly being picked up and utilised.

At the end of the day, says Clow, fishers are now much more informed on the big issues for the industry and realise that if fishing is what they love to do, they need to ensure that they have a say in creating smarter businesses and setting a positive path for how the future will look.

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