Darren Guard’s family has been involved in the fishing industry in New Zealand waters for 189 years, since 1827.
He is the last of the Guards to be involved in commercial fishing.
But he no longer catches fish. His involvement is as a director of Guard Safety Ltd, providing advice to the maritime industry, and as project manager for Trident Fisheye, implementing electronic monitoring on to fishing vessels.
It was in that latter role that he was thrust into the spotlight when former Greens leader Russel Norman, now Greenpeace New Zealand head, made breathless allegations about the sinister work Trident was supposedly up to.
The industry-funded project to better monitor inshore fishing is there for all to see on the Trident website.
There is complete transparency. Norman has been invited by Sanford, a major investor in Trident, to view the system on a vessel in the Snapper1 fishery based on the Hauraki Gulf, meet with fishers and tour the processing plant to show the fishery in its entirety and the way it is being protected.
Oddly, surprisingly, he has declined.
The attack on Trident is a clear continuation of the anti-fishing agenda set out in the Simmons catch reconstruction report and the piggy backing on that by German conservation group Nabu calling for an international boycott of New Zealand seafood over alleged lack of Maui dolphin protection.
“Entities like Greenpeace and LegaSea have used propaganda to convince the people of New Zealand that the fishing industry is not sustainable,” Darren Guard said.
“It is, and our technology will prove that.
“I believe the mix of modern technology provided by Trident to monitor fishing activity and provide real time data will help ensure our fish stocks remain strong and grow for the next 189 years.
“Our current electronic monitoring roll out is not a compliance project, it is about verification of known processes and gathering data to improve fisheries management for SNA1. So why are we being accused of being conflicted?”
In fact, the footage is stamped with date, time and position as recorded by the on-board GPS and the encrypted data is downloaded from the boat back in port to a secure computer.
The sophisticated, tamper-resistant cameras with a 360-degree view are monitoring vessels at sea around the clock.
The footage is available in full to the Ministry for Primary Industries' fisheries section for monitoring of compliance with the Fisheries Act and Quota Management System.
Guard is frustrated at what he sees as misrepresentation, if not lies, about the fishing industry.
His two daughters came home from school after a session with a local environmentalist and told him it was bad to be a fisherman and he should not catch fish any more.
He asked Katelyn, 10, and Emma, 8, what they thought about their dad being in fishing and what would happen if the industry was forced to close?
Katelyn: You should not be killing fish as I was told that was bad. But I think it is okay now because they taste so good.
Emma: The snorkelling would be good if there was no fishing.
Katelyn: But there would be no fish and chips.
Emma: It would be sad to shut down our family history and, dad, it would take you a long time to get another job. If you had no work, we would get sick because we would have no food.
Katelyn: Rubbish put in the ocean probably kills more fish than fishing.
Emma: If you cannot go fishing then neither will the other dads on your boats. What about the people that fix the boats? Will their kids get presents if their dads cannot work on boats?
*I am personally familiar with the Guard story, having worked as a deckhand on the Destiny G for a scallop season in the early 70s.
Darren’s father Phil was the skipper. We worked out of Waitapu in Golden Bay and out of Nelson in Tasman Bay over a golden summer. That tough little boat was built by Jack Guard for cray fishing in the Chathams and is still in service, since sold and now berthed at Napier. Jack Guard, ex D’Urville Island, had a boat yard on Nelson’s Haven Road for many years.
I loved the sea and the life but was not cut out to be a deckie. The scallops and all the other scrapings from the shallow seabed – kinas and shells and mussels and sting rays and skates and weed – all piled higher and higher on the tray as the dredges came aboard and the sun got higher in the sky and I got further and further behind, a Sisyphus of the sea.
Phil was usually an easygoing man, always treated me well, but his patience was sometimes sorely tried. When he did get testy, I would cool him off by filling one of his boots with the deck hose. “Aw, you’ve done it again,” he’d cry. It was always an accident of course.
Phil’s older brothers, Chris and John, worked a bigger boat, the Gleam, and always had the biggest catch of the day. The deckie’s job on the Destiny included cooking the evening meal but I wasn’t much chop at that either, although in my defence, Phil didn’t often bring much food. Flounders plucked out of the trawl were a backstop. Happily, Chris was master of a pressure cooker, and we would usually tie up alongside Gleam and dine there, along with others in the fleet.
Now, more than 40 years on, I indirectly work for a Guard again, and all others in the fishing industry.
It seems fitting.