The Marine Stewardship Council has reaffirmed New Zealand hoki fisheries meet international best practice in the face of a boycott call.
The German-based environmental group Nabu is targeting McDonald’s, which uses New Zealand hoki in its fish products, in an anti-fishing campaign over alleged lack of dolphin protection. This is despite the fact endangered Maui dolphins are not found in the deepwater hoki habitat.
McDonald’s has not buckled to what amounts to economic blackmail.
The global company has responded that the New Zealand hoki fishery is considered one of the best maintained and controlled fisheries in the world and was one of the first to be awarded MSC certification for sustainable fishing.
The Nabu action led by Dr Barbara Maas was timed to coincide with the release of the Simmons catch reconstruction report that claims massive dumping by the fishing industry since 1950.
The Sustainable Fisheries Partnership (SFP), an international non-profit organisation that advises major buyers on the sustainability of fisheries they source from, has attacked the campaign.
“There is no connection between the situation of these dolphins and the McDonald’s business and attempts to link the two are simply dishonest,” SFP chief executive Jim Cannon said.
SFP fishery technical director Geoff Tingley was critical of the Simmons report. “The methods in the paper are questionable, but regardless of the methods, the paper is highly misleading in aggregating historical data and implying current performance is as bad,” he said.
“The study’s reliance on historical data skews its conclusion towards an allegation that the current problems of discards and waste are worse than they actually are.”
The difficulty in having a sensible science-based discussion around the Simmons report is that the data and methods are so unclear.
Further, the furore around the leaking of the Ministry for Primary Industries reports into discarding in the inshore fishery, referred to in the Simmons report, is giving credence to the deeply flawed catch reconstruction study.
Dropping an outright lie about a Maui dolphin capture into a swirling mass of allegations has made for a tangled web that has had the fishing industry on the back foot, as intended.
On May 13 on the eve of the Simmons report’s release, Dr Maas issued a press release headed: Investigation reveals Maui’s dolphin death was suppressed.
That was forwarded to the BBC and other international news organisations and run uncritically.
The fact is the Nabu claim is a fiction. There is a dolphins capture incident referred to in the Simmons report, as Dr Maas warned there would be, but it refers to Hector’s dolphins, which are not at risk. The capture was investigated and recorded. A second capture could not be confirmed.
The question that should be being asked here is: How is that a publicly-funded institution in the form of Auckland University and publicly funded researchers are party to a campaign that besmirches, if not potentially sabotages, a vital export sector and all those who work in it? The university’s ethics committee should have something to say about that.
The Simmons report is deeply politicised, witness the collusion with Nabu.
It is part of an international project, the University of British Columbia-based Sea Around Us.
The overall project is headed by Dr Daniel Pauly, who has a clear anti-fishing bias, claiming the world’s oceans will have run out of fish by mid century.
The Simmons catch reconstruction report covering 61 years draws heavily on interviews with 300 subjects, all anonymous, 200 of whom were crews on foreign chartered vessels complaining about their treatment. That is a hopelessly biased sample.
The role of science is to put data before opinion, not the reverse.
What the report’s authors appear to have done is compile every instance of illegal or questionable behaviour they can find, extending even further back than the report’s supposed 1950 outer limit, and extrapolate that across the entire industry to buoy up their inflated figures.
Their bias is demonstrated in choosing to dismiss detailed studies by science provider NIWA going back to 1991 that showed the overall discard rate was 6.6 percent in the offshore fisheries where the bulk of fish are caught.
It is simply not credible to claim the actual catch rate is two to three times that recorded. That would equate to hundreds of thousands of tonnes, a sea of dead fish that could hardly go unnoticed.
Because they are so vulnerable in this respect, Simmons et al have now sought to discredit the NIWA findings. They claim the findings are not accurate because they “do not tell us how much was dumped when the observer was asleep”. This is desperate stuff. The fact is vessels that MPI deems need more scrutiny have two observers on board for 24-hour coverage.
Where the report does have some merit is in highlighting there are issues in the inshore fishery. That area deserves scrutiny.
The industry has been telling MPI for a number of years that discards policy, Total Allowable Commercial Catch settings and deemed values all need to be reviewed.
The public is not generally aware MPI requires non-target species and undersized fish to be thrown back. That is a case of fishermen complying with the law, rather than breaking it.
Increased electronic monitoring of vessels announced by MPI Minister Nathan Guy this week will address the symptom but not the cause.
The Quota Management System has served us well for 30 years but we can agree with Simmons and co that it doesn’t provide all the answers.
What the QMS has built is a $1.7billion export industry that provides major investment and employment, particularly in regional New Zealand, and helps sustain this country’s high standard of living. That is being put at risk by the most concerted attack yet seen on the commercial fishing industry.
An independent, international review of the Simmons report is being commissioned.
But in the meantime there is no doubt New Zealand’s reputation is being unfairly damaged.