Orange roughy fishery collapse continues

The orange roughy fishery on the Chatham Rise - an area between the South Island and Chatham Islands - is continuing to collapse, fisheries officials say.

The area is showing a continuing drop in fish numbers, even though a "rebuilding strategy" with a phased reduction in catches has been in place for the past two years, said Ministry of Fisheries deepwater fisheries manager Aoife Martin.

"The latest results for orange roughy on the Chatham Rise show the rebuilding strategy has not yet had the results we need to see," Ms Martin said today.

"Significant catch reductions are already proposed for the next fishing year with the support of the fishing industry but we will need to carefully monitor and assess whether this will be effective," she said. "If not, further measures will be implemented next year."

New Zealand's orange roughy fishery first developed on the Chatham Rise in 1979, a year after the nation declared a 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zone, but decisions to fish the stock down to very low levels proved disastrous as researchers initially did not realise the species lived up to 120 years and likely took a long time to breed replacement fish.

Despite later clear warnings from some scientists if high catch levels continued, fishers collapsed the Challenger Plateau stock to 3 percent of the unfished biomass, and there were significant catch reductions from annual catches of 40,000-50,000 tonnes during the 1980s.

A 2006 assessment of the largest orange roughy stock (East Chatham Rise) has been described by researchers as a failure because though it predicted a substantial rebuild of the species, the stock size has continued to decline.

Today Ms Martin said the latest scientific research commissioned by the Fisheries Ministry shows that "our management approach has worked but that we have some work still to do to get the right management measures in place for some areas".

Despite this, the ministry has used the research results to develop proposed catch limits for the next fishing season which opens on October 1, and is seeking public submissions until August 4.

In the orange roughy management area 7A - the Challenger Plateau northwest of the South Island - she said the fishery had "recovered well" after being closed in October 2000 to protect long-term sustainability because the fish numbers had dropped below "acceptable levels".

"The recovery in fish numbers we are seeing is very pleasing and shows that closing fisheries where we need to does produce results," said Ms Martin.

The fishery had now recovered to the point where it could be sustainably re-opened to fishing, she suggested.

The ministry was proposing a cautious re-opening of this fishery with a conservative catch limit of 500 tonnes.

"This would allow for a limited amount of commercial fishing next year that will assess fish numbers and distribution which will help improve information on this fishery," Ms Martin said. "All fishing activity will be closely monitored."

- NZPA