NZ promoting its fisheries management to the Pacific

Transcript

About 40 Pacific fisheries ministers and officials are in New Zealand to learn about this country's approach to fisheries management.

Tuna is the key resource for most of the Pacific nations and a commitment was made by New Zealand at last year's Pacific Islands Forum to help improve sustainability.

Don Wiseman reports:

At the Pacific leaders' summit last year, New Zealand prime minister John Key put 50 million New Zealand dollars on the table towards the Forum's Roadmap to Fishing Sustainability:

JOHN KEY: "That fifty million will be used in areas like transitioning to a quota management system away from a daily catch and that requires far more sophisticated ministries. It requires equipment. It requires scientific research. We think actually we'll end up spending more than that."

Mr Key was championing New Zealand's quota management system system over the Vessel Day Scheme, or VDS, operated mostly by the eight countries making up the Parties to the Nauru Agreement. The PNA sells days to distant-water nations and has turned this into a highly lucrative source of income from the purse seiners that fish for skipjack in their respective EEZs. But there is no talk now of wanting the VDS to go. James Movick heads the Forum Fisheries Agency. He says the Roadmap is not about shoe-horning everyone into the same system:

JAMES MOVICK: "I don't think that there is a requirement that they move away from it rather than an encouragement that we look to improve upon the management processes that are agreed by the parties to those three subregional fisheries arrangements with a view to maximising the benefits we get from both conservation and economic development."

The head of the PNA, Dr Transform Aqorau, says he welcomes this apparent change of heart.

TRANSFORM AQORAU: "It is nice see that there is a reversal in what people are saying but that is not what was coming out last year. What was coming out was they were saying it was going to be catch, moving away and moving towards catch. I think that has to be explained properly and it's good there is a reversal in how it is being characterised now."

New Zealand's Pacific economic development ambassador Shane Jones said this week he welcomes the financial success the PNA has had and says New Zealand is supportive of that. But he says there are other fisheries' challenges.

SHANE JONES: "Not the least of which is the long line fishery where the level of regulation is woeful and unfortunately the level of high seas fishing threatens to ruin the sustainability of the long line fishery. And a lot of what we are doing this week is actually focussing on those problems."

The prime minister of the Cook Islands, Henry Puna, who is also that country's fisheries minister, is singing the praises of the New Zealand catch-based system. He says it is one of the best in the world.

HENRY PUNA: "We all share a common objective of making sure that fisheries in the Pacific is sustainable well into the future and we believe that the quota management system will deliver that for us."

The week-long fisheries study tour will involve some time in Nelson, including a visit to the Maritime training school there.