Sealord fined $24,000 and ordered to forfeit vessel for trawling in protected zone

Friday, 24 July 2020

Sealord has been ordered to forfeit its fishing vessel the Ocean Dawn, although they will be able to apply for a hearing to regather it.

Sealord has been fined $24,000 and ordered to forfeit a US$16 million vessel for an illegal deep-sea trawl in a protected zone off the east coast of the South Island.

Representatives for Sealord Group Limited and two of its employees, Bolen Terrie Goomes and Adrian Thomas Pope, were in the Nelson District Court on Friday on a representative charge of using a trawl net in the lower buffer zone of a Benthic Protection Area (BPA).

Goomes (the skipper of the vessel) and Pope (the first mate) were unable to attend in person, as they were at sea at the time of the appearance.

The incident in question occurred over the course of two days from of 26-28 October 2018, when the Sealord vessel Ocean Dawn had been fishing on the Mid-Chatham Rise – about 200 nautical miles east of Christchurch.

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An aerial view of Port Nelson with the Sealord site centre. Judge Ruth said while he accepted there had been no intentional breach of the protected zone, “common-sense” solutions could have prevented the breach happening.

The Ocean Dawn had left Port Nelson in September to fish for hoki by way of bottom trawling. However, on five occasions between October 26 and 28 the vessel breached the Mid-Chatham Rise BPA and conducted bottom trawling operations which strayed in to the protected zone.

The Mid-Chatham Rise is one of 17 BPAs within New Zealand’s Exclusive Economic Zone, set up in 2007 to protect vulnerable benthic (sea floor) biodiversity.

The Ocean Dawn had been trawling for hoki at the time of the breach.

Bottom trawling can damage or remove epifauna like corals and sponges, which can have a flow-on effect as the epifauna provides a habitat for other species.

Epifauna such as corals and sponges are considered to be highly vulnerable to damage caused by bottom fishing, with regeneration time for deep-sea invertebrates predicted to take decades to centuries to recover.

While midwater trawling is allowed 100m or above the seabed under strict conditions, bottom trawling in BPAs is illegal.

On those five occasions, the trawl resulted in a fish catch of about 40,000kg and a sponge catch of 1300kg.

On the evening of October 28, when Goomes became aware the boat was trawling in a BPA he retrieved the net and advised Sealord of the situation. The offending was detected by MPI on October 29, and Sealord self-reported the incident on the same day.

The fish catch was seized by MPI and sold for a sum of $112,294.

In their explanation of the offending, both Goomes and Pope said they had been aware of the BPA, but had mistaken the boundaries from the vessel’s SeaPlot navigation system for track lines.

While Goomes and Pope had earlier pleaded guilty, defence lawyer Kim Proctor-Weston argued for a discharge without conviction for Sealord, and submitted that an application for non-forfeiture of the vessel and catch sales be made.

Proctor-Weston said there had been no intent on behalf of either Sealord or the fishermen to breach the BPA, and that considerable effort had been made to prevent such a situation from happening.

She said the breach had amounted to an “honest mistake” and that steps had been taken by Sealord as far as possible to be avoided.

MPI prosecuting lawyer Julie Wotton said while there were mitigating factors that led to the offending, none of them were unforeseeable or could be considered special reasons.

She said the damage to the sponges was also an aggravating feature, with scientific evidence suggesting that up to 10 times more than were trawled up could have been damaged.

Judge David Ruth said he accepted the breach had been completely unintentional, and that Sealord had put significant measures in place following the incident to prevent it recurring.

However, he agreed with the prosecution’s argument that there were low-tech, common-sense measures that could have been put in place to prevent the mistake.

He made an order for the forfeiture of the vessel and the money made from the catch.

Judge Ruth also fined Sealord $24,000 plus court costs for the breach, with Goomes and Pope also fined $7500 and $5000 respectively.

Sealord chief operating officer Doug Paulin said an internal investigation was done to understand how the mistake occurred.

“At Sealord we pride ourselves on doing the right thing, and we deeply regret that this incident happened.

“It is extremely important to us that we do all we can to ensure we learn from, and do not repeat, this mistake.”

Paulin said since the incident Sealord had adopted new geo-fencing technology (alarms) on board the vessel, which had not been available at the time of the breach.

He said while Sealord was disappointed with the outcome, they respected the Court’s decision.

“The Court referred to Sealord as a ‘giant in the industry in which it operates’, and with that comes an expectation that we will be held to the highest possible standards.”

MPI director of compliance Gary Orr said it was important that companies sending skippers to sea were given adequate training and sufficient oversight well after the vessels left the port.

“They need to provide transparent and up to date information and systems on board their vessels so that incidents like this do not happen.”

Sealord will be applying to the court to have the vessel returned, but during the meantime have been permitted to use it in the normal course of their fishing operations.

Greenpeace NZ has welcomed the decision.

'It's good to see the fishing industry held to account in this instance, but bottom trawling is an incredibly damaging fishing technique that largely happens out of sight and out of mind,” said Greenpeace NZ oceans campaigner Jessica Desmond.

“We can't rely on the occasional prosecution to stop the carnage.

“Areas which have been trawled in the past show no signs of recovery even decades later, this is why we can’t rely on prosecutions after the fact,” she said. “All bottom trawling on vulnerable marine ecosystems like the seamounts in the Chatham Rise, must be banned.”