Fisheries Minister rejects attempt to hide dead dolphins and penguins from public

Thursday, 18 January 2018

Forest and Bird say the Commercial Fishing Industry want to stop public access to videos and images of fish being discarded and seabirds being caught by fishing boats because they say it could be bad for NZ's reputation.

Fisheries Minister Stuart Nash has rejected industry calls to keep images of fisheries bycatch – including dead penguins and dolphins caught in fishing nets – secret.

Images and recordings are used to monitor bycatch of dolphins, seabirds, sea lions and penguins – which are threatened by fisheries – as well as illegal fish dumping

Representatives from the fishing industry wrote to the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) in July 2017 to ask that that material be exempt from the Official Information Act (OIA).

A yellow-eyed penguin allegedly caught as fisheries bycatch in an image released under the Official Information Act.

The letter from the Deepwater Group, Fisheries Inshore New Zealand, the Paua Industry Council, Seafood New Zealand and the New Zealand Rock Lobster Industry Council, was itself released to Forest and Bird under the OIA.

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A sea lion allegedly caught in a trawl net as bycatch, shown in an image released under the Official Information Act.

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Fisheries Minister Stuart Nash has rejected an attempt to hide images of dead dolphins and penguins from the public.

* Digital monitoring must be delayed: fishing industry**

It said the information from monitoring – which would include the whole fishing industry – could be used by individuals and organisations that had campaigned against commercial fishing.

It would 'serve as ammunition for their anti-fishing agendas', the letter stated.

The group also said it was concerned the monitoring material could breach privacy and commercial sensitivity.

A spokesperson for Nash said he 'has not seen a compelling case to change the Fisheries Act around the application of the Official Information Act'.

'He has been advised by MPI that there are already measures in place to protect the privacy of individuals and commercially sensitive information, and that every OIA request is assessed on a case-by-case basis.

'Mr Nash says that on becoming minister he told fishing company representatives that both the industry and the government have a social, moral and economic obligation to use innovative technology to make the best possible management decisions about our fisheries resource.'

The letter and its objective had earlier been heavily criticised by Forest and Bird.

Chief executive Kevin Hague said in a statement: 'In plain English, what they are saying is catching endangered penguins, dumping entire hauls of fish overboard and killing Hectors dolphins looks really bad on TV.

'Well, the solution is to stop doing it, not to hide the evidence. It's hard to think of a more credibility-damaging activity than trying to change the law to so the rest of us can't see what's really happening out there.'

Hague and Forest and Bird have welcomed Nash's reaction to the fishing industry proposal.

The group was 'pleased to see the Fisheries Minister draw a line in the sand over industry transparency', he said.

Seafood NZ said in a statement it hoped the protections under the OIA were enough to address its 'serious concerns around privacy, (intellectual property), commercial sensitivity, and the potential misuse of data and video taken out of context'.

'That needs to be clarified. The key thing is there is no cover up here and there never has been. Putting cameras on vessels which the regulator has 24/7 access to is the opposite of a cover up.'