Threatened eels still being harvested for food, renewing call for commercial fishing ban

Tuesday, 3 May 2022

Longfin eels are only found in New Zealand, and some experts say we're not doing enough to protect them (video first published July 2019).

Nearly 10 years ago, a 150-metre tuna tapestry travelled all the way to the Beehive, accompanied by a thousands-strong petition calling for an end to commercial longfin eel fishing.

The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment released a report that same year, which warned the practice needed to stop, or the species could face extinction.

But up to 137 tonnes of native eels – many of them longfins – are still caught and shipped overseas each year for food, even as ongoing environmental degradation and the impacts of climate change continue to build.

Longfin eels – or tuna – are classified as at risk and declining, although the Department of Conservation is currently reviewing threat levels for freshwater fish.

Liam McMahon has started a petition and renewed calls for commercial longfin eel fishing to be banned.

* Eel bashed with hammer 'tame' from hand-feeding

* The dams, the science, and the tiny eel industry clinging to life

Long-finned eels are considered an at-risk species and their numbers are declining. (File photo)

While the cause had lost momentum in recent years, several keen environmentalists have recently reignited the fight.

Wellingtonian Liam McMahon started a petition several weeks ago through Greenpeace’s community platform, calling for the Ministry of Fisheries to put an urgent moratorium on commercial fishing of longfin eels.

It was one of two launched in recent months. Eel Activists Wairarapa has also made a submission to Parliament, petitioning for the eels to be granted absolute protection.

McMahon lives on the doorstep of Ōtari-Wilton's Bush, where he has fallen in love with about 30 eels in his local stream – descendants of eels released by wildlife sanctuary Zealandia in 2020.

“Until recently I wasn’t aware they were still being commercially harvested, let alone exported live.

“I knew they were in trouble – but they’re being plundered.”

While the eel-fishing industry had been dialled back in recent years, McMahon believed it needed an outright ban.

“When you spend time with them, interact with them – they are intelligent, they have personalities.

“They’re totally unique. They should be protected, just like the kiwi, kea, and kererū.”

There was a cognitive dissonance around the species, he said.

“It’s not cuddly and fluffy like a kiwi or a duckling, it’s this slimy, snake-like thing.”

But they were “miracles of nature”, he said, capable of living to 100 years old and growing to 40 kilograms.

While they spent most of their lives in New Zealand’s rivers and streams, all longfin eels were born in a deep-sea trench near Tonga – as tiny, see-through, leaf-shaped fish.

They found their way to Aotearoa, only making the 400-kilometre journey back to their birthplace at the very end of their life.

While others had tried and failed to ban the practice, McMahon said he hoped to be successful this time.

“It would be a real blot on our country, if in 2022 a native species was hunted to extinction.”

Fisheries NZ director of fisheries management Emma Taylor said they had taken several actions in recent years to allow for customary, recreational, and commercial use of longfin eels – while helping populations increase.

Those included catch and size limits, closing fishing areas, and introducing mechanisms in commercial fisheries to avoid catching undersize eels.

The total allowable catch (TAC) for longfins is currently 254.95 tonnes per year, with commercial catch making up 137 tonnes.

Recreational fishers can take six per person, per day.

In 2018, the then-minister agreed to reduce the TAC for North Island longfin eels by an average of 16% across all quota management areas. This cut commercial catch limits by 34%.

Taylor said combined with reductions made in 2008, this meant commercial catch limits for longfin eels in the North Island had been reduced by 72% since they were added to the quota management system in 2004.

The South Island was reviewed in 2016, and four of its six longfin eel stocks had commercial catch limits of one tonne set as a result.

Longfin eels at Christchurch’s Travis Wetlands. (File photo)

“This has effectively closed commercial fishing in these areas.”

In the last two, in Westland and Southland, the abundance of longfins was considered high enough to support continued commercial harvest, she said.

But pressures on the threatened natives were mounting.

Forest & Bird’s freshwater advocate, Tom Kay, said he was unsure why the issue had slipped by the wayside, but it would be “wise” for the Government to revisit the commissioner’s earlier recommendation.

“Obviously that hasn’t happened, and the state of our freshwater hasn’t gotten any better since then.”

While some action had been taken, Kay said it was a “half-hearted” response to “huge problems”.

“To adjust things around the edges is not good enough… We know that 76% of native freshwater fish are at risk of extinction. It kind of misses the point.”

Widespread action was needed to address all threats the species faced, Kay said.

They had to contend with their wetland homes disappearing, nutrient pollution in rivers, low flows from water takes, and dams restricting their movement – while the impact of climate change and warming seas on their breeding ground was still unknown.

“We’re basically just continuing to add pressures and challenges at every stage of their life.

“To add commercial fishing to that … the odds are just stacked against them.”