How New Zealand's 63 Māui dolphins hold the key to a $263m export market
Friday, 7 August 2020
Michael Lawry is a member of a small and rarefied group. He has seen Māui dolphins in real life.
Not just one, but a pod of five swimming off Manukau Heads on the North Island’s west coast near Auckland.
“You have to be lucky, but they are out there,” the environmental campaigner and musician says.
Not just lucky, very lucky. There are an estimated 63 Māui dolphins over 12 months old living off the North Island’s west coast, along which the tiny dolphin (the world’s smallest) has traditionally ranged.
They are among the world’s rarest marine mammals. So rare the estimates of how many survive cannot be calculated by actual sightings of individuals, but from statistical extrapolations of the few that are seen.
**READ MORE:
* Government crack down on fishing methods to protect New Zealand Hector's and Māui dolphins
* Fewer sightings of Hector's dolphins in Canterbury raises concerns
**
So the number is a guess. There could be more, but there could also be fewer than 63. Critically, marine biologists think there is enough to rebuild the population. As long as avoidable deaths are, well, avoided.
However, whether the entire traditional range of the dolphin is still necessary to include in that recovery is the question.
Because despite all Taranaki commercial fishing boats carrying Ministry for Primary Industries observers, no Māui dolphin has been seen in Taranaki waters for eight years.
There is no doubt they used to be here. They used to wash up dead or were caught in fishing nets. Not many. But, ironically, enough to prove they definitely lived in Taranaki waters.
But none have been seen for years. And none have been caught for the better part of a decade.
Yet from October 1, Taranaki’s commercial fishing fleet will be banned from using set nets in their most lucrative fishing spots to protect the species.
There are similar restrictions being rolled out in the South Island to protect the closely related and vastly more numerous Hectors dolphin.
Taranaki fisherman say the restrictions are absolutely unnecessary. Backers say it will protect the dolphins and, potentially more to the point, the reputation of New Zealand’s seafood export industry.
In a little over six weeks set nets are banned out to 12 nautical miles, or 22km, from New Plymouth’s Waiwhakaiho River north along the west coast. South of the river, to Hāwera, set netting bans have been pushed from 3.7km to 13km.
If they want to keep fishing in those areas, commercial fishing operators will have to rely on long lines instead, a change they insist will drive them to the wall.
“Hook and line fishing isn't going to feed the world,” says Keith Mawson, of New Plymouth’s only fish processor Egmont Seafoods.
Nor is it likely to provide the same quantity of local fish for Mawson’s factory and locally popular retail shop.
Mawson has long been a frustrated voice in the battle for evidence-based conservation methods.
The dolphins just aren’t there, he says, but in the last 17 years he’s seen set-netting restrictions start at 3.7km from shore, extend to 7.4km, then 13km and now to 22km.
Each extension shrinks the amount of ocean the region’s tiny fish fleet can profitably use.
“The result will be the consumer won’t be buying and eating traditional species like blue warehou and rig, we see in the fish and chips shop, or there will be less volume of fish caught,” he says.
The restrictions also rock the confidence of Taranaki’s small fishing fleet. Those in the industry won’t want to stay. Newcomers are unlikely.
“The long term result is that there will be no in-shore fishery in 10 years,” Mawson says matter of factly.
That’s not likely to worry Lawry. He’s got a greater goal in mind than the protection of Taranaki’s boutique fishing industry and views even the new restrictions as “wholly insufficient”.
As New Zealand’s managing director of global environmental activists Sea Shepherd, Lawry is part of an organisation pushing for even greater restrictions to protect the Māui dolphin.
In July Sea Shepherd filed a lawsuit in the US Court of International Trade to put pressure on the US Government to refuse imports of New Zealand seafood until the 63 Māui dolphins were better protected.
That “protection” basically means all net fishing to be banned within the Māui dolphin’s habitat - an area which many see as highly debatable.
The lawsuit is related to the US Marine Mammal Protection Act, which comes into force in 2022.
It requires the US to ban the import of any seafood from countries that fail to prevent bycatch of marine mammals in line with its own standards.
While the legislation does not come into full force for another 16 months, its provisions can be extended to cover species that would otherwise become extinct by then.
As the Māui dolphin is internationally recognised as one of the world’s rarest marine mammals, it’s eminently arguable the law supports Sea Shepherd’s action.
And as you might expect of the radical international marine conservation group, Sea Shepard is playing hardball.
Just $2m of seafood is exported from the Māui dolphin area but the lawsuit would see all of New Zealand’s $263m fish exports to the US banned.
The attention Sea Shepard gives Māui dolphins is directly connected to the work it has been doing to protect the critically endangered vaquita dolphins in the Gulf of California.
With an estimated six to 10 individuals left, the snub-nosed dolphin is all but doomed, its population ravaged by illegal gill netting.
To Sea Shepherd, Māui dolphins must not be allowed to suffer the same fate and the decision by the government to allow fishing anywhere the dolphins might conceivably swim puts economics ahead of conservation.
The ban wouldn’t impact Taranaki fishers as they don’t export to America.
But the political pressure the lawsuit will bring doesn’t help their overall situation, Mawson says.
He calls the group’s actions “eco-terrorism at its worst”.
“It’s not fair to compare the Māui dolphin with the fate of the vaquita porpoise, which come under illegal fishing practices not evident in New Zealand,” he says.
“Why do we need to bow to the USA to look after our own environment when we have proved to be responsible.”
New Plymouth commercial fisherman Rob Ansley says the new restrictions will push him into unproductive fishing grounds and maybe out of the industry.
Last month he caught 12 tonnes of blue warehou over 13 days fishing using a set net.
Under the new restrictions, the higher cost of fishing by different methods means he would need to catch 20 tonnes of snapper on a long line to make the same amount of money.
“At the moment we fish on the edge of the reef at 5.5 nautical miles. Beyond the reef further out is a desert,” he says.
If he continues fishing closer to shore, Ansley will need to target snapper, hapuka or terakihi using long lines.
Commercial fishers can apply for payments to help meet the cost of converting their boats.
When releasing the Māui dolphin threat management plan details in June, Minister of Fisheries Stuart Nash said that money could also be used to move to another area, or exit the industry completely “if that is the most appropriate option”.
The fishing ban may be the most significant part of the plan to save the dolphin but it is not the only thing.
No new permits to carry out seismic surveying in marine mammal protection areas will be granted and the Department of Conservation will be trialling solutions to reduce or eliminate the transfer of the harmful toxoplasmosis parasite into the marine environment.
“Together with the new measures to manage non-fishing risks, these give us our best opportunity to protect these iconic dolphins,” Nash said.
Because despite the tiny number of Māui dolphins, Department of Conservation marine adviser Anton van Helden says the numbers are not a barrier to recovery.
The recovery rate would be very slow but not impossible, he says.
About 20 to 30 dolphins would need to be alive if the population was to recover, once the threat of fishing was removed, with females calving every three years, van Helden said.
It is estimated the species can increase their population by just two per cent a year, or one individual.
From where they are now, they will remain one of the world's rarest dolphins for decades to come.