Is it time to ban commercial whitebaiting?

Thursday, 8 December 2016

Whitebait are the juvenile fish of a number of species that migrate upstream to live out their lives before spawning.

OPINION: Around the country, whitebaiters have shut up their stands, cleaned their nets, and trudged back to work, many disappointed at their catch for the year. But is anyone still left wondering why such a poor season was recorded for these species? Most of these species are listed by the Department of Conservation as threatened or at risk and in decline.

Recently an article expressed disappointment in the less than bountiful catch in Southland. But you can't fish more and more of a species that's disappearing, in the full knowledge that numbers are declining. In short, don't pretend to be surprised when you don't catch as many as the year before.

A whitebaiter checking his net on the banks of the Waihopai River.

Whitebait – a number of species of juvenile fish that migrate upstream to live out their lives before spawning – are a New Zealand icon. There is little known about the spawning habits of most of these fish. After being washed out to sea and spending a few months growing from very tiny fish into slightly less tiny fish, very few of them make it through. If the baby whitebait do make it back to freshwater, they will likely succumb to fishing pressure.

Every year whitebait run gauntlets of whitebaiters perched at the streambanks waiting to catch as many as is possible. This is a tradition that New Zealanders have enjoyed for generations, a tradition that may be coming to an end.

* Whitebait season disappoints so far

* When whitebait fever strikes

* Whitebait feast for fishermen**

However, there is a group of these whitebaiters that are not fishing for tradition, or for food, nor even just as an excuse to spend a day at the river: commercial whitebaiters.

The Ministry of Conservation allows unscrupulous individuals to take as much as they can for sale: no quota, no bag limits. The only limits imposed on taking the juveniles of these threatened species are on the time of year you can fish: when whitebait are making their way from the sea to freshwater; and the time of day: you are allowed to fish during daylight hours when they swim upstream, not overnight when they mostly don't.

The West Coast fishery runs for a shorter time frame than that of the rest of the country. It has stricter rules and more stringent limits. Aren't these enough? What will more limits mean for the fishing community on the West Coast, a community for whom whitebaiting runs in the blood of many? Absolutely nothing. Community is not built on business activities, it is built on people. Community is not a few individuals grabbing all they can and selling it to the highest bidder.

Some commentators say that the science is lacking, we don't know the state of the fishery so we shouldn't impose limits or regulations, we don't have data on this particular river so don't tread on my toes etcetera, etcetera, ad nauseam.

The role of ecology and science is to find general rules by which the world works. From these general rules we can make predictions. For whitebait in particular: we dam their streams, we install culverts, and we destroy spawning and feeding grounds. In short, we give them no place to live. This kills the adults, and for this there is data. We know these adults are declining, and if this decline continues they will all be extinct by 2050. A decline in adults means a decline in babies.

The limits to their existence can be put into estimated numbers. 2500 eggs per female; 11 per cent hatch rate; an immense amount of death at sea (there is no data for whitebait but other fish have death rates greater than 98 per cent); about 20-50 per cent survival to spawning; and then, on top of all this, more than 20 per cent of fish that try to swim upstream are likely to be caught.

The loss of native species is always a controversial issue. But is it the lack of the cuddly factor that makes whitebait less worthy of our attention? The kereru, for example, faces the same pressures as whitebait. They are declining due to the loss of continuous forest cover in New Zealand and predation by introduced species, not by direct human predation.

However, it would not follow then that because hunting is not a pressure, and we could control it, we should therefore hunt and sell the meat of these birds. From this perspective we can see that the only outcome would be detrimental to the survival of these birds. As there is a decline, any further pressures are going to exacerbate the problem.

Like the kereru, the huia was once threatened by loss of forest and hunting pressure. Without a place to live, there was clearly a major threat to their continued existence. However it was not habitat loss that got them. It was the tradition and industry of hunting. It was the gun, the hunger of one man for the money from the pelts and beaks of these birds that ended their existence. Additional pressures on already stressed populations are a death sentence.

We have the knowledge, ability, and foresight to avoid this fate for whitebait, which is also a New Zealand icon. By stopping the continued commercial capture of these species we can afford ourselves time to fix the more politically complex issues that threaten their habitat and spawning requirements.

Please help us help these fish. At Freshwater for Life we are petitioning the government to ban the commercial sale of whitebait. Please sign, and show your support by not buying commercially harvested endangered species. If you are sick of the small catches, let Maggie Barry know that New Zealand's whitebaiters value their fishery and want it to survive.

It's not for profit, it's for us.

Pierce McNie has a Masters of Science in Ecology which focused on freshwater ecology and currently works doing data analysis and ecological fieldwork. Kyleisha Foote has a Masters of Environmental Management and is a research assistant at Massey University in environmental science, relating to freshwater.