NZ under fire for move to weaken deep-sea coral protections
Monday, 16 February 2026
New Zealand is facing international and domestic backlash over a government proposal that would allow its trawlers to destroy more deep-sea corals on the high seas without consequence.
The proposal, submitted to the South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organisation (SPRFMO) would more than double the bycatch thresholds for vulnerable species, including gorgonian corals.
The inter-government body in charge of regulating high-seas fishing in the South Pacific meets in Panama next month.
“It’s basically weakening the rules, meaning that a lot of the bycatch that the New Zealand fleet is having would actually be under the radar,” said Kari Thomas, of Deep Sea Conservation Coalition, an umbrella group of NGOs.
Read more
Anger as MPI shares confidential review with fishing industry
Shane Jones overhauls fisheries management, hints at further deregulation
She pointed to the Tasman Viking, a Westfleet Fishing vessel, which triggered closures in 2020 and 2024 after breaching current 15kg limits for gorgonian coral.
In 2023, the skipper and first mate were fined nearly $70,000 for failing to weigh a quantity of bamboo coral brought on board in the 2020 incident.
A year later the vessel was fishing in the Lord Howe Rise between New Zealand and Australia when it caught coral weighing 37kg, triggering an immediate suspension of all fishing in the area until 2026.
At the time Fisheries Minister Shane Jones called the suspension “severe” and called for a review of international coral limits, taking his concerns to the Ministry for Primary Industries and the Ministry for Foreign Affairs and Trade.
In the previous year’s election campaign, Jones had received political donations worth $7000 from two companies connected to the owner of the fishing vessel at the centre of the coral haul.
Under the proposed 35kg limit, both incidents would have remained under the radar, allowing trawling to continue in sensitive areas.
“Even the 2024 incident that went through a really biodiverse coral area … would not trigger a closure under what New Zealand is proposing,” Thomas said.
Thomas emphasised the scale of the damage hidden beneath the giant commercial nets. “The amount of coral that comes up in the net is just a tiny fraction of what’s destroyed on the seabed.”
But Jones told The Post linking political donations and coral extraction was “akin to optical illusion”. He labelled the allegations “pathetic”.
SPRFMO covered 56 million km, he said, while the fishing area is less than 1%. The drive to close 70% of this area was designed to “terminate” commercial fisheries.
“New Zealand fishing companies are entitled to operate in the Pacific and ought not be hounded out by green zealotry.”
Some gorgonian corals affected are estimated to be hundreds of years old, forming slow-growing sea fans critical for sheltering and nurturing deep-sea ecosystems.
They thrive at depths where sunlight barely penetrates. But rising ocean temperatures and acidification, consequences of climate change, pose significant risks to the ancient marine organisms, as well as trawling and pollution.
DSCC, alongside Live Ocean, has sent a letter to Prime Minister Christopher Luxon calling for the immediate withdrawal of the proposal, warning it would “cost New Zealand its credibility in the South Pacific” and “put the government on the wrong side of history.”
The issue came up in Parliament on Tuesday. Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson pressed Luxon on why New Zealand continues bottom trawling while nearly every other South Pacific nation has stopped.
Luxon repeatedly denied the Government was weakening protections and avoided committing to withdrawing the proposal, insisting only that “this is a Government that balances both economic and environmental considerations for all sectors”.
Thomas said this undermined New Zealand’s international commitments, including the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and the High Seas Treaty, and put it out of step with public opinion: a late 2025 survey found 78% of New Zealanders support banning bottom trawling on the South Pacific high seas.
Charlotte Denny, MPI’s sustainable trade and environment divisional manager, said the proposal was grounded in science and consistent with international fisheries rules.
She said the proposal aligned with Article 2 of the SPRFMO Convention, which includes the objective of ensuring the long-term sustainable use of fishery resources.
“SPRFMO generally has some of the tightest restrictions globally for bottom trawling in comparison with other regional fisheries management organisations.”