A Submission to the New Zealand Parliament’s Select Committee on a proposed Amendment to the NZ Fisheries Bill.
Concerns Regarding the Fisheries Amendment Bill, and Recommendations for Sustainable Fisheries Management.
Introduction
The New Zealand Government, through Fisheries Minister Shane Jones, frames the Fisheries Amendment Bill as an ‘efficiency and productivity’ exercise—cutting red tape, giving industry “certainty,” and boosting seafood export value.
In reality, the Bill represents a systematic dismantling of safeguards at precisely the moment they are most needed.
Key concerns include:
- The completely inadequate timescale for consultation on an issue that is vital to New Zealanders and our marine world.
- Concentration of power: The Minister gains greater authority to set catch limits independent of scientific advice, with the ability to rely on industry self-reported data rather than robust independent assessment.
- Erosion of oversight: On-board camera footage—recently proven effective at exposing massive under-reporting of discards—would be exempt from the Official Information Act, with fines up to \$50,000 for sharing footage. The Minister can also allow operators to switch cameras off.
- Reduced accountability: Legal challenges to fisheries decisions would be restricted to a 20-working day window, severely limiting judicial review that has historically held Ministers accountable to the Act’s sustainability purpose.
- Weakened environmental protections: The Bill introduces more flexible, longer-term (up to 5-year) catch limits with minimal review, reduces penalties for exceeding catch limits and taking undersized fish, and effectively incentivizes destructive bottom trawling over cleaner methods.
- Privatization of a public resource: Quota owners would gain ability to stockpile entitlements and delay catch reductions even when stocks are depleted, shifting the burden of ecological degradation onto the public while profits are exported—seafood exports average under \$6/kg, little of which benefits domestic consumers.
This proposed amendment occurs against a backdrop of well documented dramatic ecological marine decline. The Ministry for the Environment’s ‘Our Marine Environment 2025’ report and other official data, note the following negative impacts:
Overfishing: 12% of assessed fish stocks (19 of 152) are over-fished or depleted, with 5 stocks collapsed. Bycatch continues to kill protected species—15 Hector’s dolphins in 2023/24 alone, thousands of seabirds annually, and tonnes of protected coral.
Ocean warming: Sea-surface temperatures around New Zealand have risen 0.16–0.34°C per decade since 1982, warming faster than the global average. Marine heatwaves are becoming more frequent, intense and longer-lasting, with 2022 setting records causing both marine species loss and shifting of migratory patterns
Acidification: Ocean acidity has increased ~30% since 1750, with measurable increases off Otago. This threatens shell-forming species and disrupts food webs negatively impacting fish nutrition.
Sea level rise: Accelerating coastal inundation and erosion, compounded by vertical land movement in some areas, resulting in the elimination or reduction of many fish breeding grounds.
Invasive species and habitat destruction: 428 non-native marine species have been identified in NZ waters, with outbreaks like Caulerpa algae spreading across 1,500+ hectares. Bottom trawling continues to bulldoze seafloor habitats.
Extinction risk: More than half of indigenous marine invertebrate species are threatened or at risk.
Bottom Trawling: The long-term impacts of bottom trawling in New Zealand and the Southern Pacific represent a systematic and catastrophic degradation of irreplaceable deep-sea ecosystems. The combination of extreme physical destruction, centuries long destruction of marine habitats and in many cases irretrievable loss, and climate feedback effects is resulting in permanent biodiversity loss. Scientific evidence confirms that protecting climate refugia and high-vulnerability habitats—particularly seamounts—is essential to prevent ecosystem collapse and maintain long-term fisheries productivity, yet current management trends are moving in the opposite direction.
This Bill treats fisheries primarily as an export industry to be deregulated, while official reports confirm the marine environment is under compounding pressures from climate change, overfishing, habitat destruction and pollution. The timing is particularly damaging given that camera data revealed a 1,000%+ increase in reported snapper discards and 950% increase in kingfish discards once monitoring began—proof that the industry cannot be relied upon to self-regulate.
The Bill weakens transparency, scientific oversight, and public participation at the exact moment when marine ecosystems require stronger precautionary management and climate-resilient planning. Thus these ‘reforms’ do not represent “modernization”—they represent a privatization agenda that locks in irreversible ecological damage for short-term commercial gain.
Key Concerns and Proposed Alternatives
1. Tiered Information Framework for Setting Catch Limits (Low-Information Stocks)
The Bill proposes a tiered framework for setting Total Allowable Catch (TAC), where for low-information stocks, the TAC only needs to be ‘not inconsistent’ with the objective of managing the stock at or above Maximum Sustainable Yield. This approach risks over-fishing and depletion of vulnerable or data-poor fish stocks, as management decisions are unable to be based on robust scientific evidence.
This could lead to the plundering of unknown stocks, with potentially irreversible ecological consequences.
Recommendation: The Precautionary Principle be applied to all data-poor stocks. Instead of allowing higher catch limits, management should default to significantly lower, more conservative catch limits until robust scientific data is available to demonstrate sustainability. Any increases in catch limits should only occur when supported by comprehensive and peer-reviewed scientific assessments.
2. Multi-Year Catch Decisions
The Bill allows the Minister to set TACs for up to five consecutive fishing years . While the stated purposes is to provide certainty for the industry, this provision introduces reduced flexibility to respond to rapid environmental changes, climate impacts, or unforeseen declines in fish populations. Such extended decision cycles could delay necessary adjustments to protect struggling stocks, potentially leading to collapses that are difficult to reverse.
Recommendation: We recommend implementing Adaptive Management with Frequent Reviews. Catch limits, especially for stocks vulnerable to environmental shifts or those showing signs of stress, should be reviewed annually or more frequently. Decision-making processes must incorporate real-time data and ecosystem indicators to ensure timely and effective responses to changing marine conditions.
3. Relaxed Rules on Discards and Returns
The Bill creates new circumstances under which commercial fishers are permitted to return or abandon fish or other aquatic animals . This relaxation of rules risks increasing the mortality of non-target species (by-catch) and juvenile fish, which are often discarded. This practice not only wastes marine resources but also masks the true impact of fishing on marine ecosystems and hinders accurate stock assessments, making effective management impossible [3].
Recommendation: We call for Mandatory By-catch Reduction and Full Accountability. The government should mandate the widespread use of best- practice by-catch mitigation technologies (e.g., seabird scaring devices, turtle excluder devices, selective fishing gear). In addition, all caught fish, regardless of size or species, must be landed and fully accounted for to ensure accurate data collection, minimize waste, and provide a true picture of fishing impacts [.
4. Confidentiality of Camera Footage
The Bill proposes new provisions that explicitly exclude on-board camera recordings from the Official Information Act 1982 and impose significant penalties for unauthorized release. There appears to be no valid reason for this change, other than to decrease public scrutiny of illegal activities.
This measure represents a substantial reduction in transparency and public accountability of commercial fishing operations. It prevents independent verification of fishing practices, by-catch events, and compliance with regulations, increasing distrust among the public and environmental stakeholders at a time when all parties need to be working more collaboratively.
Recommendation: We urge the Committee to ensure Full Transparency and Public Access to on-board camera footage. While noting some issues around commercial sensitivity, this footage should be accessible under the Official Information Act, with redactions only occurring where absolutely necessary. Public oversight is crucial for building trust in the monitoring system and ensuring that fishing practices align with sustainability goals.
5. Revised Judicial Review Window
The Bill introduces a significantly shortened timeframe for challenging fisheries management decisions, requiring any legal challenge to be made within 20 working days of the decision being notified. This extremely short window severely weakens legal safeguards for environmental protection and public participation, making it nearly impossible for environmental organizations and the public to mount effective legal challenges against potentially unsustainable decisions.
Recommendation: We advocate for reasonable and appropriate Judicial Review timeframes. It is essential to maintain adequate timeframes for judicial review, allowing sufficient time for legal preparation and ensuring that decisions can be properly scrutinized fortheir environmental impact and adherence to legal and scientific requirements.
6. Risks and Opportunities Related to Bottom Trawling
Bottom trawling is widely scientifically recognized for its devastating environmental impacts, including habitat destruction, by-catch, and disruption of marine ecosystems.
The Fisheries Amendment Bill, in not explicitly addressing bottom trawling with the proposed new regulations, creates an environment where bottom trawling and its devastating impacts on the marine environment and fish stocks, will continue and could even incentivize this incredibly destructive practice through the relaxation of camera footage processes and by-catch rules.
New Zealand is:
- The only country in the South Pacific that still allows bottom trawling on seamounts
- The only country whose vessels have bottom trawled in the South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organisation (SPRFMO) regulatory area since 2019.
- One of only seven countries still conducting bottom trawling in international waters
Recommendation: We urge the Committee to incorporate specific measures to address bottom trawling. These should include:
- Ban all bottom trawling by New Zealand fishing companies in the medium and long term.
- In the short term ban Bottom Trawling on Seamounts and Vulnerable Marine Ecosystems (VMEs): Explicitly prohibit bottom-contact gear on seamounts and other identified VMEs to protect unique and fragile deep-sea habitats
- Provide regulatory or financial incentives for fishers to transition to long-lining, potting, or other low-impact methods that minimize seabed disturbance and by-catch.
- Mandatory Habitat Impact Assessments: Require comprehensive environmental impact assessments (EIAs) specifically for bottom trawling activities before any multi-year catch limits are set or renewed.
- Public Transparency of Trawl Impacts: Ensure public access to camera footage of trawling operations to maintain transparency and accountability.
- Spatial Closures for Recovery: Utilize management procedures to establish and enforce no-trawl zones in areas identified as critical habitats or those requiring ecological recovery.
7. Impact of Climate Change on Fisheries Management
Concern: New Zealand’s marine environment is rapidly experiencing significant impacts from climate change, including rising sea temperatures, marine heatwaves, and shifting fish distributions.
The current Bill, with its emphasis on multi- year catch decisions and a tiered information framework that can be permissive for data-poor stocks, is ill-equipped to respond to the rapid and unpredictable changes driven by climate change. This lack of adaptive capacity risks exacerbating the vulnerability of fish stocks and marine ecosystems].
Recommendation: The Fisheries Amendment Bill must explicitly integrate climate change considerations into its core framework. This includes:
• Climate-Adaptive Catch Limits: Mandate that all catch limit decisions (TAC/TACC) explicitly account for climate change projections, marine heatwave data, and observed shifts in fish populations.
• Shorten Review Cycles for Vulnerable Stocks: Require annual or more frequent reviews for stocks identified as climate-vulnerable or those showing significant range shifts, moving away from rigid multi-year decisions.
• Protect Climate Refugia: Prohibit destructive fishing methods, such as bottom trawling, in areas that serve as thermal refuges or critical habitats for species displaced by warming waters.
• Dynamic Management Areas: Develop mechanisms to adjust management boundaries quickly as fish stocks shift their geographic ranges, ensuring that newly arrived or displaced stocks are not over-exploited due to outdated management zones.
Conclusion
The New Zealand Fisheries Amendment Bill, in its current form, contains provisions that threaten the short, medium and long-term health and sustainability of New Zealand’s marine environment.
We believe that a truly sustainable and prosperous seafood sector depends on robust environmental protection, scientific integrity, and public trust.
We respectfully request the Committee to give due consideration to these concerns and recommendations.
New Antarctica 