Fishing industry body Seafood New Zealand confirms that fishers working in the country's jack mackerel 7 fishery (JMA7) have managed to achieve a whole year of no accidental captures of protected species such as seabirds, dolphins, and other marine mammals.
Jack mackerel is a significant species for New Zealand’s commercial fishing sector, worth over $66 million in export revenue, and area 7 is the largest of the jack mackerel fisheries in the country.
"The people operating in this fishery have developed multiple measures over many years to prevent bycatch," said Lisa Futschek, CEO of Seafood New Zealand. "They have worked together to understand what works and what doesn’t, supported by Seafood New Zealand and other industry groups and by high rates of observer monitoring. It’s taken a lot of effort over many years to get to this point, but it was worth it."
The skippers, vessel managers and companies involved have worked to protect fur seals, seabirds and dolphins, but because the biggest overlap was with dolphins, extra work was focused in that area.
Key tools and processes for helping to reduce dolphin captures included:
Crews’ yearly briefings with Deepwater Environmental Liaison Officers and reviews of capture events
Open dialogue with skippers and vessel managers about risk factors
Use of audio devices that deter dolphins
Reducing the number of night time tows during the ‘higher risk period’
Open communication between skippers, notifying the whole JMA fleet if/when a capture does occur
Avoidance of new moon fishing at shallow depths
The three fishing companies currently involved are Sealord, Independent Fisheries, and Maruha.