Seafood Industry Policy on Marine Reserves

Press Release by NZ Seafood Industry Council, 16 August 2004

The health and wellbeing of fisheries depends upon good management of all marine resources. The seafood industry therefore supports the need for protection of marine biodiversity. However, this can be achieved through many different mechanisms.

Protecting marine biodiversity
Industry demands the best tools be used for the job. It considers marine reserves just one of the many regulatory and voluntary tools available to protect marine biodiversity; however they are not always the most appropriate.

We first need to be clear about what we are trying to achieve - what are we trying to protect and what threats do we need to control? Only then can we ask whether it is appropriate to establish a marine reserve.

For example, if the biodiversity of a unique benthic community was shown to be at risk from the effects of bottom trawling, then the Fisheries Act would be an appropriate management mechanism. If the biodiversity of a harbour was at risk from urban and agricultural runoff, then the Resource Management Act would be the appropriate mechanism. If a unique marine ecosystem was at risk from a range of threats, then a marine reserve may be an appropriate mechanism.

The industry believes the Marine Reserves Act should provide 'high level' protection of marine biodiversity - i.e. marine reserves should be the preferred mechanism only where full protection from all sources of controllable risk is required and protection cannot be provided by other, more targeted mechanisms. It is therefore appropriate that all marine reserves should be strictly 'no take'.

Economic and social costs are inevitable from a marine reserve because it completely closes off sustainable extractive use by commercial, customary and recreational fishing interests. We need to understand the benefits of protecting biodiversity in a particular area in relation to the costs - and be satisfied that a marine reserve is the best way to achieve those benefits.

Marine reserves are NOT fisheries management tools
Arguments about the beneficial effects of marine reserves on fisheries are imported from overseas, where many fisheries are essentially unmanaged and fishing practices are often unsustainable. These arguments do not apply in New Zealand where fisheries are managed sustainably under the Quota Management System. New Zealand's fisheries management system requires catch limits to be set to ensure that each fish stock remains at or above the level at which the stock can replenish itself.

Introducing extensive closed areas into a system which is already sustainably managed will simply displace effort into other areas and result in sustainability risks and increased conflicts between users.