Fishermens stories

Auckland fisherman, Nathan Adams

Nathan Adams' decision to get into set-netting wasn't straightforward. Like many other New Zealanders who don't have experience with the fishing method, he thought set-netting was unsustainable.

"When I was a longliner there was a set-netter in the Hauraki Gulf who used to say to us ‘hey I don't catch snapper. I catch rig and school shark,' and we used to laugh at him and say ‘if you stick a net in the water it catches everything.'"

But, always curious about different techniques, Nathan went out fishing with the set-netter to see what it was really like. He soon learnt that set-netters can be very selective about the species of fish they target by adjusting things like the style and size of the mesh, net height and the time and place they fish."

He also discovered there was a potential living to be made from set-netting off Muriwai beach.

He and his wife Lisa pulled together what money they had and, with a little help from their bank manager, bought a section of land overlooking the beach and started building a house.

One of their first investments for the set-netting business was a better boat which they christened the Western Break. This allowed them to more easily negotiate Muriwai's celebrated surf and increased the number of days Nathan could go out fishing.

The bans begin

In 2001, then Fisheries Minister Pete Hodgson dropped what to Nathan and Lisa was a bombshell: a ban of set-netting on the west coast of the North Island, from Northland to Taranaki, out to four nautical miles. Mr Hodgson said the ban would help protect the endangered North Island Hector's dolphin (now identified as a subspecies called Maui's dolphins).

Nathan had seen Maui's dolphins while fishing, but in 15 years set-netting at Muriwai he had never caught one. When you look at the wider statistics that's not surprising. There have been 17 notified Maui's dolphin deaths since records began in 1983, and none have been proven to be from commercial set-nets.

"We lost a big percentage of our turnover with that ban and I didn't think we could survive it. I had to go out and fish on the east coast which was a lot more competitive. To be perfectly honest we went into overdraft then and still haven't got out of it."

The Western Break was excellent for working close into shore, but once it went out past four nautical miles, the combination of wind and swell made fishing dangerous unless the weather was perfect.

But it wasn't all bad news, he discovered a rig fishery at just beyond the four nautical mile mark.  Once he started fishing there, he didn't even see a dolphin, let alone catch one.

"In all these years, I've not seen one beyond four nautical miles. I've spent thousands of hours out there as a recreational fisher as well as a commercial fisher...I'm good at spotting them and identifying them so if they were there, I'd see them."

The only thing standing in the way of getting full use out of Muriwai's rig fishery was the weather. He and his wife decided to invest in a bigger boat, so he borrowed money against the house and bought a fixer-upper from Australia. It was a cray boat so he had to make some alterations to it.

When word started to filter through of another set-net ban, Nathan and Lisa decided to stop putting more money into the new boat until they knew for sure.

In 2008, set-netters fears came were realized. Then Fisheries Minister Jim Anderton announced an extension of set-net bans around about two thirds of New Zealand's coast line out to seven nautical miles. This extension of the bans was announced despite there being no recorded Hector's or Maui's dolphin deaths attributed to set nets since the first ban.

The industry asked the High Court to review the Minister's decisions in the areas where fishers were hardest hit and dolphin capture was extremely unlikely. The court allowed fishers in those areas to continue working until it reached its decision.

Where are we now?

This year the Court referred two of those areas back to the current Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture for consideration. He will decide whether to:

• - Extend the set-net ban on the west coast of the North Island from four to seven nautical miles.
• - Close an area of the South Island's east coast to butterfishing.

Regardless of what the Minister decides, the politics of dolphin conservation have already cost Nathan and Lisa Adams dearly.

"I've ended up with a bigger mortgage on my fishing boat than what I've got on my house. So we've lost a lot of money on this, a lot of money."