When did retirement become a dirty word?
New Zealand is internationally recognised as having one of the world’s best managed fisheries. That is according to John Connelly, the United States National Fisheries Institute president, who is a keynote speaker at today’s Seafood NZ conference, to be opened at Te Papa by Prime Minister John Key.
New Zealand’s performance is underpinned by its Quota Management System (QMS), now in its 30th year. That has seen a shift from overfishing, with no limits on catches, to healthy fish stocks where 97 per cent of our annual catch is above sustainable limits set by fisheries scientists within the Ministry for Primary Industries.
Auckland University academics led by Dr Glenn Simmons and Professor Nigel Haworth, who is also Labour Party president, believe otherwise.
They argued (August 29) that the QMS has failed.
This can be seen as part of a campaign that launched in May with a catch reconstruction report that Simmons and Haworth oversaw. It alleged the actual New Zealand catch over 61 years was 2.7 times that reported to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation.
That report is a highly politicised document which was circulating among political, environmental and recreational lobby groups before its release. It relies heavily on anonymous interviews under what its authors term a ‘‘critical realist’’ approach and some MPI compliance investigations into specific but limited issues.
Its opaque findings and the arbitrary attributions of estimates to species and sectors for the period have been disputed by international scientists, MPI and Niwa.
Some of its claims are laughable, such as an alleged recreational catch of 6785 tonnes of deepwater orange roughy.
Environmentalists used the report as a club to assail the seafood industry, including attempting to bully McDonald’s into boycotting New Zealand hoki in what was tantamount to an act of economic sabotage.
There are omissions in the Simmons et al prescription that are telling. It seems anything that does not fit the weknow-best and you-are-not-to-be-trusted agenda is discarded.
That means the fact New Zealand seafood is in high demand in international markets and that exports are at a record high is ignored. In the year to June, exports were $1.78 billion, a rise of 15 per cent on the previous year. That is more than the much vaunted wine industry earns. In any case, the QMS was designed to ensure sustainability, not to increase value, although that is an outcome.
It is nonsense to claim New Zealand is not adding value to its catches. Orange roughy is exported whole to China, earning twice the value of the fillets alone. Live rock lobsters have grown to a $300 million industry, an extraordinary success. Mussels are exported in half shells and have become a $200 million industry.
New Zealand is the world’s largest producer of king salmon, which sells at a premium. The Tiaki brand launched this year includes a smartphone app that shows discerning consumers how and where the fish was caught. Precision Seafood Harvesting is delivering live fish to the boat. Fish roes and livers are harvested for nutreceuticals.
Those market successes should be recognised and celebrated. The economy of this small, remote country depends on what we can sell to the world. That helps support our envied way of life.
We can agree with our determined detractors on some aspects.
No system is perfect and while the QMS is fundamentally sound and has served us well, it can always be improved.
The seafood sector will become increasingly important as a provider of top quality protein – enough for 2.3 billion meals a year on present production. Ours are mixed fisheries and with high quality, highly desirable protein comes an amount of lesser quality and less wanted by-catch. Dealing with that by-catch in a cost-effective manner has long proved a difficult area and all companies are investing in research to derive value from the material.
Fishing is a complex industry influenced by many factors, that is shared with recreational and customary interests. As such it would be ideally overseen by a standalone ministry, as was previously the case, rather than subsumed in the wider primary industries sector. Institutional knowledge has been lost.
Simmons and his colleagues are right to question increasing compliance, including cameras across the fleet, without addressing underlying discarding issues. That is only focusing on the symptoms and not the causes.
MPI is aware of that and is proposing a future of fishing approach that encompasses vessel tracking and electronic reporting and monitoring aimed at increasing transparency and reassuring a sceptical public. That will also need to examine policy options and the setting of catch limits.
That is one of many issues facing an industry that is in good heart, that has strong prospects but also no shortage of challenges.
A challenge in turn for the academics and their environmental activist colleagues is acknowledging the progress that continues to be made, rather than continually bagging those out on the water adding to the health and wealth of the country.
Tim Pankhurst is chief executive of Seafood New Zealand. With all the stories about baby boomers rejecting retirement and embracing encore careers – and there are many – we sometimes forget that there are people who really can’t wait to retire.
Terence Hurley is one of them, and he got so tired of friends acting like there was something wrong with him for wanting to retire at 62, he wrote a story for CNBC.com, ‘‘Please stop telling me not to retire.’’
‘‘When did retirement become a dirty word?’’ he says.
Hurley, from San Francisco, was stunned at the reaction of his friends and colleagues when he said he was retiring from a biotech health care company, after 40 years in the workplace.
‘‘I was expecting congratulations, best wishes and even some jealousy on my happy news,’’ he wrote. ‘‘Finally, at age 62 I would have all the time in the world to do whatever I wanted. Pursue new interests, rediscover neglected passions, create interesting experiences. No more meetings, deadlines, office politics. After all, if you could stop working tomorrow, wouldn’t you want to?’’
Instead, his friends were surprised and disappointed that he no longer wanted to work. They even sent him news stories about how it was a big mistake to retire. Hurley isn’t buying any of it.
‘‘I will appreciate my good fortune at being retired and have no regrets about leaving the workforce,’’ he said. ‘‘I’ve had a fine and rewarding career, and now it’s time to move on ...Death won’t be my retirement. I’m getting out while I’m still healthy and able to do new things. I’m done and have no shame so please stop telling me I shouldn’t retire.’’
What prompted him to write the story in the first place?
‘‘The anti-retirement sentiment I’ve been reading and hearing about over the past year,’’ he said in an interview. ‘‘It seems many people really are opposed to the idea of retirement, which I found shocking and kind of odd. Ernest Hemingway has that famous quote: ‘Retirement is the ugliest word in the language’ and I guess he never did.
‘‘Also, friends and coworkers seemed disappointed when I told them I no longer wanted to work. Retirement is something I always looked forward to, so I wanted to express the pro-retirement point of view. I must say, the feedback to the story has been very positive, which is reassuring to me.’’
His wife was ‘‘ecstatic’’ and his two adult children were supportive, he says. The reaction from his siblings, however, was mixed.
‘‘A common question was what are you going to do all day?’’ he said. ‘‘I think some people perceive retirement as generally not having much to do since you are no longer in the workforce. I see it as just the opposite.
‘‘The possibilities are endless and I plan to be grateful for every moment, every day. I will approach this next phase of my life with wonder, enthusiasm and openness.’’
Washington Post
''I plan to be grateful for every moment, every day.''