Call to lift lid on fish bycatches

Fishing industry representatives appear to be attempting to hide the impact of bycatch from the public.

Endangered species of penguins and dolphins such as Ma¯ ui’s and Hector’s are among the creatures that become bycatch.

A letter sent to the Ministry for Primary Industries asks that the Official Information Act be prevented from applying to information gathered by electronic monitoring aboard fishing vessels.

Under the act, anyone can request information from a government department or minister of the Crown and this applies to the ministry’s monitoring of fisheries.

This means the proposed Integrated Electronic Monitoring and Reporting System programme would be covered by the act.

The system’s information would include fisheries catch reporting, real-time vessel location monitoring, and on-boarding fishing activity.

The ministry said the proposed programme would ‘‘allow fisheries to be monitored and managed with far greater certainty’’. and killing Hector’s dolphins looks really bad on TV.

‘‘Well, the solution is to stop doing it, not to hide the evidence. It’s hard to think of a more credibility-damaging activity than trying to change the law so the rest of us can’t see what’s really happening out there.

‘‘Commercial fishing is vulnerable to criticism, not because it’s being misrepresented by media or environmental advocates, but because New Zealanders are shocked by what the fishing industry has got away with.’’