Call to ban estuary fishing after lures kill pied shags
The death of pied shags from swallowing fishing equipment has led to calls for a fishing ban in an Auckland estuary.
Panmure resident Corina Hooper, who has been looking after the shags at Panmure Basin for 12 years, said it was heartbreaking to watch the colony die out.
In 2017, Hooper warned of a grim fate for the shags, saying they were dying because of overfishing. She has now started a petition to Auckland Council to have a fishing ban put in place in the area.
Hooper said many of the birds were dying because they were trying to eat fishing bait and becoming stuck on hooks.
‘‘There’s not enough fish in there, the water is dirty as hell, they can’t see, so they’re going after the bait. I have a photo of a shag that had an autopsy done that had swallowed a lure, and it died a horrific death. It thought it was a fish.’’
Hooper said the shags often becoming tangled in fishing lines, causing them to ‘‘hang from the trees for days until they die’’.
She said the colony had been ‘‘an icon’’ and attracted overseas visitors – but juvenile birds were not surviving to adulthood. Visiting birds were no longer coming to Panmure Basin either, she said.
Auckland Council senior regional adviser Tim Lovegrove confirmed there had been losses of pied shags in the estuary because of entanglement and ingestion of fishing gear but said the population of the colony was stable and hadn’t declined recently.
Hooper’s petition had 243 signatures at the time of publication, but she said she needed ‘‘thousands’’ more for a fishing ban to be put in place.
Fisheries New Zealand director of fisheries management Emma Taylor said there was a set net prohibition in the Panmure Basin and part of the Tamaki Estuary. She said the ban was specifically to protect shags from fishing activity.
Taylor said shags had a wide foraging range and any further fishing restrictions would need to be carefully considered, and would go through the usual processes including public consultation.