Court says Doc can’t control shark diving
WELLINGTON: A longrunning legal battle about shark cage diving has taken another twist, after a court ruled the Department of Conservation does not have the power to grant authorisation to operators.
But the High Court judgement, released this month, did not address how the venture must be governed — or how public safety should be factored in.
Over the past decade, fledgling tourism ventures offering shark cage diving have emerged in the northeastern waters of Stewart Island, leading to a standoff between operators and the paua industry.
In 2012, Maritime New Zealand hosted a multiagency meeting of officials and groups interested in establishing commercial shark cage diving operations.
The following year, Doc released interim guidelines on potential risks to great white sharks from cage diving, at the same time acknowledging its ‘‘limited statu tory authority to require permit applications for all commercial interactions with protected marine wildlife under the Wildlife Act.’’
The guidelines were not intended to regulate shark cage diving but to act as a guide for operators who, at that time, were not subject to authorisation under the Act.
In 2014, then Conservation Minis ter Nick Smith announced that tourism businesses offering the chance to view great white sharks would need a permit as for whale, dolphin and seal watching. The organisation representing the paua industry, PauaMAC5, backed permits, but argued permits should not be granted around Stewart Island.
PauaMAC5 argued that Doc should consider public safety when it issued permits under the Wildlife Act but Doc said it did not have to consider public safety.
Justice Karen Clark said the key issue was whether the granted permits under the Act were lawful.
She ruled that the section of the Act used by Doc did not give the department power to ‘‘authorise commercial shark cage diving operators, or any person, to attract sharks to a vessel, platform or cage for the purposes of viewing or filming the sharks’’.
But Justice Clark stopped short of ruling what law should now regulate shark cage diving — or determining that Doc must consider the safety of other water users. — NZME