Snapper limits

YOUR ARTICLE on the snapper stocks in Fisheries Management Area 1 (‘‘Fishing fury at snapper limit’’, News, July 28) will justifiably provoke lively debate amongst amateur fishers.

How can the Ministry of Primary Industries get it so wrong again? Do they not know that snapper in Area 1 over the past several years have been almost an embarrassment with fishers being sent home after only an hour or so fishing because they have already caught their limit? Indeed, never has it been so easy to catch snapper just off the beach. For some commercial fishers the problem has been how to avoid snapper.

Matt Watson is quite right in his protest but he would be wise to refrain from attacking the commercial division. Commercial fishing is a primary industry in a broke nation and it is the primary industries which make it possible for the amateurs at all.

The ministry’s proposed restrictions are idiotic and reveal how little they know about fishing. Three fish per person per day is absurd, and as has been pointed out, negates the purpose of going fishing at all. One can agree that nine per person per day is a little generous and one is sure the amateurs would settle for, say, six or seven.

Does the minister not know there are enough fishers in Area 1 to swing a government out on a question like this? After all, who wins the Auckland peninsula wins government.

The amateur fishers are better amateurs than the amateurs in the ministry who have been shown up to be totally unaware of the snapper stock situation in Area 1.

Maurice Ashby, Auckland