Fish ‘n Tips

Guest Blogger: Forest & Bird  Marine Advocate, Kirstie Knowles.

Line fishing, for many of us, is an imaginative exercise.

And if you’re anything like me, before you drop your line into the water, you’ll press your nose almost against the water’s glassy surface, and peer into its inky depths in an attempt to see what bounteous life it contains.

These days if you’re lucky the tug of your line will help to answer this question. If not, your imagination is left to fill the gap, so to speak. 

The statistics will leave your imagination reeling.

The UN has estimated that 70% of the world’s fisheries are now exploited to their limits, over-exploited or depleted. In this year’s Best Fish Guide , several types of fish have slipped in our rankings. Two of them are types of tuna (bigeye and yellowfin).

Tuna has always been a popular dish. Ancient Greeks used to stand on bluffs to watch for schools of passing tuna and it was a staple in a Roman soldiers lunchbox.

However, in the last century our appetite for tuna has become unsustainable. We just can’t get enough of it. In 1950, 600,000 tons of tuna were caught worldwide. Last year, that figure was almost 6 million tons.

Fitted with the latest and best in gadgets, fishers stalk the oceans with helicopters, GPS and sonar to root them out. When local waters are emptied, large tuna hunting vessels and their floating factories move into ‘bluer’ less regulated areas.

All types of tuna from high-end tuna (yellowfin, bluefin and bigeye tuna) to the stuff that lands in cans (skipjack, albacore) all face threats from overfishing. Some of most seriously threatened are our bluefin tunas.

If sustainable methods aren’t employed soon, everyone will lose from conservationists to cannery operators. 

So dire is the situation for supply of these large predatory fish, that in order to satisfy our demand for tuna, aquaculture farms have sprung up across the world, but their success has been somewhat limited.

Farmed tuna have an enormous appetite, and need a significant amount of food (10kg), to put on a very small amount of weight (1kg). And, because fish need omega-3 oils to grow, the farmed tuna are fed with other wild caught fish.

Supply of tuna for farming is also highly dodgy, with some, such as the Australian tuna farmers, catching live tuna in the wild and then rearing them in sea cages. Farming fish also creates a lot of waste, which can do great damage to the sea floor and associated seabed communities.

A Hollywood film – The End of the Line – cleverly pieces together the story of dwindling tuna stocks, and charts its inevitable demise if we don’t act now.

The film has drawn major interest (and outcry) in the failing management of our fisheries and is a must see when it finally screens here in New Zealand.

However, amid the panic and fear, a new science paper published in the Science journal suggests that New Zealand’s fisheries are in fact world-leading.

The question is – how true is this?

New Zealand prides itself on our clean, green image, and promotes its fisheries management as world-leading.  New TV advertisements and seafood marketing tools boast that “if it’s from New Zealand it’s sustainable”.

The self claims of success however have been heavily criticised as the paper reviewed just a fraction (19 out of 628) of New Zealand’s fish stocks. The stocks chosen for review were also those for which there is regular management reviews and relatively good, up –to-date population information.

In practise however, just over 100 of our 628 fish stocks actually have enough information to determine population status or health (see MFish web site). Of these, 79 (or two thirds) are estimated to be near or above target levels (whatever near means). The rest are overfished. 

Compared to some fisheries, New Zealand does take a comprehensive management approach and, as noted above, has been recognised as being among the best. But comparing ourselves to countries with no management or very poor fisheries management does not mean that we should be proud of our situation. New Zealand is still far from living up to its slogan “If it’s from New Zealand, it’s sustainable.”

Anyone who eats fish, needs to come armed with information, so they can make the best choice for our oceans. By using Forest & Bird’s Best Fish Guide, consumers can avoid ‘red’ species, and build an understanding of the fishing methods and by-catch of particular species.

Of course the next step for us, is to look to our restaurants and seafood retailers. Burger Wisconsin have made their burgers ‘greener’ by swapping deepwater oreo to tarakihi following advice from the Best Fish Guide, and in the future we’ll be encouraging other restaurants to follow suit.

To date, over 600,000 Best Fish Guides have been distributed around New Zealand. 

To find out more about the Best Fish Guide visit our site at: http://www.forestandbird.org.nz/what-we-do/publications/-best-fish-guide

Or to order yourself some wallet guides, contact us at the national office, visit your local Burger Wisconsin store, or check out your local aquarium, zoo or library for a copy.