Tuna Fishing ‘Uneconomic’

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30835, 21 August 1965, Page 3

Tuna Fishing ‘Uneconomic’

(N.Z. Press Association) TAURANGA, Aug. 20. The development of a fully-fledged tuna industry in New Zealand was uneconomic, said Mr P. H. Bromley in Tauranga today.

He was replying to the

Minister of Marine (Mr Scott), who said yesterday that, with suitable vessels, tuna could be caught throughout the year in New Zealand waters.

Mr Scott said the fishing year would be divided into a possible winter season, for off-shore fishing for southern bluefin and possibly yellowfin

tuna, and a summer season inshore programme using gillnets to catch albacore, skipjack and possibly juvenile yellowfin. Mr Bromiley, just returned from studying United States fishing, said Japanese tuna fishermen had the right type of vessels and worked under conditions and for pay that would not be accepted in New Zealand.

However, the Japanese did not find their tuna operations off the New Zealand coast economic. It was only the gross protein deficiency faced by Japan which forced them to fish tuna where ever they could.

Leading American oceanographers and authorities on tuna movements in the Pacific had said there were not enough of the fish round New Zealand on which to base a successful year-round tuna industry. “Mr Scott’s enthusiasm is commendable, but he has been badly advised. The public is becoming blinded by wild statements. It is time for some sober thinking,” said Mr Bromiley. “The situation is similar to that of a mussel industry in the Hauraki Gulf, which was started after a Marine Department report that the shellfish provided a vast untapped source. This folded up soon after it was started. People lost money.”