Study of Ellesmere eel fishery

Press, 8 March 1978, Page 3

Study of Ellesmere eel fishery

Parliamentary reporter A working party has been set up by the Minister of Fisheries (Mr Bolger) to study the establishment of a controlled fishery for eels in Lake Ellesmere. The Ellesmere eels were being over-exploited, he said, and unless a limit was placed on the number of fishermen there was a very real possibility of serious long-term depletion of stocks. There would be a stay of new licences. In 1976, eels had ranked as New Zealand’s third most important export fish after rock lobster (crayfish) and snap-1 per, said Mr Bolger. Nearly: 1700 tonnes of eel, worth about $2.2M, had been exported that year and nearly a third of these had been caught in Lake Ellesmere. Eel landing from the lake had increased from 5 tonnes in 1966-67 to 647 tonnes in 1975-76, before dropping back to 560 tonnes in 197677, in spite of a 45 per cent increase in fishing effort. The latest figures represented a yield of more than 30kg per hectare of lake area, considerably higher than for established European eel fisheries, where the growth rate was faster and the lake were stocked artificially with elver, said Mr Bolger. This strongly suggested that the fishery was being overworked and that conservation measures were necessary, he said.