Govt may spend $20M buying out fishermen

Press, 14 May 1985, Page 3

Govt may spend $20M buying out fishermen

PA Wellington The Government approved a scheme yesterday to set quotas for inshore fishermen and cut allowable quantities of threatened fish species 30 to 40 per cent. The changes announced by the Minister of Fisheries, Mr Moyle, could cost the Government about $2O million to buy up the tenders of the fishermen who decide they want to leave the industry. The Government plans to charge fishermen a flat levy on their catches. Initially, these have been set at a nominal $3 a tonne. “It’s a public asset and people who are given a tradable right to that asset should pay for that right,” Mr Moyle said. “They don’t like it, but they have been given something of permanent value, and when they come to retire or give up fishing they’ll be able to sell that quota for a great deal more than the annual rental value.”

The Government was developing a formula to include the value of fish and the price of quotas to help set future levies. Mr Moyle said deep-water fishermen had been levied $3 a tonne initially, but the Government had adjusted the levy in line with fish values, so that the levy on orange roughy rose to $7O a tonne. He said the restructuring would cut the costs of fishermen because they would not be competing for the same fish, and at the least, their profitability would rise.

“I don’t think necessarily you're going to see dearer fish — you’re going to see different fish,” he said. More of the less popular species, and the less heavily fished, that would be seen in the shops would include bluenose, alfonsino, some species of flat fish, as well as surface fish, such as kahawai. Mr Moyle said that if

studies in future showed a species was recovering, more quotas might be issued for that fish on the market, and if the threat was not relieved, quotas could be cut further.

“Resources are definitely limited and there is need to place a great deal more emphasis on conservation,” said Mr Moyle.

Many favourite species, such as snapper and hapuka, were under threat, particularly from the East Cape of the North Island along the north-east coast to the far north.

The Ministry of Fisheries plans to set a total allowable catch for various regions and then give its licensed commercial fishermen each a quota for certain species of fish. The quotas will be based on their catches over the last three years, with the fishermen being able to select which two of the three years they wanted to qualify,

Quotas will be made available soon with objections to them due to be heard by July 31.

Fishermen who want to leave the industry will place a tender price on their quotas before the end of August and the Government will select those it buys out. Mr Moyle said more concentration on co-operative effort in the industry would be apparent once a lot of the competitive element was taken out of fishing. Quotas were a tradable property right, and fishermen could use them as collateral to borrow money from a bank, or sell them when they left the industry. Fishermen who overfish their quotas will be allowed to carry over into their next season’s quotas. Mr Moyle warned that if their catch was more than 10 per cent over the quota, the Government might decide that it was not accidental and deduct a penalty amount from their next quota.