Agreement on scallop seasons

Press, 21 July 1988, Page 21

Agreement on scallop seasons

By

WILLIAM HOBBS,

in Nelson

Officials from the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries have reached agreement with fishermen on a format for this year’s southern scallop season.

Earlier, fishermen had indicated that they would strongly contest fisheries management proposals by MAFFish which would have removed minimum size limits but limited scallop boats to about onethird of the area of Tasman and Golden Bays. The central regional director for MAFFish, Mr Peter Brierley, said under the proposal now agreed to, the scallop season would be broken into three stages, starting with the harvesting of scallops from areas where basketgrown spat has been used to seed the scallop beds to enhance the fishery. This would be followed by a period when an area of Tasman Bay known to produce slow-growing and under-sized scallops would be opened without the usual 100 mm minimum size applying. The third stage would be the open commercial scallop season in Tasman and Golden Bays and the Marlborough Sounds for which there would be a limit of 3.1 tonnes each boat.

Mr Brierley said it was conceded that this was

well down on the 4.6 tonne limit applying to each of the 48 licensed scallop boats last season. “But everyone knows the beds are not in fantastic shape at the moment,” he said. In addition to their 3.1 tonnes quota, the fishermen could expect perhaps another 0.8 tonnes from the opening of the stunted scallop area where the minimum size would be reduced to 90mm, Mr Brierley said. However, this was being treated as an entirely separate season so any shortfall of catch of the smaller scallops would not be transferrable to the main season to be amalgamated with that quota.

Care was also being taken with the opening of the under-sized beds to ensure that the commercial scallop boats would not have any impact on recreational fishing. They would be allowed to harvest small scallops only well off shore and in deep water.

Mr Brierley said these

proposals would go forward as a joint recommendation for the season to the Minister of Fisheries, Mr Moyle, who still had to approve them. If the proposals were approved by the Minister the harvesting of enhanced scallop areas would begin in midAugust, a scientist with MAFFish, Dr Michael Bull, said.

Dr Bull said the harvest of seeded scallops would probably take three to four weeks and would be followed as closely as possible by the harvest of the stunted scallop area. The first two stages of the scallop season were both trials and so MAFFisli wanted to keep them quite distinct, Dr Bull said. However, they also wanted to dovetail them to provide continuity for the processors.

The main season was expected to start in October and would have a minimum of restrictions other than the over-all 3.1 tonnes each boat limit, though there would still be a daily catch limit as in past seasons.