WHITEBAIT RESTRICTIONS

Taranaki Daily News, 24 July 1930, Page 14

WHITEBAIT RESTRICTIONS

SERIOUS MENACE’ TO INDUSTRY. ; ,-A ' . , • HANDICAP ON EMPLOYMENT. “It is unfortunate that those fn charge of the New. Zealand Fisheries Department have no idea of the thousands of people who earn their daily broad by whitebait - fishing during the season,” sad Mr. W. Stevenson, of Dunedin, managing director of the Ir-. vine, Stevenson (St. George) Company Ltd., in commenting at Auckland on the proposed whitebait restrictions. Mr. Stevenson’s firm .has whitebait'Carineries in the Waikato and at Hokitika, Greymouth, Westport and Dunedin.' “At a time when, unemployment is rife,” Mr." Stevenson continued, “it is little short of scandalous for the Fisheries Department to wish to add .to the ranks of the unemployed. Those who have canned whitebait for' many years should have a better idea, than anyone else whether restrictions are necessary,and. tliey say emphatically that they are neither necessary nor practicable. Nature, by periodically sendirig a season of badSi'eather, looks after the fish supply, since whitebait are not Caught in rough weather and are therefore left free to breed in their millions. v When the regulations were : brought forward last y ear they . occasioned ' indignation meetings in. all. the whitebait centres of the Domiriion, and the matter was promptly dropped. chief trouble appears to be'that there is a big Government Fishery De-, partmerit with nothing to do, and uriles the members stir up some trouble the. Goyerihmerit pruning knife is likely to become busy in it. .. “To put the . matter in a nutshell,” concluded Mr. Stevenson, ' “it appears to-.be a case of either you lose your job or I lose mine. For about thirty years the chief occupation of the Fisheries Department has been the introduction of salmon into New Zealand as a commercial proposition, yet there are no salmon commercially nor are there likely to be any. Is it to be wondered, then, that the Government Fisheries Department fears the pruning knife?”