Special report
Kahawai, a popular recreational fish are becoming increasingly scarce says Recreational Fishers Marlborough Association spokesman Tony Orman.
The kahawai has been labelled “the family fish” as it provides recreational fishing for young and old and provides a home cooked meal for families. However the resource is being “hammered” by the greed of corporate company purse seiners to the point of collapse..
“Recent years have seen very much less and less kahawai being caught at popular fishing spots such as The Diversion and Wairau Bar. It’s a mere shadow of the once abundance of fish there,” he said.
Kahawai are schooling pelagic fish, introduced to the Quota Management System (QMS) in 2004 “to ensure sustainability.” They are highly prized by recreational fishers and commercially bulk harvested-largely via purse seining.
“The alarming decline shows the failure of the QMS to ensure that sustainability,” said Tony Orman.
A few decades ago, surface feeding kahawai schools were easily identified by excited gulls and terns wheeling above the feeding melees and were frequently seen around Marlborough’s coastline and even just off the Picton foreshore.
“But that is very much past tense with a feeding school only very occasionally seen today.”
Ministerial denial
The Recreational Fishers Marlborough Association had written over the years to successive fisheries ministers about the decline in kahawai but received ministerial responses that denied any problem.
“No doubt written by some ministers boffin for the Minister, the replies were insulting. The point is anglers are on the water often week by week, see and know trends. Some bureaucrat or minister in centrally heated offices doesn’t,” he said.
The kahawai individually is a low value fish but bulk fishing methods by corporate company purse seiners compensated for that in dollar returns.
Tony Orman said reports from around the country indicated that purse seiners were targeting kahawai aided by spotter aircraft radioing the location of surface feeding schools of fish.
Spotter plane
Reports elsewhere in the country such as Northland – Fisheries Minister Shane Jones’ territory – were of several purse seiners targeting big schools of kahawai aided by a “spotter” aircraft and removing them in rapid time.
The association had reports of purse seiners plundering surface shoals in Marlborough’s outer Pelorus Sound.
Kahawai are especially important to the food chain of the saltwater ecosystem as the location of a feeding spree on herrings attracted numerous sea birds while underneath other fish species like snapper, blue cod and others feasted on sinking scraps.
“It becomes a four way banquet. Remove the kahawai and seabirds and other fish species have their food supply depleted. Kingfish a major prey of kahawai and even seals suffer with depleted food supplies. Overfishing of a species can have unintended detrimental consequences for other life in the food chain.”
The Recreational Fishers Marlborough Association believed kahawai should be managed as a “recreational only” species along with kingfish, a concept that was promoted over 20 years ago but ignored by governments.
Footnote: The national Total Allowable Catch (TAC) – commercial – for kahawai is 5733 tonnes The TAC for KAH3 (includes Marlborough) is 410 tonnes but in the year 2023-4, the actual commercial kahawai catch was 221 tonnes – numerical evidence of over-fishing.
Kahawai on the fly rod are exceptional sport
Kahawai were introduced to the Quota Management System (QMS) in 2004-5 and now the fishery has collapsed. Really it shows how worthless the QMS is.
Other fisheries have similarly collapsed e.g. orange roughy for the second time since the species was discovered.
There is another factor in the collapsing of fisheries. The QMS favours the big boys like Talleys, Sanford, Sealords etc and the big corporates dominate the quota system because they buy out the true small Kiwi operartors.
The corporates are only interested in maximum profits which equates to plundering. The corporates friend in government is Fish Minister Shane Jones. He obeys his corporate mates. So the other factor is the Jones boy and his corporate mates – sustainability doesn’t figure in their culture.
Wellington Harbour used to fill up with schools of kahawai in the Autumn. Birds would be “working” above schools of kahawai everywhere. In the 1970’s I used to catch them as a 10-11 year old schoolboy in my wee rowboat with a handline and zed spinner trolling out the back. That was all I could afford.
I was in Wellington last week and saw only one small school of birds “working” near the Picton Ferry terminal. Drove to Days Bay and saw none anywhere else in the Harbour, including Eastbourne.
It would be difficult to have a “recreational only” species under current regulations because of bycatch while taking other quota species e.g. Jack Mackerel or barracuda. Best to just heavily cut the kahawai quota so that they are no longer targeted.
The concept of Kahawai as a family fish will be as lost on certain politicians and bureaucrats as the concept of community is lost on them. On their over-generous incomes and perks they lose touch with the reality of life as most New Zealanders
live it. So when it comes to choices between the well-being of the general populace and the profits of big businesses we know who’ll get their favourable treatment.
Seems to me that we need a political party with their main policy being to introduce the Swiss system of binding citizens’ referenda on major government proposals.