Call to polish fishing sector image

The outgoing chairman of New Zealand's biggest fishing company, Sealord, wants fishing leaders to unite to clean up the industry's tarnished environmental image.

Shane Jones, about to step down from the job for a Labour seat in Parliament, said "considerable damage" had been done to the industry by Greenpeace's photo of a New Zealand-registered bottom-trawling vessel hauling in coral in the Tasman Sea.

And Jones said one of the biggest disappointments in his three years as head of Sealord was the failure of a proposed merger with the second-biggest company, the listed Sanford. Obvious synergies and efficiency gains had been lost, he said.

Industry leaders needed to collaborate more on a range of issues, including public pressure to end bottom trawling and the big cut in the hoki catch quota.

Jones said the offender who had fished over coral beds had increased the damage by treating the issue as "a monstrous joke".

"There are elements in the industry who exist at the margin who don't suffer the costs if they thumb their noses at environmental anxieties."

Greenpeace claimed the enormous piece of 500-year-old endangered coral was pulled up by the Tasman Pacific Company trawler Waipori.

Jones said Sealord would not tolerate such behaviour. It had the potential to "stigmatise" the whole industry.

Sealord, which on Saturday reported further evidence of its financial turnaround with an unaudited full-year net after-tax profit of $35.7 million on revenues of $557.5. million, supported the hoki quota reduction from 180,000 tonnes to 100,000 tonnes a year.

But as it held a third of the total quota, the cut by the Government was a big loss, the company said.

The calls to ban bottom trawling could lead to further job losses, while Kyoto taxes would cost Sealord $3 million a year.

Jones, likely to stay on as chairman of Te Ohu Ka Moana, the controlling shareholder in Sealord's half-owner, Aotearoa Fisheries, said Sealord's annual result could have been substantially better if a merger with Sanford had been achieved.

Merger discussions were canned in April last year for reasons never divulged.

Over 50 per cent of Sealord's revenue in the year to June came from fish sourced overseas.

"Very few people appreciate ... how much that portion of the business has grown, and I think it is a comment on how difficult it is in the face of declining quota," Jones said.