KEY POINTS:
The article this week, headed Fish bill hooks Labour Maori MPs, suggested that they are reluctant to support the Fisheries Act Amendment Bill on the basis that such support would give the Maori Party ammunition against them at the next election.
Presumably, the concern for Labour's MPs is that the Maori Party will portray support for the bill as being un-Maori and detrimental to Maori commercial fishing interests.
Labour's Maori MPs and the Maori Party are misguided in their attempts to politicise this bill and have indicated a combined lack of knowledge and appreciation for the precautionary approach to fisheries management.
Both sets of MPs should be supporting the bill. A precautionary approach to fisheries management is not a concept which originates in the Labour caucus. It is is a globally accepted approach to fisheries management and part of a wider fisheries management agenda.
Fish-counting is an inexact science and with fishing quotas and accepted fishing levels based on the perceived status of stocks, the accepted level of fishing and the concept of sustainable fishing is a matter of conjecture.
That has resulted in the implementation of a precautionary approach to fishing. Such an approach is not a pure science but a commonsense approach to resource management. It encourages legislative and management action to be taken in respect of fish stocks without the requirement to determine stock levels.
In the Pacific a precautionary approach is now being taken in the management of tuna stocks. A major tool for an assessment upon which the determination of sustainable fishing levels relies is the tagging programme managed by the Oceanic Fisheries Programme of the Secretariat of the Pacific Community, based in Noumea.
Tags are inserted into the back or belly of the fish before releasing them. This provides information on growth, movement, mortality and the impact of fishing.
Fishermen are essential to the process because scientists rely on them to retain the tags of caught fish and hand them in.
A financial incentive linked to returning tags is a guarantee that most collected tags are returned.
Even with this comprehensive tagging programme there is disagreement regarding the strength of tuna stocks.
Concerns about over-fishing and what constitutes sustainable fishing are being increasingly discussed by scientists and the tuna fishing industry.
From the perspective of the tuna longlining industry in Papua New Guinea, the Pacific's stock levels are declining, a perspective based on reduced catches.
In contrast to the PNG longline industry, the secretariat has determined that stock levels are strong, although care needs to be taken to preserve yellowfin and bigeye tuna stocks. The secretariat, after studying regeneration levels of bigeye and yellowfin tuna, considers that although they are being overfished they are not in a permanently overfished state.
Determining the balance between recruitment levels and the threshold at which recovery of fish stock would become irreversible is a job that has fallen to scientists.
Given the immense financial investment and risks involved in commercial fishing - including the social and economic risks to the lives of people employed in the industry - collecting, analysing and disseminating scientific data is a necessary part of fisheries management.
While science and data analysis is becoming increasingly important to fisheries management it is not possible to rely on science alone.
This recognition that science cannot provide a definitive answer to the question of how much fishing constitutes sustainable fishing has enhanced the adoption of the precautionary approach.
It is possible that the promotion by the Fisheries Minister of the precautionary approach may have some effect on the profit levels of fishing companies. But without such an approach there is a real risk of fishing being done at levels beyond which it will not be possible for stocks to be replenished.
There is no realistic way of knowing when the point of unsustainable fishing has been reached. It is certainly not a point that anyone should want to reach.
A precautionary approach to fisheries management is necessary not just to preserve fish stocks but to safeguard the livelihoods of people in New Zealand and the wider Pacific who rely on fish as a source of income.
* Laurentia Laracy is completing an MA thesis at Auckland, studying Papua New Guinea's tuna industry.
