Letter to the Editor - Tuesday August 13, 2013

Simply madness

I refer to the excellent letter of Robin Shepherd recently and his condemnation of the suggestion that amateur snapper limits might reduce to three fish per person (Bad law, August 6).

While I have not a great deal of issue with the legal size being resized a few centimetres, to even countenance a reduced limit to three snapper is appalling in the extreme.

If, has been mooted, there is no intention to constrain the commercial netting practices of commercial trawlers, then government officials themselves need to face up to an extraordinary series of incompetent decisions historically, which only highlights how little they know about past decisions made and those planned in the future.

While there may be truth in the adage that 10 per cent of sports fishermen catch 90 per cent of the amateur take, we are talking about issues of Kiwi lifestyle that go way beyond the debate. This debate takes us into 90 per cent of our population at least in the so-called Snapper Zone, and the ramifications go way beyond a snapper for dinner.

Recently on TV an outstanding if not superlative article has been featuring called 'The Song of the Kauri', which by no little coincidence relates to almost exactly the same geographical area as this debate is focused. In that film an informal commentator opines that if not now, in time to come the colonial crime and tragedy of destroying kauri forests wantonly to promote agriculture will be sheeted home to our forbears. This is a parallel.

Apart from the aforegoing, one only has to wander around any rural town to find the extraordinary number of shops that have found room to stock the various forms of fishing gear, and one has to question how many jobs that initiates.

This series of discussions and decisions on snapper limits makes the so-called GCSB Bill pale into insignificance when one considers its impact on our daily lives, and to not contemplate the magnitude of the consequences would be folly in the extreme.

It is therefore imperative that a detailed and independent audited analysis of trawler catches versus undersized fish dumped is undertaken to give veracity to discussions on and reduced amateur catch limits.

Finally, in this increasingly complex age of trying to nurture kids to appreciate all the good things which contribute to make New Zealand a special place to grow up, any mindless and stupid withdrawal of the basic

MURRAY RAE

Houhora