Greymouth fishing company Westfleet, which operates out of Port Nelson, has had its 320-tonne trawler Tasman Viking forfeited to the Crown after the company was found liable with two of its skippers for failing to assess and report coral caught in their net when bottom trawling in the South Pacific.
Greymouth fishing company Westfleet, which operates out of Port Nelson, has had its 320-tonne trawler Tasman Viking forfeited to the Crown after the company was found liable with two of its skippers for failing to assess and report coral caught in their net when bottom trawling in the South Pacific.
A deep sea fishing company has lost its multi-million dollar trawler to the Crown in a case described by a judge as a “cavalier approach to the whole area of compliance”.
Greymouth-based Westfleet Fishing Limited was sentenced in the Nelson District Court today on a charge of breaching a condition of a high seas permit and a representative charge of failing to provide a Non-Fish Protected Species (NFPS) Report. Along with losing its trawler Westfleet was also convicted and fined $56,250.
Former skipper Stephen John Smith was separately convicted and fined $7500 for contravening a condition of a high seas permit, while first mate Nicholas Taikato was convicted and fined $6000 on a representative charge of failing to provide an NFPS report.
They admitted the charges in July last year, laid by the Ministry for Primary Industries.
A portion of coral managed to be weighed by an MPI observer on the Tasman Viking.
Judge David Ruth said in summing up the end of today’s three-and-a-half hour sentencing hearing, which began with arguments around forfeiture of Westfleet’s 320-tonne trawler the Tasman Viking, that “failure to record was at the heart of these charges – not the amount of material”.
No one from the company and neither Smith nor Taikato appeared in court today. They were not required to as the charges related to non-imprisonable offences.
Westfleet said in a statement after sentencing it had “inadvertently misreported” coral caught in its net while catching alfonsino between October and November 2020.
Managing director and chief executive Craig Boote described it as “an unfortunate incident caused by unintentional human error onboard for which we are very sorry”.
Westfleet argued the case was “out of the norm” and therefore justified special reasons for non-forfeiture, including that the total amount of coral and benthic material weighed “less than half a pound of butter”.
Judge Ruth said there was no way of knowing exactly how much benthic material had been hauled up in the trawl, given that some of it went back into the sea with the net when it was re-deployed.
He said it was the result of an “unduly rushed attempt to get another tow out of the way quickly, which lost forever the ability to assess the material in this case”.
MPI said scientists have identified that bottom trawling was the most consistently high-scoring threat to oceanic deep-sea ecosystems, particularly in deep-sea fishing (at depths greater than 200m) because the gear used was usually larger and heavier than shallow water trawl rigs.
In October 2020 the Tasman Viking left Port Nelson on a fishing trip to the Challenger Plateau and Lord Howe Rise, west of Taranaki in the Tasman Sea and within a protected area of the South Pacific fishery.
Smith was at the helm and two fisheries observers were on board as required by the high-seas fishing permit.
The boat arrived at Lord Howe Rise three days later, and on the evening of October 21, “Tow 47″ began - the element of the trawling expedition which became central to the case.
When the net came on board it was “visibly fouled” with bamboo coral, the summary of facts said.
Around 15 minutes later the net was shot again before the crew had removed all the coral from the net and deck for identification and weighing.
The remaining coral on deck was swept overboard by the net when it was re-shot.
The observer identified the benthic material as bamboo coral, which has a threshold limit of 15kg.
If benthic species at or above the threshold limits were caught in a bottom trawl tow, the vessel had to immediately report the encounter, cease bottom fishing in the area and move on.
This did not happen in this case, which lent weight to MPI’s argument that commercial gain was involved as a consequence of Westfleet actions.
The observer weighed the quantity that had fallen onto the vessel’s deck at 2.79kg, but he was unable to say for sure how much in total had been hauled up.
He entered the details on the Vulnerable Marine Ecosystem Evidence Process form, which was then signed by Smith, who said he could “easily double” the numbers he had in his form to make it more correct.
The observer was only willing to use the amount of the coral which had actually been weighed.
Smith later acknowledged that he could not accurately estimate the amount of coral caught and that when he suggested “doubling the weight” he was referring to coral that he had seen on the deck because he had not seen the coral in the net.
He did not think the threshold had been breached and he believed it was stone coral.
The matter was not reported to either MPI or South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organisation (SPRFMO) at the time, but video footage and photos of the incident seen by a coral expert confirmed the species as bamboo coral.
In March 2021 MPI advised Westfleet that coral and sponge captured in five bottom trawl tows by the Tasman Viking had not been reported in accordance with regulations.
As yet, the company has not filed the necessary NFPS reports nor amended the fish catch reports.
In court today, Westfleet challenged statements made by the expert that an estimated 15kg of coral had been caught, based on the coral equating to four to five bins weighing around 3kg each.
Later, after viewing the video footage and photographs in more detail, she thought that five to six bins of coral had been caught and on that basis, increased her estimate to between 18-20kg of bamboo coral.
The company’s lawyer Bruce Fraser described the method of estimating as a difficult exercise with “no clear unequivocal answer”, and that the “total amount across all tows came to (the equivalent) of less than half a pound of butter”.
Crown lawyer Jackson Webber, who was acting for MPI said it wasn’t possible for Westfleet to “turn up here today and re-frame the charge”.
He said Westfleet’s submission had revealed the company had no system, protocol, manual or training which skippers were required to follow in terms of carrying out assessments.
Webber said the company’s argument over the difficulty with estimating volumes was precisely the point – it had to be weighed to be determined accurately, but it couldn’t in this case because a “particularly significant amount of coral” had been put back in the sea in a fishing net.
Judge Ruth’s concerns about protecting New Zealand’s reputation offshore, as a seafood exporter which looked after its marine environment were countered by Fraser who said the prosecution itself served to do that.
Judge Ruth said protection of the marine biodiversity had to be maintained and this case was a “prime example” of the inherent difficulties in detecting fisheries offences.
Judge Ruth allowed an application for relief from forfeiture, meaning the company would have to pay a certain amount to have the vessel released.
