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Future of our Fisheries
when fiction becomes an alternative fact Seafood New Zealand’s CEO Tim Pankhurst’s biased opinion piece, in the NZ Herald 26 January, included the statement that NZ ‘was named as one of the five most sustainable fisheries in the world’ and six fisheries had Marine Stewardship Council accreditation, but this tells only part of the story. Pankhurst 100% biased, publicizes the alternative facts “results” as being a true and correct analysis of the state of our fishery. It is utterly false. As the NZ ranking is based on the opinions of NZ fishing industry lackeys, they are heavily biased. Professor Ray Hilborn one of the study’s researchers, was outed last year as having received millions of dollars from fishing, seafood and industry groups, including Seafood New Zealand. He has deep links to the New Zealand seafood industry. “The seafood industry has given millions of dollars to Ray Hilborn,” says Greenpeace USA Oceans Campaign Director John Hocevar. “Hilborn’s failure to acknowledge the problem of overfishing is the equivalent of climate denial and every person who reads his work should at the very least know that corporate interests are underwriting his commentary.” “Throughout his career, Hilborn has fought alongside corporations against ocean conservation efforts, and in fact, just last year he attacked Greenpeace’s campaign to stop labour abuse and unsustainable fishing by tuna industry giant Thai Union”, continued Hocevar. “It isn’t just that the seafood industry is funding Ray Hilborn. The problem is that he has repeatedly failed to acknowl-
SEE INSIDE edge these conflicts of interest in
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Page 6 - Letters to the
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Page 8 - Plan to levy
hunters
Page 9 - Motiti Island
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Page 12 - White Maori
Patriot
violation of publication require- manager at Seafood New Zealand, ments, even as he has taken mil- business innovation and quota lions of dollars in industry funding.” manager at Aotearoa Fisheries Ltd (now Moana NZ), and foundation When a leading NZ Industry stoops CEO of FishServe, a wholly owned so low as to employ people of this subsidiary of Seafood New Zealand. calibre one has to wonder what Paul Starr after immigrating to other dirty tricks they are up too? New Zealand in the early 1990s became the chief scientist for the NZ Tim Mckinnel, Research and Inves- Seafood Industry Council. In 2001 tigations Manager at Greenpeace he joined Tropia Ltd to provide New Zealand, said “there are not research services to MPI and the just questions about Hilborn’s rela- fishing industry. Mr Starr should tionship to the New Zealand indus- also have self-identified with the try, but about the influence his work fishing industry category and not has had on New Zealand fishing Government Science category. policy. New Zealanders know what Dishonestly self-identifying to the a hammering our fish get from in- wrong category means that the dustrial fishing, we need our officials results, which are directly affected to be hearing the truth from scien- by them, are also dishonest. If it tists, and not industry funded spin.” looks fishy and smells fishy, it will This latest research involving Hil- in all probability be fishy. It would born, got the opinions of fishery have been financially suicidal for experts from diverse backgrounds these three people to bite the from 28 countries, who were “in- hand that feeds them. On top of vited to complete a survey charac- that how can the close ties that terizing the management systems they have to industry give them for 10 species in their country of the ability to give unbiased opinfamiliarity. Institutional review ions to a report that can be so sigboard approval was not required nificant to NZ’s fisheries policy? for these surveys and Respondents It is nothing short of a conspiracy. were given the option of being Another survey respondent Pamela acknowledged for their contribu- Mace is MPI’s Principal Adviser tion or remaining anonymous.” Fisheries Science who previously The five survey Respondent fish- worked for the Seafood Industry ery experts with “diverse back- Council. Ms Mace working for the grounds” from New Zealand are industry captured MPI spouts the Katherine Short (industry con- good story: “the science story is sultant), Tony Craig (industry con- one of success - substantial and sultant), Pamela Mace (MPI), Paul continued Progress”. But, NIWA’s Starr (industry consultant), and former chief fisheries scientist John Rosemary Hurst (NIWA). They were McKoy is on record as saying “our asked to “self-assign their level of system is NOT strongly scienceexpertise” and to “self-identify into based. We have been fooling a primary background category: ourselves. Decisions on commercial government science, government fishing limits are essentially manager, fishing industry, uni- guesswork and “highly susceptible versity, environmental NGOs, or to influence”. Clearly McKoy was organization external to the coun- not industry captured. Readers try, such as the FAO.” Judging by can draw their own conclusion the results they all seem to have on which of these people was rated their expertise very highly. being economical with the truth. Katherine Short and Tony Rachel Stewart’s November NZ HerCraig have self-identified them- ald article, ‘Path of destruction and selves into the Environmental dim-wittedness’ is very apt here: NGO category; when in truth they “MPI stands for everything wrong should have self-identified into with this country, and then some”. the fishing industry category. In which case Ms Mace as the Princi pal Adviser Fisheries Science stands Ms Short and Mr Craig are partners for everything wrong with New and directors of Terra Moana Ltd, Zealand’s fisheries, and then some. which consults to the fishing indus- The fifth respondent Rosemary try. Clients include Moana NZ (previ- Hurst, is the Chief Scientist Fisherously known as Aotearoa Fisheries) ies at NIWA (National Institute of and the Paua 2 Industry Associa- Water and Atmosphere). NIWA used tion. Mr Craig the chairman of Paua to be an independent research 2 Industry Association has been organization, but these days is described as “one of those people basically a profit driven consultwho can transcend relationships ing company – $5.5 million profit from the fishermen on the wharf before tax on revenues of $130 to politicians in Parliament”. Previ- million in the 2015/16 year. Its surously he was the business policy vival depends on contracts with
extractive industries, mainly fishing and mining. fisheries stock surveys NIWA carries out are mostly funded through fishing industry levies. Over the next few weeks NIWA staff will be defending the indefensible, saying that a 35 year marine mining operation off Taranaki will not damage the environment. Individual scientists working for NIWA are well qualified and well meaning, but the financial pressures on NIWA and other consulting companies are doing massive damage to science and the environment. The simple fact is that NIWA is not a university, and therefore their scientists do not have the statutory role of ‘critics and conscience of society’, which gives them the specific ‘academic freedom’ to be independently critical. Professor James Renwick who worked at NIWA for 20 years, says NIWA scientists were “discouraged from saying anything that would go against public policy, or possibly reflect badly on the Minister”. Science commentator Peter Griffin has said scientists frequently tell him they’ve experienced “pressure from above” not to comment publicly on sensitive issues. “How as a CRI (Crown Research Institute) scientist can I ever speak out against an industry that my CRI serves? I just cannot,” wrote one scientist under the protection of anonymity. Not only is the Hilborn study based on a biased set of surveys, it is also
based on a biased set of fisheries. The study deliberately biased the fisheries chosen towards species with the highest catch tonnages and the highest dollar value. Needless to say, these are based on large, mostly offshore fish stocks that were even larger before fishing than they are now. As they say, the best way to make a small fortune is to start with a large fortune. Most of our inshore fish stocks are woefully badly managed. We have population size estimates for only a small handful of fisheries. Most inshore fish quotas are basically a running average of past catches. We are literally flying blind on most NZ fisheries, especially in the inshore. When people with vested interests are able to orchestrate a litany of lies using industry captured scientists and consultants, it shows that there is something drastically wrong with one of our core industries. This whole orchestration of untruths constructed shows how low these scumbags will go to make these untruths seem believable. MPI’s reputation is completely shot; they will do what they need to do to convince the politicians that our fishery is in good health. If that means lying through their teeth about dumping and misreporting so be it. If it means orchestrating some backyard scientists to tell lies so be it. The people involved in involved in Hilborn’s
study are a disgrace to this country. Winston Peters has it right when he slacked off recently on Radio Live about the failure of the free market neo-liberal ideology that the government has been dogmatically pursuing. Immigration, housing, and fisheries are all complete disasters. But the question must be asked, why is this piece of rubbish of being in the ‘top five’ being bought out now? With the fisheries review underway, industry captured lackeys need something to peddle to Nathan Guy and politicians saying nothing is broken, everything is fine the QMS just needs future proofing. When you dig into the methodology of the Hilborn study, the respondents that completed the surveys blatantly lied, and that affects the results. It is fraudulent. It is also based on their level of expertise and some have never ever been involved in marine stock assessments. They have taken the most valuable species: hoki, paua, crayfish and snapper and they have based their assessments on single species fisheries. This study doesn’t pass the sniff test. It smells of a completely orchestrated jack-up and deserves nothing less than utter condemnation and Pamela Mace MPI’s Principal Adviser Fisheries Science should be ashamed of herself. Opinion Piece by Graham Carter
Te Awamutu Fish and Game Trout Fishing Competition Bulmers Landing 18th and 19th March 2017 Lake Arapuni Must have Licence beforehand to enter