NZ Fishing Portal - New Zealand Fishing
The first foreign vessels & crews came to fish off New Zealand in the 1950’s. In the 1960’s foreign vessels & crews could legally fish up to 3 nautical miles from the coast. In the 1970’s foreign vessels & crews were hammering the fisheries off the coast of New Zealand up to the 12 nautical mile limit – there were no catching constraints.
In 1977 New Zealands 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zone (NZEEZ) was declared but under the law of the sea foreign vessels and crews could still fish within it. In the late 1970’s & early 1980’s NZ individuals put their balls on the line by sailing with foreign crews on long voyages to learn how to operate factory vessels and catch offshore species.
Our goal was to claim deep-sea /offshore fisheries from FOREIGN OPERATORS for the people of NEW ZEALAND – to “New Zealandise” the fishery.
In 2009 we see that foreign crews are still here and NZ CREWS are actually being REPLACED with FOREIGN CREWS. To make it worse much of the offshore species of the maori fisheries settlement are firstly caught by foreign crews then re-processed in other countries with dubious records in human rights / environmental standards.
It is just wrong. Together we need to change it for the good of NEW ZEALAND as a whole.
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