Progress report of the implementation of our Eastern Tarakihi Management Strategy and Rebuild Plan

Fisheries Inshore New Zealand, Te Ohu Kaimoana and Southern Inshore Fisheries welcome the release today of the first quarter (1 October 2019 – 31 December 2019) progress report of the implementation of our Eastern Tarakihi Management Strategy and Rebuild Plan.

The report is available on the Ministry of Primary Industries website - https://www.mpi.govt.nz/protection-and-response/sustainable-fisheries/east-coast-tarakihi-fishery-rebuild

We have committed to the sustainable management of the East Coast tarakihi fishery and welcome the opportunity for wider stakeholders to be informed of the hard work that fishers, operators and licensed fish receivers are putting in to rebuild the fishery.  The Minister has challenged us to implement and build on our Strategy – we are doing this. This level of reporting and transparency is fully supported by industry.

The summary of the progress report shows that five of the six key performance indicators have been met for the quarter and are on track for the year.  We have made a great start but we still have work to do. 

We acknowledge that there are areas we are continuing to improve on.  For the milestone we didn’t meet this quarter we have had 99.28% compliance with the voluntary closed areas – we consider this a great achievement in avoiding juvenile tarakihi and we will continue to strive for better.  There has been 1125 trawl events in TAR2 during this reporting time period with only 8 tows crossing the voluntary closed area boundaries.  Only one of these events was by a signatory to the rebuild plan.  

Tarakihi is an iconic New Zealand fish and a core species in our local markets. The measures we are implementing and continuing to develop are driven by the importance of the long term sustainability of fisheries. This enable us to provide a clean, natural and local source of protein to New Zealanders.  We remain committed to working with the Minister, his officials and other stakeholders to continue to implement and build on our success to date.