The only specialised marine publication in Oceania that focuses on the maritime industry, from super yachts to small craft to large commercial ships, including coastal shipping, tugs, tow boats, barges, ferries, tourist, sport-fishing craft
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letters word of mouth, that there is no hope of getting an LLO license because they cannot get enough sea service. I am struggling with the legal and ethical issues at stake here. If I were a young man who, a dozen years ago, had planned to build up a business taking tourists out in a yacht, and had had my hopes and dreams wrecked by an illegal interpretation of a rule by a government agency, what would I be thinking now if I found out about it? Who would I seek to blame? The director of MNZ? The chairman? The Minister? The training providers who have been disseminating the wrong information provided to them by MSA/MNZ? I feel it is my responsibility to publicise the change to the way MNZ interpret the rule, but I don't see how it can be done without causing a lot of damage to everybody concerned. Hence I seek your advice [or your more experienced readers] as one more experienced in such matters than I. the whale and her dead unborn calf had very high concentrations of DDT in their bodies. The same is being found in dolphins, and both [animals] have to be disposed of as toxic waste. We don't have this in New Zealand alone, as many other countries around the world have been poisoning their lands and, due to run-offs, their coastal waters and oceans, ever since the industrial revolution started gaining traction in the mid-1800s. Of course, many who are profiting from all the benefits, including those saving a few dollars from lacing their antifouling with DDT, do not want to know about the accumulative downside of all this poison that we are still pouring onto our lands and ultimately into our water sources and oceans. One just has to look at the health of our land and people to gain some idea as to where all this is heading. Now, who's for adding some DDT to their antifouling? Michael Pignéguy, Auckland Graham Turner, Dunedin Refer to MNZ News page 75 for the letter from MNZ's Sharyn Forsyth. Ed… Mike we agree, but I think the message to the EPA was to not weaken the existing approved toxins in our antifoul paints or we may see a return to inappropriate dosing. Ed… HOMEBREW AND DDT WAIHEKE SEA SCOUTS Dear Sir I refer to the letter in the July/August issue where a retired fisherman states proudly that he, and presumably many other fishermen, used to add DDT to ordinary antifouling paint before applying it with a paint brush, also full of ignorance, to their hulls. Dave Newman goes on to say that "the problem with this EPA stuff is that they are full of all these green do-gooders who have no idea of the cost of marine growth, it's only marine growth, so what's the problem?" Well, if a "green do-gooder" is someone who cares about what goes into our oceans and soils, then I am one of them. And I am also very aware of the cost of running a boat with a fouled bottom. Concerns about the use of DDT started way back in the 1940s, but it took until 1989 to ban its use in New Zealand due to "negative environmental impacts". It was used extensively on farms and around domestic gardens, with around 500 tons being applied annually by 1959. By then, evidence was coming in from overseas of the detrimental effects DDT was having on the environment, causing it to be banned in Hungary in 1968. Norway and Sweden soon followed and banned it in 1970, the United States in 1972 and the United Kingdom in 1984. DDT is one of those nasty chemicals (another is mercury) that are bioaccumulative (the rate of intake is greater than the rate of its excretion), and there was increasing evidence in New Zealand in the 1970s that there were DDT residues in fresh water fish, such as trout and eels, due to the run off from farms. With a half-life of 2–15 years, DDT residue in the soil on farms was also being ingested by animals, and in the 1980s some 40 percent of the lambs in Canterbury had DDT levels that were above the European Union's permitted levels. But farms also have run-offs into coastal waters where our aquatic life has no choice but to ingest whatever is in the sea. There are many other chemicals that we use, both on the land and our boats, that are also bioaccumulative, and one really wouldn't want to be eating fish that have been caught in Auckland Harbour, for example, or anywhere that is close to run-offs from agricultural or industrial areas. We have a friend who has a PhD in marine biology and who has to perform autopsies on whales and dolphins, as well as other marine life. About three years ago, she performed an autopsy on a whale that had been killed by a ship strike. She found that both Dear Sir Recently you published a nice story written by Mike Pignéguy about the Sea Scout Group on Waiheke. I am involved with the group on Waiheke as a leader and past committee chairman. All involved, from the children to the leaders and families, are grateful for and proud of the kind words and promotion in your magazine. 8 Professional Skipper September/October 2013 Paul Walden, Waiheke Island GUILD OPINION Dear Sir I felt Chris Carey's letter 'MUNZ or Guild' [July/August issue] needed some kind of reply, so I have written one. I admire what you are doing as regards to the foreign vessel and crew issue. The majority of our members work for Sanford or Sealord and it would not be in their interests to attack these companies in the media. So we don't. I think the way forward is for the government to push the fishing companies to train and employ more young New Zealanders and that's the message we keep pushing to the politicians. Let's hope they really do something about it this time. Sean McCann, National President NZ Fishing Industry Guild I agree Sean, however, the level of involvement both the named companies have with FCV and crewing still remains of concern, especially when fishing Maori quota, and we have young Maori out of work. Because of its size we have published your letter as an "Opinion" piece on page 39 Ed… RAG BAG Dear Sir The types of "INCIDENT" being reported to MNZ has now entered the realms of farce. "A trainee was ripping a T-shirt and struck his hand against a wooden wardrobe causing swelling in his hand". If the said T-shirt required that much force to be applied, it was clearly not ready to be consigned to the rag bag! P.W. Benson, Auckland OPEN LETTER Dear Sir Hello Lindsay [Tisch], I am taking the unusual step this morning of writing to you regarding this recent news that the National Party is proposing a 60 percent cut in the recreational share of the snapper fisheries... Cutting our snapper bag limit from its current nine fish to just three, while ensuring there is no www.skipper.co.nz