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meets both these needs and many people are aware they should be eating fish more often. These two trends will help ensure the industry has a bright future. The difficulty for a number of countries, including New Zealand, is being able to harvest and process the fish we have in our water for a cost that allows the fishermen and companies to make enough profit to be able to attract talented individuals to work in the industry. What's Sealord's position and involvement regarding inshore fishing, and how does it relate to deep sea fishing operations? Sealord isn't involved in inshore fishing to any great extent and 96 percent of the quota holding Sealord has is for deep water species. There is often confusion about our role inshore, which impacts us negatively. I would invite people with questions about this aspect of our operations to contact us directly. What are your thoughts on how to get New Zealanders involved in the fishing industry? Fishing is a very passionate and emotive industry to be involved in, and this helps ensure that there is a quorum of New Zealanders looking to work for Sealord and other fishing businesses. However, similar to other manufacturing industries, it is becoming harder to attract young people to work in what can, in some roles, be a very labour intensive job with the added complication in some instances of being at sea for relatively long periods of time. Sealord is now spending time ensuring that young people see the opportunities that exist in fishing for career development both at sea and on land. Sealord has a number of fishing skippers that started with the business as deck hands and have worked their way up to the top role on board our vessels. The industry and Sealord are more focussed on talking about the positive aspects to working in the industry and combating the more negative aspects that are often commented on in the media. In June this year, Thomas Harrison and skipper Rex Chapman hosted Wellington Career expo visitors on one of our boats (FV Thomas Harrison) to educate about working on a fishing trawler. These kinds of hands-on demonstrations are a positive way to encourage new talent to seek a career in fishing. Anyone who is interested in working for Sealord can read all about us and make contact through our website: visit www.sealord.co.nz Sealord has made the decision to withdraw from Argentina after making a significant investment… Argentina has been a difficult market to operate in with rampant inflation in operating costs and an ever deteriorating exchange rate. The fishing itself has been okay, however, when the costs of fishing outweigh the potential returns with no light at the end of the tunnel, the business had to make a decision. That decision is to exit the Argentinean business, which will require a writedown of our assets in Argentina. Will this incur further cost to shareholders? No, apart from the writedown of assets there will be no further cash injection required from shareholders or the company. Given that iwi are 50 percent owners of Sealord and there was an original intent by government when allocating the assets to encourage greater Maori participation in our fisheries, especially young Maori, what is Sealord now doing to get Maori involved with www.skipper.co.nz the industry and on boats? Sealord is looking to also use our new iwi fishing platform of "Ihu to Mai" to build closer relationships that will enable Sealord to look to employ more Maori youth and talent into our business. Currently we are working on scholarships to the Westport Fishing school as well as how we can tap into iwi to support our efforts during the hoki season as we employ close to 200 additional workers during the May-September season. We hope that this might work in with other seasonal work that a number of iwi members currently are employed in. "Ihu to Mai" offers iwi the ability to come fishing with Sealord in a joint venture. Quota assets are matched tonne for tonne and the fishing operation is managed together with all the profits from the fish caught within the joint venture shared equally. This type of programme is important as we move into the future and consumers look for assurance that the fish they are buying is being sustainably managed, so being a quota holding only is becoming more difficult. Getting the best value for the fishing assets that Maori own will inevitably require more involvement than merely leasing quota to others to catch and sell. How are Sealord and the industry managing the foreign charter vessel issues around fair pay and opportunity for New Zealanders? Sealord has had an involvement with the same three foreign charter vessels for over 20 years, and the crew and boats are treated in the same way as any other Sealord vessel or employee. They are paid at the same levels as New Zealand crew and are experts in their fields. Having been on board these vessels and in speaking with a number of the crew, some of whom have fished on the vessels for the entire time they have been in New Zealand, I am confident that there is no inequality in treatment of the crew or standards on board the vessels. In terms of opportunities for New Zealanders, Sealord is always looking for young and talented New Zealanders to join our crews or our land based businesses. We are conscious of the requirement to add to New Zealand's future and we take many opportunities to help ensure that we positively impact the youth of our country. As general manager of Sealord what are you doing to improve the way the fishing industry operates? Covering technology, training, safety, fisheries and quota management. Sealord is an active member of many industry bodies both in New Zealand and globally – where time and effort is spent ensuring that we manage our fisheries in the best possible manner and look after all our employees that work in our business. Each year we spend many millions of dollars that is contributed to the Government's fisheries programme to improve industry and scientific knowledge of our fisheries to make sure we can confidently assure our customers that we are managing our fisheries in a sustainable manner. Additionally, we undertake our own research. In the last 12 months Sealord has invested over a million dollars in an Acoustic Optical System that is helping improve our knowledge of orange roughy, which will significantly help in managing a fishery that has and will again, be a tremendous asset to New Zealand. Recently, Sealord has initiated a joint approach with Talley's and Sanford in thinking about safety to ensure that we are all providing the best opportunity for all our employees to leave work in the same health shape in which they arrived. Personally, I take a lot of time talking to our employees to understand what they believe is best for our business and for them. I find that a lot of good ideas come from those who are embedded everyday, working on our vessels and in our factories. September/October 2013 Professional Skipper 41