legal and contractual adjustments required to bring the changes into force. Well and good, but what about the damage in the intervening four years?
Compliance with QMS and labour rules is always going to be hard unless the enforcing authorities actually do some enforcing. How is that possible without the presence of those authorities on all boats 24/7? Lea Clough was at the NZ Federation of Commercial Fishermen's conference in 2011 and reported hearing: "…a presentation by an American crab fisherman (on electronic observer coverage). Constant and mandatory, it was not expensive and provided benefits such as elimination of burgling others' pots and provision of complete fine-scale data which belonged to the fishermen, that Government and research organisations had to buy from them."
Great! Compliance and additional income for the fishermen. So why isn't this already in place? New Zealand fishermen don't often stand side by side with
organisations like Forest and Bird, but on this issue they do. In a press release F&B's Katrina Subedar congratulated the government for its decision to re-flag foreign fishing vessels operating in New Zealand waters, but said the move "…will not bring environment benefits until it solves non-compliance problems". Andrew Talley suggested that changing the FCV charters from Time Charter to the Demise Charter model, where the charterer becomes the employer of the master and crew, bringing all the fishermen on to a level playing field under New Zealand employment and other laws. They would also be paying ACC, PAYE, and generally contributing to the Kiwi tax take.
In combination with electronic observer coverage, the Demise Charter seems to provide an elegant solution to the problem. The next question is, can New Zealand rebuild its fleets in next few years?
Deep water fishing vessels available for charter are plentiful internationally so vessels are not the problem. Our weakness is, a decade or so of not training New Zealand crew. But then again foreign crews aren't all that well trained either so it should not be that hard to train New Zealanders.
The multi-billion dollar revenue generated from a Kiwi manned and operated fleet would be a pleasant fillip to this country's income, to say nothing of the dignity of getting unemployed kiwis off the dole and becoming real, contributing, members of society. And what if we can't charter and man the boats, and there is a delay in the re-rationalisation of New Zealand fleet with a temporary associated loss of capacity to catch fish? Editor, Keith Ingram suggests the fish aren't going to go away. "They will only reproduce and increase in numbers, increasing the value of our deepwater investment in preparation for when the New Zealand boats do, tap into it." Which has got to be good for the sustainability of the fishery.
Slurs and implications of slavery have the potential to destroy not only our fisheries markets, but forseeably, international markets for all the country's produce and exports. The centrepiece of our international marketing image is after all, predicated on our reputation of a "clean, green", friendly, country. If you need an example of how negative publicity impacts on market prices, you only have to go to the share price of New Zealand's only publically listed fishing company, Sanfords. In the two years the FCV issue has been running, their share price has slipped from a high of $5.65 in April 2011, to $3.80 in December, although it has gained a few cents since then. "It's time to stop pussy-footing around and confront the problem directly. Governmental window-dressing doesn't cut the mustard. Those last nine of the inquiry review's findings need to be implemented now," says Keith Ingram.
July/August 2012 Professional Skipper 39
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