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illegal, in my mind, sure as hell does not make it at all moral or ethical. I was holding forth on this subject recently, about the rape of our reefs by gill nets, when one of the younger listeners chimed in with his thoughts about how awful the use of seiners and FADs are for the catching of tuna in the tropics. Oh dear, that is another touchy subject for me. My first introduction to the current Greenpeace-led charge towards the banning of FADs and seiners etc in preference to a more... I assume... tender and loving and humane method of catching tuna, namely poling, was to bump into a couple of young Greenpeace activists seeking petition signatures outside the Matamata Warehouse (of all places! Crikey, they DO get about, don't they!) It was pretty interesting actually, having some spotty young teenage lass trying to tell me all about the evils of seiner fishing for tuna, the nefariousness of using these FAD things, and how much better it is to use rod and lines to catch the fish one by one, which was how she described poling. I asked her how many seiners she had seen working. None. I asked her, how many poling boats had she seen working. None. Hells bells... how many FADs had she seen? None. Had she ever even been to the tropics, had she ever been on the sea even... Well... no. Holy cow. So, I took it upon myself to at least try to present an alternative viewpoint. FADs concentrate fish for capture. Great, this means the boats do not have to use more fuel to find the fish. Saves all those nasty carbons from being set free. However, my biggest point is, poling, that preferred method of catching tuna, is sheer dynamite on the local islands inshore fisheries. In order to supply plenty of small baitfish, used to chum the tuna up around the poling boats, every lagoon in the areas surrounding the poling boats' ports are swept clean of baitfish by the use of bright bait lights at night off small bait catching boats, fine mesh scoop nets being used to hoover up every small fish in the lagoons that get pulled in by the bright bait lights. In the huge Vonavona lagoon, (in the western provinces of the Solomon Islands, working out of the port of Noro, feeding the local Solomon Taiyo tuna cannery there) in the 1990's, it became darn hard to find any trevallies, coral trout, red bass, mackerel or mangrove jacks inside the lagoons, and increasingly as the decade went on, as more and more poling boats became operational, harder and harder to find fish outside the reefs too. Then, when the country went to the pack at the turn of the millennium, the cannery closed down for a while, the poling boats were abandoned as more efficient seiners moved in, and before long, we started to see a definite bounce in fish numbers in the lagoons again. the turn of the millennium the cannery closed down for a while the Now the baitfish are back, mangrove jack fishing is awesome now: the trevallies and red bass are there in great numbers again... it is awesome to see, and once again, the locals can actually feed their families off the fish found in their lagoons. Sure, the seiners have nailed the tuna up there, there really can be no denying it, we see nothing like the schools of tuna we once saw up there, however, without political controls on the licensing etc, frankly, that is not going to change. The huge difference now though, is that there is once again a pretty healthy amount of life to be found in the lagoons and inshore fisheries. Sadly, I do not think I managed to change the wee lass's mind. My story ran counter to the propaganda she had been fed, and as it was not The Correct Line, I was obviously wrong and could safely be ignored. So I am not totally anti-commercial fishing, not at all. But come on, we can chose to use methods that achieve the end result of catching enough fish, without raping and pillaging whole eco- systems. Baitfish harvesting for poling boats does this, and I oppose that. And bloody gill netting does the same to every fish habitat it is used on, and damn it, it should be banned as well. So OPC, if you are dealing with gillnetters I would suggest you stop. As for the skipper of the gillnetter in Whitianga, next time someone (not myself, but a well known and respected local charter boat operator) starts complaining about your modus operandi, I would also suggest you do not threaten to go out to target all the best recreational kingfish reefs and wipe them totally clean of every fish that swims, just out of sheer spite. Not a good look R.J. Welcome to my world, a paradise called for fishing, diving, surfing or just relaxing in the sun, visit ZIPOLO HABU RESORT ZIPOLO HABU RESORT Munda,Western Province, Solomon Islands. Visit our website at www.zipolohabu.com.sb Email zipolo@solomon.com.sb • Ph 00677-62178 or contact Captain Asparagus Email StuCawkerCapt.Asp@xtra.co.nz VIP.S79 November/December 2012 Professional Skipper 51 Forget taking family photos catching momentous memories like big kingies off the coromandel, thanks to gillnetters and OPC!