Recommendations

Recommendations

1. We welcome the appointment of an Oceans and Fisheries Minister and Under-Secretary to ensure cohesive oversight of all marine activities within Aotearoa New Zealand’s territorial sea and EEZ. This will allow holistic management of the marine domain and productive, sustainable fisheries.

1. The Oceans and Fisheries Minister might lead development of an Oceans Strategic Action Plan to provide ongoing strategic oversight for the marine domain (see Theme 2).
2. The Oceans and Fisheries Minister might facilitate multi-party conversations to build a culture of trust and collaboration in the marine domain, taking a Treaty-based approach that is inclusive of all Māori and non-Māori (essential for Theme 2).
3. As a first step, the Oceans and Fisheries Minister might prioritise immediate evidence-informed actions to protect the marine environment within the provisions of the Fisheries Act 1996 (see Theme 2 and Theme 6).

Recommendations

2. Develop a bold Oceans Strategic Action Plan for 2040 to protect and manage Aotearoa New Zealand’s territorial sea and EEZ, with a clear integrative framework to prioritise, coordinate, implement and measure outcomes to achieve 100% sustainably managed oceans.

The panel recognised that such a plan is beyond its Terms of Reference. The following recommendations pertain to the commercial fisheries aspects of such a plan and could be enacted ahead of a larger look at the oceans:

1. Through a Treaty-based and multi-stakeholder approach, develop an evidence-informed action plan that agrees upon the definition and role of an ecosystem approach to fisheries management in Aotearoa New Zealand and how it can be achieved within the context of the Quota Management System (QMS) and a changing climate (see Theme 6).
2. Provide a clear framework for annual reporting, decision making, future planning, and lead agency responsibility to coordinate all efforts in this space, including providing clarity around the roles of local and central government, Treaty partners and kaitiaki in fisheries and biodiversity management (see Theme 6).
3. Set an expectation that any fisheries-related plans, when created or revised, must specify how they will progress the objectives of the Oceans Strategic Action Plan and demonstrate progress against this in annual review reports (see Theme 6).
4. Include actions to support the move from volume to value in commercial fisheries through full product utilisation and a premium brand associated with Aotearoa New Zealand (see Theme 7).
5. Clearly prioritise actions across a multi-year programme, starting with those that can be achieved in the short term in an evidence-informed manner to protect the marine environment within the provisions of the Fisheries Act 1996 (see Theme 6).

Recommendations

3. Building on the other themes, acknowledge that successful application of an ecosystem approach to fisheries management must take a holistic, long-term approach that considers future generations.

1. Explicitly address cumulative effects and the interconnected nature of ecosystems and mitigate other stressors on fisheries, beyond commercial fishing including:

1. Land-based impacts, especially sediment from forestry and land-use changes
2. Climate change
3. Plastics
4. Disease and invasive species
5. Recreational fishing
6. Aquaculture
7. Population pressure and growing population
8. Mining and the energy sector.

Recommendations

4. Refine the regulatory framework for fisheries management to support more responsive and transparent decision making to improve fisheries and environmental outcomes.

1. Improve the processes for input and engagement in fisheries management, particularly in regards to undertaking effective iwi and stakeholder engagement, public involvement, and adequate checks and balances.
2. Improve transparency through increasing the accessibility of information used to inform decision making, including data collected by and for the regulator (see Theme 5).
3. Enable the increased use of observational and localised community knowledge, mātauranga Māori and fishers’ observations in regulatory decision making, ensuring there are appropriate processes to corroborate and validate data (see Theme 5).
4. Develop a mechanism to ensure that all relevant research is incorporated into regulatory decision making (see Theme 5).
5. Include a step within formal decision-making processes that ground truths quantitative modelling results against real-world observations as far as practicable.
6. Support operationalisation of an ecosystem approach to fisheries management to improve environmental outcomes by utilising data from existing electronic collections and expanding data collection where practicable (see Theme 5 and Theme 6).
7. Empower fishers to innovate to enable them to improve environmental outcomes (see Theme 7).
8. Continue to update the process behind setting and updating the deemed value of species within the Quota Management System to make it more responsive to short-term changes in species abundance and distribution, to avoid either perverse incentives to discard catch or incentives to catch in spite of penalties.
9. Develop a dashboard to present the Fisheries New Zealand Stock Assessment Plenary Annual Report and Aquatic Environment and Biodiversity Annual Review information to more clearly showcase new data and knowledge and important data and knowledge gaps.
10. Support development of mechanisms to increase consumers’ ability to access traceability information on fish and fish products.

Recommendations

5. Cultivate a data platform that facilitates integration of data from a range of sources, compiles datasets in an accessible centralised platform, and turns them into information that can be readily applied in fisheries management and other areas of the marine domain, including state-of-the-art environmental reporting (see Theme 2).

Specific to commercial fisheries:

1. Work across government and with stakeholders to develop common data standards for the centralised data platform and reporting of ocean-related data and open data agreements.
2. Aggregate existing datasets from within and outside government, determine data gaps, and provide detailed prioritisation of efforts to fill gaps for:

1. Fish stocks (number of stocks and frequency of assessment)
2. Habitat, especially the seafloor
3. Biodiversity
4. Marine invasive species
5. Protected marine species
6. Sedimentation
7. Ocean climate and acidification
8. Litter.

3. Link and integrate relevant fisheries datasets to enable timelier, spatially explicit analysis of fisheries interactions with protected species. This will include linking and integrating fishers’ electronic reporting with the protected species bycatch data from observers (data about seabird, marine mammal, shark, coral bycatch).
4. Enable more timely monitoring and risk assessment of protected species bycatch by ensuring bycatch data flows into quantitative risk assessment models, so that managers can see bycatch hotspots and monitor impact on priority protected species in close to real time (see Theme 6).
5. Engage with industry for the purposes of establishing an industry-wide agreement around sharing non-sensitive aggregated data with regulators, e.g. seafloor mapping (see Theme 6). Enable open and proactive use.
6. Collaborate with and enable industry and others to fill data gaps where appropriate (see Theme 7).
7. Increase opportunistic collection of data, e.g. through fishers, citizen science and ships of opportunity (see Theme 7.g).
8. Include data, research and local knowledge gathered outside the formal government process in the centralised data platform, including from:

1. Local and regional councils
2. Research institutes, universities, other formal institutes
3. Iwi and community groups
4. Citizen science
5. Video
6. Emerging technologies e.g. environmental DNA (eDNA).

9. Incorporate key trends from local government reporting within annual reporting (such as the Fisheries New Zealand Stock Assessment Plenary annual report and Aquatic Environment and Biodiversity Annual Review).

Recommendations

6. Within the current regulatory framework, transition Aotearoa New Zealand’s fisheries management system to an ecosystem approach through supporting and resourcing the expansion and uptake of wider ecosystem monitoring and driving a shift towards more ecosystem-friendly fishing methods. In the longer term, the Oceans Strategic Action Plan should facilitate and define a shared understanding of what an ecosystem approach to fisheries might encompass and what this approach aims to achieve within the context of Aotearoa New Zealand’s fisheries management (see Theme 2).

In the shorter term:

1. Create a framework for prioritisation and protection of Habitats of Particular Significance for Fisheries Management (see 9(c) of Fisheries Act 1996) and review barriers to usage. Produce guidance documentation for the definition and identification of Habitats of Particular Significance for Fisheries Management (see 9(c) of Fisheries Act 1996) and required evidence base.
2. Support research that advances application of an ecosystem approach to fisheries management, such as how species, including bycatch, interact to form a functional ecosystem (see Theme 7).
3. Develop a set of national marine ecosystem indicators and establish long-term monitoring (including habitat, bycatch and taonga species) to better inform implementation of an ecosystem approach to fisheries management with clear goals.
4. Secure funding and commitment for the long-term monitoring to be established and maintained.
5. Review best practice international approaches to national marine ecosystem indicators and incorporate relevant learnings into the Aotearoa New Zealand context.
6. Define and implement an effective ecosystem protection regime in fisheries management.
7. Support the development of alternative fishing methods (see Theme 7).
8. In partnership with iwi, industry and environmental NGOs, develop approaches and incentivise innovation to minimise or eliminate adverse effects of fishing gear (e.g. full contact bottom trawling and dredging) on benthic habitats. E.g. further restrict the areas trawled, switch to less damaging gear when available, focus on developing new technology where less damaging gear is not currently available (see Theme 7).
9. Review and prioritise restoration approaches for damaged habitats (see Theme 3 and Theme 7.a.iii).

Recommendations

7. Take a more holistic and strategic approach to research and innovation in the marine domain to enable innovation to thrive and support more sustainable fishing (see Theme 3).

1. Undertake a comprehensive review of fisheries research funding and establish a funding and research strategic action plan, including:

1. Clear prioritisation of research questions to be answered, and technology to be explored, to inform and be informed by the Oceans Strategic Action Plan (see Theme 2).
2. Clarity on the role of industry levy funding and government funding.
3. Resource and incentivise the development and use of fishing methods that are more selective and reduce adverse impacts on the marine environment, particularly on benthic habitat and marine protected species (see Theme 6.i).
4. Investment in methods that improve the efficiency of assessment of fish stocks.
5. Prioritisation of real-time risk management (e.g. avoiding protected species), increasing value through innovations in processing and by-product development, and innovations that support more cost-effective data collection at a lower fisher burden.
6. Support for research to fill key data gaps, particularly the basic biology of commercial fish species.

2. Review the pathway to testing new fishing methods to reduce the barriers to enable innovation in trawl technology and other fishing methods.
3. Invest in and incentivise innovation in environmental protection, prioritising research that enables bottom trawls to fish lighter (see Theme 6.i).
4. Develop clear pathways and remove barriers for fishers to be involved in research and innovation, including support with applying for funding.
5. Fast track the special permit processes to enable innovative new methods to be trialled, with key requirements to gather data and evidence of effectiveness of new methods (see Theme 5).
6. Create and support a researcher/industry collaborative platform for accelerating innovation and its implementation, as well as innovation from existing companies.
7. Support citizen science projects in the marine domain and guide data collection efforts to meet the Tier 1 standard so that data can feed into government reporting and decision making (see Theme 5).
8. Support development of tertiary training focused on fisheries management science.