Fishery facts

Of New Zealand’s 75 commercial fisheries assessed:

75 have no management plan
26 are over-fished or there has been a substantial decline in stocks
51 cause habitat damage
42 kill significant numbers of seabirds
45 kill a significant number of marine mammals
64 catch too much non-target fish
58 cause adverse ecological effects
44 have never had a stock assessment
13 have had a full stock assessment in the last 10 years (some showed that little was known about the state of the stocks)
8 have had quantitative stock assessments which are more than 10 years old
18 have had only a partial stock assessment in the last 10 years

Every year 2,000 commercial fishing vessels fish in New Zealand waters:
* Catching 550,000 tonnes of fish
* Setting 10,000 km of nets
* Setting 50 million hooks
* Making 90,000 trawls
* Making 90,000 dredge tows
This adds up to industrial scale pressures on fish and the wider marine environment.

This page was updated on 7 November, 2007