NEWSLETTER

Spring 2007

 Hi All,

Hope this finds you warm and dry after the stormy winter. Much has happened since our last newsletter and in this one we include reports on:

·         Our first meeting with the Minister of Fisheries, Jim Anderton

·         SANZ meeting with Paul Creswell Policy Advisor, MFish and others at Seafic.

·         Seaweed Mapping Project

·         Hongoeka Project

·         SANZ Membership Widening

·         International Seaweed Symposium 2007

·         SANZ Annual General Meeting

 

Meeting with Jim Anderton

Attending: Hon Jim Anderton, James Palmer (Minister’s Executive Assistant), Suzie (Secretary) Jill Bradley SANZ: Tim Haggit SANZ; Kate Bartram Shoal Ltd: Paul Creswell Ministry of Fisheries

This meeting was held to discuss releasing the economic and regional development potential of seaweed. The Minister had been briefed on the LMS management paper prepared by SANZ earlier.

SANZ gave a brief introduction emphasizing that industry development was being held up by the permit moratorium. And the first step was to put in place an appropriate management strategy. 

The Minister provided comment on the LMS management paper and identified key issues.

  • The need for perpetual property right allocation to provide economic efficiency
  • Local area based licensing was not an easy fit with the Fisheries Act and may create issues with the Foreshore and Seabed Act and the Treaty of Waitangi Settlement which requires an allocation of property rights to Maori.
  • Policy difference on the management approach i.e. QMS is the preferred framework.

 

The meeting was both positive and productive. The Minister supported the notion of a joint working group approach. 

Mfish has started the first step of a Fisheries Plan for seaweed which will attempt to collect all information on seaweed biology, ecology and profiles of different users. This document should be finished at the end of this month.

SANZ will be helping to circulate this document in order to get as many stakeholder groups involved in the forming of a sustainable and ecologically sound management frame work.

 

Please keep an eye on the website and keep in touch for up-to-date information regarding this opportunity.

 

SANZ Meeting in Wellington

Earlier this year members of the SANZ Exec met with Paul Creswell for an update on what the Ministry is doing regarding seaweed.

Paul informed SANZ that the Ministry was preparing some 19 separate Fisheries Plans over the next 5 years. He advised that as seaweed was currently a low value fishery and seaweed was the ‘hard one’ work on a seaweed fishery plan is unlikely to start for some 3-5 years. The current moratorium restrictions would apply until such time as a Fisheries Plan and a management framework for seaweed is in place.

We were pleased to also have Daryl Sykes, Rock Lobster Organisation, speak to us. He was both inspirational and highly knowledgeable as he has worked on the frontline developing a Fisheries Plan for Rock Lobsters. Daryl advised us to go ahead and develop the seaweed industry the best way we can, even under the moratorium. Also, to develop our own Fishery Plan as we will be waiting for a long time for the Ministry.

 

Seaweed mapping project seen as boon for fisheries

A seaweed mapping project in southern waters could be the first step in developing more rational and sustainable fisheries, National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) scientists said.

A NIWA team has just finished an investigation into mapping seaweed on the shores of Dusky Sound and Stewart Island.

In the December edition of the crown research institute's Water and Atmosphere publication, NIWA staff members Reyn Naylor, Rob Stewart and Dr Russell Cole explain how they would be analysing data from the study to gain a greater understanding of the processes that shape the make-up and productivity of New Zealand's reef systems.

In some commercial fisheries, such as paua, there was an increasing awareness that management of species needed to be done on a smaller spatial scale, they said.

"This is because there is often a lot of variation in growth and reproduction parameters between different areas, sometimes separated by as little as a few hundred metres." Mapping the areas could help develop more rational and sustainable harvesting regimes, they say.

"This understanding has the potential to vastly improve the sustainable management of our coasts."

Seaweeds provided habitats for many crustaceans and fish, and a food source for kina, paua and other herbivores. Documenting the distribution of seaweed and the physical and biological processes involved in its creation was fundamental to understanding New Zealand's coastal sub-tidal ecology.

Fine-scale analysis of the data collected would need to be analysed before any conclusions were reached, they said.

Southern Paua Management Council chairman Storm Stanley said information was everything when it came to making decisions about the management of a fishery and the council supported any research aimed at increasing knowledge. "We think it's a bloody good idea."

It made good sense for the industry to embrace initiatives that would benefit the fishery in the long term, he said.

Story by Phill Mccarthy – Southland Times

Further information on mapping the dusky sounds can be found at: www.niwascience.co.nz/pubs/wa/14-4/seaweeds

 

A First in Land-based Polyculture

 

A unique land-based polyculture system is up and running near Porirua, creating an exciting new enterprise for the local Iwi. The venture is collaboration between NIWA and Hongoeka Development Ltd., a company set up to represent local Māori land owners.

After four years of research, funded by the Foundation for Research, Science & Technology, a system based on paua and karengo red seaweed) was selected. Iwi members built the unit on coastal land near Plimmerton, and have been trained by NIWA to manage the system, with 30 000 baby paua now installed and growing well, and seaweed spores in culture at the site.


Hongoeka is the first NZ polyculture system to use paua as the main producer of waste; the karengo acts as a waste remover, extracting dissolved ammonia and nitrates from water before it is recycled.

The long-term goal is for the facility to be self-sufficient, provide employment, and eventually re-seed depleted wild paua stocks. The hope also is that the venture will evolve into a marine education facility,
both for other Māori interested in aquaculture, and the general public.

Phil Heath, NIWA

 

Membership Widening.

This newsletter is going out to members as per usual but also to a number of Seaweed stakeholders, including other Commercial fisheries, Environmental groups, Universities, Aquaculturists, Seaweed manufacturers and Harvesters.

We believe in getting all stakeholders together to provide a strong voice when we sit with the ministry in the future.

A letter was sent out via The Ministry of Fisheries to all permit holders earlier this year, some of which are already members. If you know of an organisation/group or person interested, why don’t you forward those SANZ details and web address? www.sanz.org.nz

The International Seaweed Symposium

 

19th International Seaweed Symposium was recently held in Kobe, Japan in March 2007. It was attended by 535 persons from 46 countries; The XXth Symposium will take place at the Instituto do Investigaciones Oceanologicas, Universidad Autónoma de Baja California, Ensenada, Mexico in summer 2010.

The XIXth Proceedings will be published in the Journal of Applied Phycology in 2007.

 

SANZ Annual General Meeting

 You are warmly invited to the SANZ Inc. AGM!

 This years Annual General Meeting will be held in Wellington at the Mahanga Bay Research site (NIWA), on the 29th of September 2007.

 The meeting will start at 9am and run till approx 2pm. Further details will be up on the SANZ Inc website shortly.

  Hope to see you all there.