Our inshore commercial fishermen...what future?

Photo from Greenpeace

It's morning, just prior to sunrise. Mist clings to swannies and slides off white gumboots, enjoying the last few moments before its rosy, inexorable decline begins. The wharf creaks underfoot, the water slapslapslaps against disintegrating wharf piles bedecked with old car tyres. The moisture in the air muffles clanking chains and gruff voices as the Emma Jane casts off from her mooring. This is a fisherman's world. Pre-dawn, they have it all to themselves, cocooned in a misty shell. They'll be gone before the sun robs them of their cloak, returning fish-spattered tomorrow...or perhaps they won't be back for two or three days. Their mission? They're dead set on mass murder. Ironically, it's mass murder that's the life-blood of communities. There's a whole culture set around this way of life. A steady income, a trade to pick up, a common goal, something to keep families in one place and communities ticking over.

In the 1980's it was deemed that the mass murder taking place was unsustainable. The quota management system was put in place and the stats say that in many cases, fish stocks have recovered to some degree. Quotas, levies, tradable fishing rights available to the highest bidder. A booming recreational fishery taking bigger and bigger slices of the cake. Small-town fishermen have been hit hard. Quota is now owned in the most part by large companies. For the small players, leasing quota from the big blokes is now uneconomic. Once-sustainable small-time commercial fishermen in local ports are leaving town or running charters for holiday makers. You don't need quota for that. Fish stocks are now in the hands of big companies, far removed from the small communities that once depended on fishing for their livlihood. Profits go straight to the cities. What does it matter to the big Auckland businessman that a fish population in the southern South Island is wiped out for a few years? Why should they worry that the small fishing settlements now have no way to support themselves, and hence are slowly turning into bach communities for the rich?

There's a little settlement I know of, a wee way up the coast. Fantastic history...Maori strong-hold, ex-whaling port (you can almost hear the cries and smell the blubber boiling), summer holiday-makers paradise (Tip-Top icecream from the 4-Square, anyone?). Above all, fishing port. In it's heyday, there were dozens of small boats. Even in my childhood there were the fishsheds, manned by Fay, punts lined up colourfully along the slipway. Bill, John, the Te Mai boys, Tobe, Ken, Goose, to name just a few. Cray-pots in stacks in front of every house. Now, the fishshed's gone - in its place, a restaurant. This year, I'm told, there are just two boats commercialling out of the bay. It's idyllic, says the successful big-time businessman who's just bought a few properties up there. Used to be a bit of a backwater, he says, shaking his head.

The Emma Jane chugs away and soon I'm alone, cocooned by mist dyed blood red by rising sun. A salty slapslapslap inches below me, tide tugging at heartstrings. The toot of an early morning loopy - I reluctantly make way for his Jetski to enter the water.