Fisheries are one of the few productive sectors which most developed countries still run along nationalistic lines. Generally only financially desperate third-world governments open up their fisheries to foreign vessels. An exception to this is New Zealand, which as part of its apathetic attitude to fishing resources and later a neoliberal commitment to free trade, has allowed foreign vessels from around the world to fish in its territorial waters since the late 1970s.
Initially foreign vessels were allowed into New Zealand waters to fish for deep-sea species which local fishermen were unable or unwilling to fish for. However, after a collapse in numbers of deep-water species such as Orange Roughy in the 1980s, a quota system was introduced which meant foreign vessels were only permitted to fish for quota on behalf of New Zealand companies.
Unfortunately there are two standards when it comes to policing this quota system. New Zealand-run ships are carefully policed by on-board fisheries officers, but foreign vessels are often left totally un-supervised. The reason for this lapse monitoring of foreign vessels was revealed in a programme entitled the Great New Zealand Fishing Scandal which aired on the Documentary Channel earlier this week.
Apparently, conditions on many of the foreign-owned vessels from countries such as Thailand, Myanmar and Russia are so bad that New Zealand Fisheries Officers refuse to stay on them for health and safety reasons. Subsequently, we have little idea if these boats are confirming to local regulations or not. And even when it is proven that they are breaching fisheries regulations, it is often easier for them to pay the relatively modest fines than abide by the rules.
Defenders of the current system, argue that New Zealand wouldn't need to employ foreign vessels if New Zealand were willing to go and get the fish themselves, rather than rely on keener, harder-working foreigners to do the job for them. However, this doesn' t really apply when you are taking about a shrinking resource for which demand is increasing. Even if New Zealanders under-exploit the resource in the short-term, this isn't really a serious problem as the resource will therefore last longer, and the total value of fish taken in dollar terms will be higher, as a fish not caught today can be caught and sold for a higher price tomorrow. And in any case, that's likely to be an academic problem, as there are now sufficient New Zealand boats around to catch the existing quota (which has recently been cut dramatically for many species) without needing to call on foreign vessels.
The end result of this rash experiment in laissez-faire fisheries management is that many New Zealand fisherman are unable to compete with foreign vessels and hundreds have left the country for jobs in better managed fisheries in Australia and North America.
For a developed country with a small population of 4 million people, and thousands of kilometres of relatively unpolluted coastline, this is a situation of third-world incompetence.
Former Labour prime-minister David Lange once had the audacity to say New Zealand was run like a Polish shipyard. However, in the case of fisheries, he and successors have turned it into the equivalent of a Nigerian shipyard.
