STET Ltd opposes all proposed amendments to the Fisheries Act. The changes prioritise commercial interests over ecosystem health, weaken regulatory oversight, and reduce public accountability. Key concerns include:
- Multi-year catch decisions and management procedures: Reduce scientific scrutiny, ignore environmental variability, and risk locking in unsustainable harvest levels.
- Low-information stock management: Lacks robust ecological data and invites industry bias.
- Rebuild periods: Allow economic factors to delay recovery of depleted stocks.
- Non-extractive values: Are overlooked, including ecological roles and non-commercial cultural practices.
- Voluntary sustainability measures: Are unenforceable and exclude recreational/customary conservation efforts.
- ACE carry forwards and deemed value threshold changes: Undermine sustainability and enable quota banking.
- On-board camera proposals: Removing footage from OIA and weakening camera use reduces transparency and compliance.
- Discard and landing rules: Erode sustainability by enabling increased discards, higher juvenile mortality, and underreporting.
STET urges Fisheries New Zealand to adopt science-led, precautionary, and ecosystem-based management that upholds public interest over industry lobbying.