After watching what was described as ‘damning evidence & dramatic footage of the fishing industry’ on Netflix’s movie ‘Seaspiracy’, Sarah finds out if there is any truth about what could be happening in New Zealand seafood boats & salmon farms.
In this week’s Sarah’s Country’s Opinion Maker, we uncover the facts to fish farming that are so far from those painted in the documentary it was reclassified to a movie!
Seafood NZ Communications Manager, Lesley Hamilton explains:
There are 169 species commercially fished in New Zealand producing 450,000 tonnes of seafood bringing in $2 billion in export value.
The 2006 study that said the seas will be fished out by 2048 has been discredited multiple
NZ is considered in the top five sustainable fisheries in the world with our quota management system as the Ministry for Primary Industry counts the fish stocks And we do that by actually counting the fish every year. We are currently sitting 91% of all fish landed in New Zealand from the stocks that are assessed as being sustainable.
New technology such as precision seafood harvesting, seabird mitigation with torey lines, sinkers and coloured dye on the bait distracting the birds from the nets
The entire fleet of NZ seafood vessels will be fitted with cameras but concerns and consultation on the privacy of the footage.
NZ King Salmon CEO, Grant Rosewarne explains:
NZ King Salmon produces 15,000 tonnes/per annum which is 1% of the world’s salmon which is a type of fish that doesn’t get sea lice and is sustainable due to our natural advantages.
Their feed is sustainable by not feeding on marine sources and is close as possible to what they would eat in the wild in terms of nutrition requirements from vegetable protein and off-cuts from beef along with algal oils
Most of the farms are in high flow, high oxygen areas and situated over mudflats and as an effect of having salmon farms, there aremore nutrients in the water that leads to an abundance of native species around the farm.
He worries about inequity out there in terms of misinformation versus facts. It’s easy to cast aspersions and throw mud, but it can be hard to correct.
“We actually got a fine on one occasion for having too many native species in too great abundance at one of our farms, which we go, well, if this was a dairy farm and there were too many Kiwi birds would a dairy farmer get a fine for that? Sustainable aquaculture is one of the most sustainable ways of producing animal protein on the planet as we have a net positive increase in biodiversity,” explains Grant Rosewarne.
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