Moana New Zealand is the largest Iwi-owned kaimoana company with the largest inshore quota volume and value in Aotearoa. We are unique in that we are the only organisation owned by all 58 iwi across the motu. We manage the commercial fishing assets guaranteed to Iwi through the Māori Fisheries Act. The nature of the Settlement means that Māori will always be involved in fisheries and our activities and investments have a long-term perspective that is respectful of fisheries and the ecosystems of which we are part. Our assets can never be sold.
Dividends are paid to Mandated Iwi Organisations annually, which in turn are used by Iwi to fund their own social agendas such as health and education initiatives. We take an inter-generational approach to the health of our fisheries, and want to ensure a biodiverse and thriving marine environment that supports sustainable fish stocks.
We are pleased the Government has proposed making slight updates to the Fisheries Act 1996, which will ensure the country’s legislation remains fit-for-purpose, transparent, responsive, efficient and uses a common-sense approach to decision-making for the future of our fisheries.
As a courtesy to our shareholders and others interested in our position in the Proposed Amendments to the Fisheries Act, we provide a high-level summary below.
- Moana supports the proposal for multi-year catch decisions as it achieves the desired outcomes for creating more responsiveness, certainty and efficiency within the system. Public consultation should remain as part of the sustainability rounds, with flexibility to allow decisions to be reconsidered should there be signals of a sustainability risk.
- We support the proposed management procedures to enable the Minister for Oceans and Fisheries to set out when, why and how catch limits for fish stocks would be adjusted. The Minister should be able to approve these procedures up to five years—this creates certainty for our industry enabling longer-term planning and outlook.
- We support the opportunity for the Minister to consider socio-economic factors when setting or altering catch limits. Any opportunity to enhance the mauri of the moana is welcome when making sustainability decisions. This includes the social, cultural and economic factors relevant to the decision-making process.
- We encourage robust and meaningful engagement with us, Iwi and Te Ohu Kaimoana alongside other stakeholders in the development of management procedures to ensure kaitiakitanga and rangatiratanga are supported in relation to our fisheries.
- Moana has proactively placed cameras on board all of our contract trawlers since 2015, before legislative changes required them for compliance in 2025, and used them to verify activities at sea. We are keen to see cameras utilised to their full potential in aiding in even better fisheries management. We firmly support and have long advocated for camera footage to be excluded from the provisions of the OIA. Cameras are just one tool to ensure we operate with care, and one we want to see developed responsibly by Government as this technology has the potential to encroach on our contract fishers’ personal lives during their time aboard vessel and expose intellectual property.
- We support the monitored return of QMS species to the water from which they were taken if the returns are monitored by an observer or on-board camera system and counted against ACE. This is an excellent way to leverage on-board cameras to deliver fisheries management benefits and reduce costs and fish going to landfill. This removes any ambiguity on reporting and is a pragmatic approach to ensure that all returns whether live or dead made under a monitored programme.