Māui and Hector’s Dolphin Defenders is the only
charity dedicated to the preservation, protection and
recovery of New Zealand’s endemic dolphins. Formally
established in 2012 but operating for around 25 years, the
group’s members have been involved in the development of
every Māui and Hector’s dolphins Threat Management Plan
(TMP).
“Māui and Hector’s Dolphin Defenders commend
the Environmental Law Initiative on its Judicial Review of
the 2020 Māui and Hector’s dolphins Threat Management Plan
announced today (10 April) because the Government’s
decisions were unlawful. Decision makers put the anecdotal
and speculative views of the fishing industry before their
legal obligations to protect Māui and Hector’s dolphins.
These decisions were also unacceptable, and
immoral.”
Dolphin Defenders founder and Chair,
Christine Rose, says, “We know every TMP has failed to do
its job, to actually manage the threats to Māui and
Hector’s dolphins, because they are still being wiped out
by the fishing industry.”
The Department of
Conservation Incident Database shows at least 26 Hector’s
dolphins killed by trawl and set nets since the adoption of
the last TMP. Though Rose says this figure is probably
higher because cameras on boats were only rolled out in
2023, not all boats have cameras, and not all footage is
reviewed.
“These dolphin deaths were avoidable, but
with the TMP they were inevitable, because decision makers
handed the solutions to bycatch problems to the fishing
industry, which caused them. The TMP allows trawl and set
nets, proven to kill, within the dolphins’ range, causing
suffering, deaths, and decimation of dolphins”, says Mrs
Rose. “The Government played the industry hand in a mortal
game where the dolphins were the losers.”
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Māui and
Hector’s Dolphin Defenders made submissions and provided
briefings to Ministers in the development of the TMP. “We
used expert advice to point out that the industry proposals
would lead to more dolphin deaths. The industry recommended
fishing methods – low headline heights and slow trawl
speeds, which were adopted by the Government and included in
the TMP. These allow trawling to continue just hundreds of
metres from shore – key Hector’s habitat -and have been
involved in at least half the subsequent fishing-related
deaths. The industry’s ‘solutions’ kill Hector’s
dolphins”.
“It’s even worse, that in at least
four cases, fishing boats that have killed Hector’s
dolphins have gone back out and killed more.”
The
deaths of a heavily pregnant female and her female, unborn
calf, along with another female, in Kaikoura, and two
dolphins off Otago from a population of only 41, plus the
eight killed off Timaru, and all the other deaths in the
time of this TMP, are a direct result of Ministerial
weakness and regulatory capture where the industry wrote the
rules and the Government adopted them.
When the
fishing industry kills female dolphins it amplifies the
death knell which rings for the whole species, because it
takes out present, and future generations. These impacts
were not taken into account in the development of the TMP
and the setting of Fishing Related Mortality Limits, says
Mrs Rose.
That unhealthy neglect of obligations to
dolphin sustainability continues apace, with the delay of
the Hector’s dolphin Bycatch Reduction Plan Annual Report,
years overdue. The present Minister, Shane Jones reckons
there are no such thing as Māui dolphins, a line parrotted
by the industry. Meanwhile Jones is working on weakening the
Fisheries Act based on recommendations from the Seafood
Industry Forum.
Rose says, “Nothing but exclusion of
indiscriminate fishing methods in dolphin habitat will stop
dolphins needlessly being killed, and save subpopulations
and the wider species from
extinction”.
