The sight and sounds of New Zealand's primary industries, like agriculture and horticulture, are never too far away. Pastures, fields, crops and stock yards are familiar to us. But it's not as easy to visualise our underwater commercial fishing footprint.
In a special video and data visualisation proudly brought to you by the Federation, we've taken spatial data sourced from the Ministry for Primary Industries and processed it with a 3D map programme to ‘drain the seas’ out to our 12 nautical mile inshore limit and show just how compact the inshore fishing trawl footprint is.
In New Zealand, trawling is necessary because many of our fish (like flatfish, snapper, tarakihi, gurnard and rig) live on or near the bottom of the ocean. They breed, grow and sustain a healthy population near the seafloor so we fish for them there – reliably, efficiently and cost-effectively. In fact, 70% of our commercial fish catches by volume are caught by trawling.
Like any type of food production, bottom trawling has an impact. Our responsibility is to keep that impact to a minimum. Here is how we do this:
Thirty-one percent of our 4 million-square-kilometre Exclusive Economic Zone is closed to bottom-contact fishing.
According to the Ministry for Primary Industries, our annual fishing footprint is under 3% of New Zealand’s waters – this encompasses our territorial sea, which goes out to 12 nautical miles, plus our Exclusive Economic Zone.
We continue to evolve our net technology to reduce impact. Our nets are now lighter. Larger mesh means that smaller fish swim out. We use innovative bycatch mitigation methods, in net-tech and on-deck, to protect seabirds and other marine mammals.
As you see in our video explainer, in this small, highly managed fishing area fish are abundant – fish populations continue to grow in these same areas, so we don’t have to fish anywhere else.
More resources:
Report: “Extent and intensity of bottom contact by commercial trawling in New Zealand waters, 1990-2022"; MacGibbon, D.J.; Mules, R.; Goode, S. (2024). Extent and intensity of bottom contact by commercial trawling in New Zealand waters, 1990–2022. New Zealand Aquatic Environment and Biodiversity Report No. 344. 80 p.
Seafood New Zealand: Bottom trawling in Aotearoa New Zealand
We are proud to be a part of New Zealand’s primary production industry – growers and producers of high-quality food – and proud to fish responsibly to bring this healthy protein to your table.
Doug Saunders-Loder
President, New Zealand Federation of Commercial Fishermen