I have loved fishing for most of my 73 years.
As a youngster, I went with my father and his mates game fishing in Bay of Islands waters. I was sometimes seasick and had to be dropped off at Deep Water Cove to while away the day while the fishermen scoured the ocean towing a dead kahawai along the surface. On one such day they returned to pick me up and had a large marlin draped over the stern of the boat.
Of course, my dad and his mates were over the moon, celebrating with copious rums and beers while they towed their trophy to the weigh station for the obligatory photos, after which the once mighty fish was unceremoniously dumped out at sea. No smoked marlin on the menu in those days, just the thrill of the kill and the celebrations after the weigh in. This was in the 1960s, but since the 1920s when American fisherman Zane Grey established NZ as a game fishing El Dorado, this practice of dumping was common. “Every fish was brought in for weighing, and, after weighing, its carcass was dumped. It would no more have occurred to these men to release a fish alive than to flavour their tea with Tabasco sauce.” (nzgeo.com)
As a child I didn’t really think this was unusual, as it was what my dad and his mates did. Fortunately, this sordid practice has slowly been replaced by the more fish-friendly ‘tag and release’ protocol, although if a marlin could speak, the word ‘friendly’ might not feature in its description of being hooked in the mouth and fighting for its life for an hour or more, then being released – to either die of exhaustion, or slowly recover to be caught again so its tag can be recovered to show that it didn’t die … warm fuzzies for the recreational fishers. As only 0.55% of tags are recovered (only 3 per year), and given that many recreational catches of marlin go unrecorded, accurate catch rates could be difficult to assess. So who knows how many marlin die after being released?
Those fish that are landed are often kept in the hope of breaking some sort of record, or to win the top prize in a game fishing competition. Striped marlin, although decreasing in number, are apparently not yet endangered, whereas other types of marlin, like the blue and black varieties are more vulnerable. According to Hauraki Gulf campaigner and marine environmentalist, Shaun Lee, “The sports fishing industry awards and celebrates the capture of the largest fish. Large old fish produce more eggs and sperm than younger fish. Female billfish are larger than males. This means the most productive members of the population are landed for records, trophies and prizes. A large blue marlin at a weigh-in station does not represent a gain of 500 kg of freezer meat, but a loss of millions of eggs which could have helped rebuild the population. The situation is just as important for our striped marlin which have lost 94% of their spawning biomass since 1960s.” Besides, who can afford to smoke 500 kilos of marlin at $4 a kilo, especially if it didn’t win a prize?
Lee also says, “The activity recklessly ill-treats animals (an offence under section 28 A of the NZ Animal Welfare Act); it also contravenes other sections of the act (30A1-3).”
The SPCA would also like to see an end to game fishing, while Forest and Bird publishes a Best Fish (to eat) Guide which takes into account fishery sustainability and presumably mercury content, and relegates marlin and yellowfin tuna to the ‘no eat’ red zone.
So, as you can probably gather, I would rather not target marlin myself. I get it that fishermen and women find it exciting. It can be a thrill when a reel suddenly starts screaming, and given the popularity of the activity, and the sponsor money and marketing behind it, I imagine that game fishing itself and its associated competitions, like trophy hunting animal safaris in Africa and cigarette smoking will die a slow death. Although with the coalition government’s recent cave-in to the tobacco lobby, smoking might last a little longer, with the loss of hundreds of more lives.
Considering the huge increase in the numbers of recreational boats now chasing the game fish, it might be wise to enact measures to ensure that these beautiful, great creatures of the deep don’t become seriously endangered.
With this gradual demise idea in mind, I would like to offer some possible interim changes that could be made to competition rules:
- Use barbless hooks. This would give the fish more of a chance of freeing itself.
- Ban the use of drones and other fish finding electronics to locate fish.
- Limit the number of lures trolled to two per boat.
- Give prize money to the smallest of a species landed instead of the biggest. Let the photos tell the story of huge fish being released.
- As game fishing is largely a matter of luck, release all fish and distribute the millions in prize money by spot prizes.
Eventually, probably not in my lifetime, when killing fish in fishing competitions becomes unnecessary for human fun, and fish are only killed for eating, or when a lack of fish causes sponsors to cease providing millions in prize money, perhaps hookless lures could be trolled and when fish are teased to the surface, the team photographer could jump over, snap the beautiful fish and enter his or her best shots in a truly sustainable competition. That would take real courage.
And if you want to save the ocean and the air from the emissions from 460 boats burning around 300,000 litres of petrol and diesel in Kubota’s four-day competition, you could just not have it in the first place. Ah, but what about the economic benefits I hear some of you say? Well, yes there are undoubtedly benefits for the town, but I would urge you to have a wee read of Dr Zeus’s children’s book The Lorax, which was actually banned in the US because it criticised the logging industry. It could also apply to fishing. Ah, the power of big money …
Words by Ross Liggins
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