The battle for the longfin eel and the sham review

A response to my recent posts on longfin eel harvest has set me off another rant. Back in the early 2000s with friends I began highlighting the plight of our amazing longfin eels - endemic, listed as threatened by the IUCN, in NZ listed as “at risk” but commercially harvested and exported.

We set a group - Manaaki Tuna; A lifeline for longfins and a website *www.longfineel.co.nz*. Our big campaign was a petition, and the tuna tapestry thousands of schoolkids had added to. On the day we handed over the 10k signature petition the tapestry circled parliament.

This led to the hard-hitting report from the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment Jan Wright’s titled “On a pathway to extinction; an investigation into the status and management of the longfin eel”.

The commercial harvest is managed by MPI (was MinFish) under the quota managements system, and in response to all this public pressure in 2013 MPI announced they would undertake an independent review: their website says: “The international peer review panel will help provide confidence that decisions on the future management of the longfin eel are based on the best scientific advice available".

However, like something from a Monty Python skit, the review contained this list of matters that were “out of scope”:

•      the efficacy of past MPI eel fisheries management measures themselves, or the Quota Management system in general.

•      the efficacy of local area eel management actions.

•      recommended future management actions.

•      the efficacy of the current threat classification system.

So, the overseas reviewers could do their review but not one of the important and contentious matters that initiated the review could be discussed.

This bizarre farce seems to me a really sad reflection on New Zealand’s public service, I can’t imagine the Primary Industries Minister had decided on this Claytons review, but I really don’t know.

From the day the report was released on, every time longfin eels come into the media, the response from MPI is the same “we had an independent review done and it’s all good – nothing to see here …” Sadly every time the media swallow this line, as do the MPI spokespeople seemingly no one takes a look to see that the review is a scam, and the longfin decline continues.

(NB the pdf of the report has been removed from MPI website in the last few months after I highlighted this farce to the Guild of Agricultural Journalists and MPI staff)  

See the latest MPI data on tonnes of eels landed in the graphs above. The dashed lines are the limits and its clear that the limits from have had no effect you can see the catch is declining faster than the limits can be lowered. The second graph was for South Island which was only put under quota management around 2017.