Seafood New Zealand has called the government's change of course deeply ironic, arguing the outcome is "not great for the environment" and does nothing to discourage commercial operators from catching undersized fish.
The controversy centred on the Fisheries Amendment Bill, which as written would have stripped away most commercial size limits, allowing operators to land and sell juvenile fish, among them snapper and tarakihi. Recreational fishers mobilised strongly against the proposal, warning it would decimate future fish populations. Fisheries Minister Shane Jones had framed the measure as a way to reduce wastage, but by Wednesday coalition parties were posting on social media to announce they had listened to public feedback and would not proceed with the changes. The reversal was striking given that as recently as Monday Jones had remained entirely unapologetic, dismissing those raising concerns as "noisy voices".
ITM Fishing Show host Matt Watson welcomed the news when speaking to RNZ's First Up, describing it as a "win" and evidence of what "people power can do". He was cautious about reading too much into it, however. The bill had "one of the terrible things taken out of it", he said, but it had not been "thrown out".
"There is a lot more stuff in there that is equally as bad, if not worse," Watson said. "There's still legalised fish dumping in there. There is still reduction in fines for fishes that overfish their quotas, there's a removal of environmental considerations, and it does nothing to move us away from destructive fishing methods."
He urged New Zealanders to "stay vigilant".
LegaSea, a non-profit organisation dedicated to restoring the marine environment, was equally critical. Project lead Sam Woolford told RNZ the minimum size limit provision had amounted to little more than clickbait, and that the reversal had come far too late. In his view, where problems existed around catch volumes or fishing methods, they needed to be addressed directly rather than through legislating an outcome.
"It's completely unacceptable that it's taken this huge public outcry for the government to pay attention," he said. "It's particularly unreasonable they think removing one small aspect of this legislation is going to placate New Zealanders."
The Environmental Law Initiative (ELI) raised its own concerns about the broader contents of the bill, particularly around the treatment of environmental considerations. ELI director of research and legal Dr Matt Hall said the legislation, taken as a whole, systematically weakened the sustainability provisions currently embedded in the Fisheries Act. Hall identified several worrying elements: the potential for fishing impacts on ecosystems to be disregarded, the possibility that non-regulatory measures could be used to justify higher catch levels, and tighter restrictions on judicial review of fisheries decisions. He also said the changes were contrary to New Zealand's obligations under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.
Seafood New Zealand chief executive Lisa Futschek offered a different view. She told RNZ she was disappointed by the reversal, arguing the original proposal would have strengthened commercial fishers' incentives to avoid catching small fish. "We don't want to catch small fish, our processors don't want to process small fish, and this proposal would have provided incentives not to catch small fish," she said.
Under the provision that has now been dropped, fishers who did bring in undersized fish would have been required to count them against their quota. "In other words, they would have to pay for it," Futschek explained. Without that mechanism, the existing rules remain in place: fishers must return small fish to the sea as the legislation requires, but face no financial consequence for catching them. Futschek maintained the proposed changes were "net positive for the environment and for sustainability of our resource".
On the coalition parties' decision to cite public feedback as their reason for the reversal, Futschek acknowledged that fisheries and seafood were "a very emotive topic". "They are part of our culture and our heritage, and understandably, people are passionate about it, and they want to have their say in this situation," she said. She added that widespread disinformation about what the clause was actually seeking to achieve had fuelled speculation about the motives behind the change, speculation she described as "frankly wrong".
