The total amount of marine fish caught in New Zealand waters between 1950 and 2010 is estimated at 2.7 times more than official statistics suggest, and most of the difference is due to unreported commercial catch and discarded fish.
This is a chief finding from a report released in May Reconstruction of Marine Fisheries Catches for New Zealand (1950-2010) by Dr Glenn Simmons and others from the University of Auckland Business School, Oxford University, and University of British Columbia, and part of a global study published in Nature Communications.
“A striking finding was the extent of misreporting to avoid deemed value penalties – at sea and on land,” said Dr Simmons. “This highlights a weakness of the Quota Management System, which relies on full and accurate reporting, yet, in practice, incentivises misreporting.”
