ep3

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iawn, ond rwy'n gobeithio y byddwn yn gweithio'n fawr iawn, ond rwy'n gobeithio y byddwn yn gweithio'n fawr iawn, ond rwy'n gobeithio y byddwn yn gweithio'n fawr iawn, ond rwy'n gobeithio y byddwn yn gweithio'n fawr iawn, ond rwy'n gobeithio y byddwn yn gweithio'n fawr iawn, ond rwy'n gobeithio y byddwn yn gweithio'n fawr iawn, ond rwy'n gobeithio y byddwn yn gweithio'n fawr iawn, ond rwy'n gobeithio y byddwn yn gweithio'n fawr iawn, ond rwy'n gobeithio y byddwn yn gweithio'n fawr iawn, ond rwy'n gobeithio y byddwn yn gweithio'n fawr iawn, ond rwy'n gobeithio y byddwn yn gweithio'n fawr iawn, ond rwy'n gobeithio y byddwn yn gweithio'n fawr iawn, ond rwy'n gobeithio y byddwn yn gweithio'n fawr iawn, ond rwy'n gobeithio y byddwn yn gweithio'n fawr iawn, ond rwy'n gobeithio y byddwn yn gweithio'n fawr iawn, ond rwy'n gobeithio y byddwn yn gweithio'n fawr iawn, ond rwy'n gobeithio y byddwn yn gweithio'n fawr iawn, ond rwy'n gobeithio y byddwn yn gweithio'n fawr iawn, ond rwy'n gobeithio y byddwn yn gweithio'n fawr iawn, ond rwy'n gobeithio y byddwn yn gweithio'n fawr iawn, ond rwy'n gobeithio y byddwn yn gweithio'n fawr iawn, ond rwy'n gobeithio y byddwn yn gweithio'n fawr iawn, ond rwy'n gobeithio y byddwn yn gweithio'n fawr iawn, ond rwy'n gobeithio that the fishery really took off. There was some guys taking some bloody stupid risks. There was stories of guys or a guy in a 17-foot parkercraft, basically a dinghy, 30 miles offshore. You've really got to use your brains when you're fishing that place, Mike. It'll take its toll for sure. Alroy Thompson has also seen his fair share of near misses at Waihao Bay. I guess probably the big thing is people be safe. Drinking on boats seems to be a big thing. Well, not a big thing, but you see a few people come in and you just go, oh, guys, you don't even know how to back a trailer. Just, I guess, come down and be respectful and be safe. That's definitely the big thing. We've got rocks here and guys don't see the marker poison. They'll come over the rocks, they'll drive into other boats. These are some of the things we've seen last year. So we're just, yeah, just people, yeah, just be safe. And if they haven't been out of here before, maybe just come in at daytime, don't come in at night. Go out with someone first before you bring your boat down. I've definitely had a few sort of close calls, Mike, especially being on a boat my size. I could fish out of a six, seven 30s, you know, which is probably just sort of standard, maybe a little bit smaller than the average boat down there, especially sort of that Waihao Bay, East Cape, Cape Runaway area. I've fished quite a bit down there. That's Toby Barclay, a committee member from the Saketane Sportfishing Club. He also likes to chase the bluefin tuna. But as we've been hearing, it's treacherous out there. He explains some of the conditions that anglers face when they're chasing bluefin tuna. I think just for the guys that are doing it for the first time, just try to stay as west as they can, you know. Don't sneak around the corner down a round off Lotton Point, Hicks Bay. It's just a whole different kettle of fish around there, you know. You just get nasty swells and currents and, you know, you get around, you know, like you get around Rangereale Banks and stuff like that. It's just another kettle of fish around there, you know. And just don't push the boundaries, you know. Wait for those good weather windows like we've got right now. There's some beautiful weather coming through, you know. Like, you know, guys push the boundaries and there's a little bit of a window and it's closing in. Oh, we'd better go, you know. Like, they can, it's, because you're a long way offshore in some of those places, especially when you're pushing out to the 1,500 or 1,600 metre line. You might be 20 miles offshore, you know, if you have an accident out there. And when that current starts to rip, those waves just stand up, you know. And I'm guilty for it last season, especially early in the season, because earlier, well, apart from this year, we're catching them off at the Runaway Sea Bay there in May, which is sort of unheard of, but generally early in the season, you're right off round off Hicks Bay, even further around, you know. That's when it gets ugly around there. And it can be all beautiful and nice and flat and calm. And the next thing you know, the current's ripping one way, you've got swells from two different directions, and you put 20 knots on top of that, and all of a sudden, you know, you've got waves here that can flip a trailer boat just like that. So, yeah, definitely a place to just go prepared, you know. And like all headlands like that, it's always productive. Wherever you've got very strong currents, you've got strong production. So, if you think of areas like North Cape and the Three Kings region, particularly the Straits, Cook Strait and Bobo Strait down the bottom, and you get the same thing over here in Australia. So, anywhere where you've got a big headland sticking out, the Taranaki's another good example, you're always going to get strong currents and productive fisheries. You know, you get a flush of phytotank going through the area, and that just makes the whole area more productive. So, it's a very, very special piece of coastline. I've been fishing there since the late 80s, really. I started snapper longlining out of Whangamata and progressed to doing the Blue Nose and Hapuka offshore. So, we quickly sort of moved towards the East Cape region, and we used that as a base. So, if the weather was a bit iffy, we'd fish around East Cape and Waihao Bay, or particularly around the East Cape region. And if the weather was OK, we'd move offshore and fish the Rumbles, Seamounts and other places down towards Tolaga or Blueberry Hill and those sort of areas. So, a very, very special place and very productive. The fishery off East Cape has been around since the 1960s. There was a big Japanese fleet that used to fish off there for a long time, and they found really high quality, good, you know, large southern bluefin tuna there. And then in the 1990s, they got pushed out a bit and the domestic fleet took over. Joining us now is a marine biologist, John Holdsworth. Joining us now is marine biologist, John Holdsworth, from Blue Water Marine Research. He's been closely involved in many of the research projects that are responsible for recreational harvest surveys and gamefish tagging projects. He's also a member of a number of Ministry of Fisheries working groups, which have been restructured to fit with the areas and species groupings that have been proposed in fisheries plans. If there's one man who knows southern bluefin tuna, it's John Holdsworth. It was a flow on from the Billfish Moratorium, which the Sport Fishing Council and recreational fishing clubs pushed for in the late 1980s. And they moved the Japanese licensed fleet out of the North Island and eventually there was meetings between the commercial and recreational sector that agreed that we should New Zealandise the fishery. And so there was pressure on the government to reduce all international quota and licenses. It's been, you know, obviously the Japanese were fishing in the 50s, so the commercial guys have been fishing since the early 90s. Well, if you rely on the stock assessments, which they've been doing for quite a few years, the fishery was in real trouble in the 1990s. There was limited control on who was catching southern bluefin tuna. There were very large fisheries in the Indian Ocean, as well as off New Zealand and in the Tasman Sea. And the stock had dropped down to 4 or 5% of this morning's stock biomass. That's pretty low. And I think it was put on the international red list for endangered species. I don't know, just seeing them migrate, I thought that was really cool, how the governments all got together and basically saved it, I guess. And, you know, it's probably really good for people to understand where the fish has been and where it is now. So far, we've heard the southern bluefin tuna fishery was almost fished to extinction, but it was on the bounce back. And it was 2017 where it really started to take off for commercial and recreational fishers. And in 2017, there was some information that there was good water and tuna quite close to Cape Runaway, and that information was passed on to recreational fishers. And in a very short time, word got out, and there was a lot of people heading down to Waihau Bay and catching large tuna, you know, 80 kilo tuna. Average size was about 70, 72 kilos. You know, that's great in New Zealand. And it's a winter fishery where you can use the same gear as marlin fishing, more or less. And, yeah, it got popular really quickly. The first year that we encountered it was 2017, which was absolutely phenomenal. Those fish have always been out there, but the recreational fishers have never realised how accessible that they were until the commercials put some coordinates up. And some people went out, had a go, caught some, and social media did the rest. So then we were inundated with literally hundreds of boats. So it was complete chaos that year. Some days we weighed fish continuously pretty much the whole day. Just hear it through the grapevine, probably a bit of social media, and so we were out there. I think the first year we got five. That was pretty cool. And I'll tell you, like, it's quite funny because everyone's like, oh, yeah, no, we discovered that, and we were the first. Yeah, I don't know who was the first. I guess the commercial boys have been out there doing it a lot, and it probably would have been one of their mates that was saying, hey, get out there, they're there. How it all started, I mean, there was always, you know, guys like Ben Muir and Floyd Pratt from Trophy Lures and the Whitehall Bay Club members. They've always known the fishery was there, and, of course, Sarge at Hicks Bay. And there was a few guys coming up from Gisborne and Napier every season to have a crack at them. But I had, you know, with my social media following, and I'm certainly not taking the credit for it, but I had a good mate of mine, John Lipton-Jones, was fishing out there on the Te Pekana, and he gave me some marks and said, hey, TK, the fish are in really close this year. And I posted them on my Facebook page, and I expected sort of three or four boats to go out for the weekend, you know, and have a crack. The weather was nice, and I essentially said, hey, guys, if anyone wants to have a crack at the Bluefin Tuna this weekend, they're nice and close to Whitehall Bay, here's the marks. And I expected sort of three boats to go out there, and as history will show, over the next couple of weeks, there were three or four hundred boats went out there, so it just went crazy. So, yeah, John Lipton-Jones gave me the marks, and Ben Carey was doing some writing for New Zealand Fishing News in those days, and he had a Facebook page as well, so he shared my post. So between the three of us, we sort of put it out there, and essentially a new fishery was born, you know. As I say, there was guys that knew the fishery was there, and I'm certainly not taking credit for it, but just by letting everyone know, it just went nuts. In very short order, the place went nuts, and a new fishery was born. And it's been a really exciting fishery, Mike. You know, it's extended our game fishing season by another three or four months, essentially. I mean, you can really fish right through the whole year game fishing in New Zealand now. You know, by the time you get to August, when the Suffolk Bluefin have finished gorging on all the feeds, sort of up off Barrier and the Poor Knights, and up towards the Bay of Islands and start heading east again, on their migration back to the spawning grounds, by the time that's finished, the sorties are starting to show up again, you know. So, really, we can fish all year round for game fish now, which is bloody phenomenal. So, it's been a real success story, Mike. I was probably the same as everyone else, Mike. Like, I think the year was 2017, and that was when a few of those commercial guys like TK, another mate of mine, Jono, or John, he was down there in one of the commercial boats. They just let out that little bit of information, you know. Like, we always thought they were so far out, these tuna, you know, these southern bluefin, and, yeah, and we snuck in there in 2017. It must have been, I think it was early July. That was sort of when the peak of it seemed to be then, and, yeah, we snuck down there. Now, we actually had a New Zealand woman's record for quite some time, on 24 kilo line. It was the first fish we caught was 94 kilos, or 92 kilos. So, yeah, just got amongst it with everyone else. It was just madness, yeah. It was pretty cool to be a part of. So, yeah, it's a wonderful fishery, and it is to be celebrated, but it does cause some difficulty for our club in that it's a very restricted area where our boat ramp is, and the locals do get a bit annoyed if that road's completely clogged and they're unable to access their fuel or their local shop. Well, the school bus can't get down there because we used to have some very bad parking, but that is restricted now, which creates a problem of its own. So, we are working with the local hapu to try to find some parking alternatives. We haven't been successful yet. So, yeah, on we go. It is, of course, we have a limited number of people to weigh the fish, but that is getting, there are fewer and fewer fish being weighed. So, yeah, probably, I don't know, I feel like 2016 or something, or, yeah, it was somewhere around there, and, yeah, got five, that was pretty cool, but we weren't chasing it, like, we didn't really know where to go and stuff like that, and you're going out a long way. I remember 16, a couple of years later, and then last year we sort of, I think we ended up with about 54, but we were sort of, yeah, a lot of those were released, not tagged, just released, and, yeah, that was pretty cool. A lot of guys do come down here, and, you know, they're away from mum for the weekend or for a couple of days, and it's sort of like a bit of a big piss trip, but, you know, I don't know if you've done much fishing out of here, but it can turn into a bit of a washing machine, and it is quite dangerous, and there has been a lot of close calls that probably go unreported, and, you know, even leaving in the dark, well, I was going to say the cars pile through, you know, with their trailers I know they probably all start turning up the day before, and it's just a constant launching, and then they go and park, and then, yeah, it's all go, you know, and that'll just go through the night, and sometimes we've sort of had to wait for an hour to launch, and, you know, it's not too bad because you just go back inside and have a cup of tea and cook some breakfast, but, yeah, if a lot of people haven't been down here before, there are a lot of rocks you've just got to be really careful of. There's cray-boys you've just got to be careful of, and other boats. You know, there's been a few issues with other boats anchored up and other boats driving into them. There are a lot of safety things. You know, we've started carrying a Garmin inReach just in case something happens. We've got our ePurbs. We've got the—the phones are no good out there. They're out too far, but certainly, you know, we've always got our radios on and listening. Our Coast Guard and Fishing Club work closely together. Our Fishing Club makes an annual donation to Coast Guard. Some of the same people are involved in both Coast Guard and Fishing Club. So, yeah, we do work closely together. Our channel, we don't have, like, a game channel. We only have Channel 65, which is a Coast Guard channel, and we do share it slightly, so we are able to use it for some fishing-related things, not for too much chat, just more for Fishing Club, for communication to people who are fishing with, you know, essential things to know. In the first couple of years, you know, there was a sort of a bull-rush mentality, and every man his dog was just going out there and catching as many as they could and striping at pose at the Waihea Waste Station, you know, and we saw some waste. But now it's settled down. I talked to Grant Dixon the following year after it really kicked off. I was invited to be guest speaker at the Foruno function and caught up with Grant Dixon, and we were talking about the mentality of some of the fishers and that sort of thing, and I said to Grant that at the end of the day, it had to be industry-led by the recreational industry. You know, I can't, as a commercial fisher, I can't stand there and say, hey, guys, you should be doing this, you should be doing that. I would have been drawn and courted. And Grant agreed, and we've seen that. You know, Waihea Bay brought in a policy of only weighing X amount of fish off each vessel, which was a great step in the right direction. And after a couple of years, I think everyone had caught one or two fish, you know, and the gold rush sort of mentality settled down, and now everyone's really getting into the sports side of it, Mike. I mean, you can go out, as you say, you know, you could chum for it, you know, cube for it like they used to do in the old days. A lot of guys are getting into the topwater side of fishing. And even, you know, I'm very honoured to be, to have been asked by Turner Champions to be an ambassador for them, and that's all about promoting the fishery and best fishing practices on how to release the fish. And they're a big advocate for barbless hooks, you know, so if you're fishing purely for sport, you don't really need to have a barb in your hook, you know. As long as you're keeping the tension on it, you're going to have great sport and it's an easy release. And the beauty is, you know, if the bluefin gets on, it gets off. Well, good on them, you know. It's not a bad thing, you know. And it's such a prolific fishery, Mike, that you're not just going to get one fish a day, you know. You're seeing everyone coming in, and that's the neat thing with what's happening now, Mike, is guys will come and say, hey, we had six fish on and we brought one in to feed the whanau, you know. It's got to that stage now, so... No, I mean, don't worry. I got a bollocking from the commercial sector for putting that information out there. I got an absolute bollocking, and some people are still pissed at me about it. And it was, it was that trust thing. Oh, you know, what happens if the recreational guys, you know, take some of our quota away and what's the thing, you know. And the recreational guys have seen an increase in allocation. But that's a good thing, you know. People have said to me I've broken down the barriers between the recreational and commercial guys, and people have got to recognise, I think a lot of people have a warped perception of commercial fishers, you know, that we're sort of pirates with a pig leg and an eye patch and a bottle of rum in our hands. It's just not the case, you know, and a large proportion of commercial fishers, particularly in New Zealand, you know, we came from generational fisheries, you know. We were owner-operators, our fathers were fishermen and our grandfathers were fishermen, and we grew up on the wharfs fishing, you know, and a hell of a lot of us are very avid recreational fishers, you know. And that's the crazy thing, you know. You'll spend a week or two weeks at sea, and the first thing you do when you get home is sit in the tinny with your mates and go fishing, you know. Much to the disgust of our spouses, you know. But that's just how it is. And at the end of the day, we both want the same thing, you know. We want a healthy, vibrant fishery, you know. If you look at the commercial sector, we've got a huge capital investment in this fishery, and the last thing we want is a bus-top fishery, you know. We want this to be around for generations, and the whole concept these days with the majority of commercial fishers is that we're guardians of that fishery for the future generations, and we've got an obligation to leave that fishery in better condition than we found it. And that's what's been happening, Mike, and the Southern Bluefin fishery is a prime example of that. You know, we all took huge quota cuts for the better of the fishery, and it's worked incredibly. Oh, totally. Well, you know, we're trying to get the message across that if someone doesn't look after their fish and it comes in in a bad state, it's not ice. We just won't weigh it. You know, our club did campaign for one fish per boat per day. Of course, MPI has a limit of one fish per person per day, which can be a huge amount of fish. You know, in those early years, we had guys coming in with four or five huge tuna objects. There was no one who caught one. They all wanted to get one, and they all wanted to stand beside it on the gantry like true Kiwi guys. So, yeah, it is easier now. Yeah, we did have a huge number up our ramp. Yeah, the total allowable catch for the recreational was 59 tons, which was entirely caught last season. You know, just touching on that, on the fishery itself, it's cool now, like I think, when everyone was down there in that, especially that first year, I think we all thought, oh, you know, this may not last long. Let's make the most of it. And, you know, there was gaps going into every single fish, you know, like I don't know what the stats were on release fish that first year, but I can't imagine it being very flash. But now, you know, and, you know, some guys have had exceptional days, you know, like some guys catching upwards of 20 fish in a day, you know, and keeping one or two, you know, which is bloody awesome, you know. So I can only see it getting better, which is awesome. But, you know, I know I was speaking to a few of the waymasters, you know, a few years ago and, you know, people would hook up a fish and it would just be on the deck all day with a towel over it and just not, you know, not looked after at all. And probably they didn't have ice. And, you know, when you start giving fish away like that, it's going to put people off. They're not going to enjoy it. So seeing it now, I think it's changed a lot. Well, yeah, it is a special year. Especially when you look at, you know, how the Japanese look after it. And, you know, we've certainly got a long way to go, but we're still heading in that direction. But I would love to go to Japan and just check it out and just see how they do it. I think it would be pretty cool. You know, I'm very honoured to have been asked by Tuna Champions to be an ambassador for them. And that's all about promoting the fishery and best fishing practices on how to release the fish. And they're a big advocate for barbless hooks, you know. So if you're fishing purely for sport, you don't really need to have a barb in your hook. You know, as long as you're keeping the tension on it, you're going to have great sport and it's an easy release. And the beauty is, you know, if the bluefin gets on, it gets off. Well, good on them. You know, it's not a bad thing, you know. And it's such a prolific fishery, Mike, that you're not just going to get one fish a day. You know, you're seeing everyone coming in. And that's the neat thing with what's happening now, Mike, is guys will come and say, hey, we had six fish on and we brought one in to feed the whanau. You know, it's got to that stage now. So, no, I mean, don't worry. I got a bollocking from the commercial sector for putting that information out there. I got an absolute bollocking. And some people are still pissed at me about it. And it was. It was that trust thing. Oh, you know, what happens if the recreational guys, you know, take some of our quota away and what's the thing, you know. And the recreational guys have seen an increase in allocation. But that's a good thing, you know. People have said to me I've broken down the barriers between the recreational and commercial guys. And people have got to recognise, I think a lot of people have a warped perception of commercial fishers, you know, that we're sort of pirates with a pig leg and an eye patch and a bowl of rum in our hands. It's just not the case, you know, that a large proportion of commercial fishers, particularly in New Zealand, you know, we came from generational fisheries, you know. We were owner-operators, our fathers were fishermen and our grandfathers were fishermen. And we grew up on the wharfs fishing, you know. And a hell of a lot of us are very avid recreational fishers, you know. And that's the crazy thing, you know. You'll spend a week or two weeks at sea and the first thing you do when you get home is jump in the tinny with your mates and go fishing. You know, it's much to the disgust of our spouses, you know. But that's just how it is. And at the end of the day, we both want the same thing, you know. We want a healthy, vibrant fishery, you know. If you look at the commercial sector, we've got a huge capital investment in this fishery. And the last thing we want is a boom and bust type fishery, you know. We want this to be around for generations. And the whole concept these days with the majority of commercial fishers is that we're guardians of that fishery for the future generations. And we've got an obligation to leave that fishery in better condition than we found it. And that's what's been happening, Mike. The Southern Bluefin fishery is a prime example of that, you know. We all took huge quota cuts for the better of the fishery. And it's worked incredibly. Oh, totally, totally. And it's got to the stage now where we actually, well, for me personally, the last few years I was doing Southern Bluefin tuna in New Zealand, I was essentially shopping. So I would wait. So if I had, say, 20 tonnes of harvest for the season, I would wait until I got right up to the Bay of Plenty. Instead of going down to Dunedin and waiting for them, you know, when they first arrived, or even off Napier and Gisborne, by the time they fall around the corner of Waihao Bay into the Bay of Plenty, they've been gorging since February. So, you know, if they get up there in July, they've got a fair bit of fat content, which is what it's all about for the Japanese market. So I would actually wait until they arrive to the Bay of Plenty and they're off Mere Island or starting to head up towards Whitianga and the back of Great Barrier, and then I would go out. I'd harvest my 20 tonne in short order, and the fish I was harvesting had very high oil content, you know, it was bulging in the tail. So instead of looking like a baseball bat or a softball bat when they first arrived there, you know, they'd been spoiling, they were all straggly and skinny. By the time they get up to the Bay of Plenty, they're barrels, you know, and it looks like the skin's about to split around the tail, you know, they're just fat and full of oil. So I would wait until they got into the Bay of Plenty. They've been gorging on all the feed all the way through, and I'd get premium prices for my product. The fishermen used to call them Northern Bluefin Tuna, compared to the Southern Bluefin Tuna, but they're actually Pacific Bluefin Tuna. That's the name that I'm using for them now. And they breed off Japan, Southern Japan, and then the juveniles stay mostly in the Northern Hemisphere, migrate across to California and Mexico. And we have been picking up some very large Pacific Bluefin Tuna off the west coast of the South Island for a few years, particularly behind the Hokie boats down there. Those large fish have mostly gone now, but there's a lot of 60 to 100 kilo Pacific Bluefin around in the commercial catch and occasionally recreational catch now. So they're coming back. Yeah, it's amazing. Fishing's so intergenerational, and I just love it. And certainly what it does, it just builds memories for people, and it's such a special, special fishery. And early on when it first started, I think we had three on at once, and I had my mate with his three boys on. And anyway, I think we got two on, and then the oldest boy, he would have been about 12 at the time. We were pretty sure it was a record, and I was like, mate, we've got two. We don't need this one. We just need to let this go. And anyway, he wasn't, well, the old man wasn't happy, and I just said, look, we can't take this. It's fine. Look, it's going to swim away, and let's let it go. And so anyway, we let it go, and there was a bit of, yeah, the old man wasn't happy. But, you know, when we got on, our neighbors all sort of went around and just went, oh, that's really cool. You tagged that fish, and you let it go. And so the young fella sort of starts sparking up, and then I was talking to the mum, and she made a big deal out of it too. And then I think next week at school, he did a speech on sustainable fishing, and I just thought that was so cool. And those boys practice it today. They're amazing kids. Yeah, that was a real highlight for me. What a great story to end on from our Roy Thompson. And it sets us up for next week, Episode 4, where we'll dive even deeper into southern bluefin tuna. Where to catch them, how to catch them, and more importantly, if you are catching them, how best to look after them. We'll be joined by our guests again next week, and we'll learn about new southern bluefin tuna tournaments where people are competing for massive prize money. But how do we look after the fishery at the same time? How do we preserve these fish when we catch them and look after them the best we can? In fact, there's some insights from how the Japanese prepare the tuna and the commercial guys like TK for sale. We'll find out more on Episode 4 next week on the NZSF pod and reel podcast. Just by subscribing to this podcast, you're helping us do the work and get these stories out there. We'll take your comments and feedback as well. All the details are in the show notes. And if you'd like to make a financial contribution to help us make more of these episodes, the details are in the show notes. The NZSF pod and reel podcast is brought to you by the New Zealand Sport Fishing Council. New Zealand Sport Fishing Council www.nzsf.gov.au New Zealand Sport Fishing Council www.nzsf.gov.au