Commercial fisheries underwater camera footage of New Zealand sea lions/pakake is essential for informing key government decisions about their conservation and protection. But, for 16 years, over 218 hours of commercial squid fishing footage, obtained in 2008 from three trawlers, has been kept from scientists and advocates. As reported by The Post, this footage is in the possession of Seafood NZ, and they will not release it to scientists or the public.
Dr. Bruce Robertson, a prominent sea lion specialist, said of the withheld footage, “The reason I’m most interested in it is because there’s some quite concerning things in there, which may point to dead sea lions possibly falling out of nets. For example, there’s really large fish caught in the SLED, which ultimately don’t get hauled up onto the deck, so they fall out. And so it raises this problem of if other big things can fall out of the SLED device, which is meant to retain dead things, then this could be happening to sea lions.”
Shane Jones said of his recent decision to scrap the FRML, “It is recommended [by Fisheries NZ] that you not set a FRML at this time, as risk to sea lions has been mitigated by sea lion exclusion device use such that sea lion captures are highly unlikely to increase significantly in the future.”
Irrespective of whether Sea Lion Exclusion Devices (SLEDs) have been successful in decreasing sea lion bycatch in the Subantarctic Islands, sea lions are still classified as ‘Endangered’ on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Pre-humans they were distributed across Aotearoa and totaled approximately 70,000+. After we eradicated them from mainland Aotearoa, a remnant population fled to the Subantarctic Islands, where once again we’ve brought threats to their doorstep.
If you agree with conserving Aotearoa’s native species, with protecting endangered species, that wildlife have a right to exist, and/or that the planet and people are interconnected, sign Greenpeace Aotearoa‘s petition: https://community.greenpeace.org.nz/…/reinstate-the…