March 23, 2016
Maori part of Kermadecs tuna fleet
Ngati Wai chair Haydn Edmonds says his Northland iwi is fishing round the Kermadecs, and the creation of a giant marine reserve will hit it in the pocket.
Ngati Wai is backing Te Ohu Kaimoana’s High Court Challenge to the Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary Bill, which they say confiscates assets that formed part of the 1992 Maori Fisheries Settlement.
Mr Edmonds says the sanctuary, announced by Prime Minister John Key at last year’s United Nations Oceans Summit, was a piece of international political grandstanding.
He disputes that Maori don’t fish there.
"There are fishing companies that go up there and fish the highly migratory bluefin tuna and swordfish four months of the year when that area is open to fishing, and associated with those companies are Maori entities, tribes that have settled," Mr Edmonds says.
He says at the least, Maori and the industry should have been consulted so accommodations could have been made, as happened in Australia when a sanctuary was created around the Great Barrier Reef.
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