Meet the Ministrys new Chief Executive - Ministry of Fisheries

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14 TheBite APRIL 2008 The business of fishing has changed radically since the 1970s. Few fisheries managers have seen as much of that change, first hand, as MFish chief fishery officer Dave Wood. Dave was at the table in 1978 when the government was working out how to manage and patrol its new Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) and he was involved in developing New Zealand’s revolutionary Quota Management System (QMS) a working life managing our fisheries At the beginning of May, Dave leaves MFish after 40 years in the public service. He says he always wanted to work to support primary production for export and after a taste of the passion that surrounds fishing, he knew that was the sector for him. A 17-year-old Dave Wood joined the Department of Agriculture in Timaru in 1967 as a cadet. A couple of years later he transferred to Wellington, where he met his future wife, Sandra, and had two years working in health research PIC TO COME before taking a job in the newly formed Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries (MAF). Dave describes working on measures to manage the new EEZ in the late 1970s as a very exciting time. “Before the EEZ, we managed fisheries out to three miles, beyond that was open slather. So patrolling was quite straight forward. With the International Law of the Sea Convention and the establishment of national EEZs, out to
200 miles, patrolling became quite a different matter. We employed 30 extra fishery officers straight away to go to sea and monitor fishing. This was the precursor to the modern fisheries observer programme. We set up the Fisheries Communication Centre so MAF could stay in touch with the foreign vessels that were fishing in the EEZ, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.” The beginning of the 1980s saw Dave working at the Beehive as the private secretary to the Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries Duncan MacIntyre. The hours were long with a 7am to midnight working day not being unusual. But there was always something interesting happening, particularly when Deputy Prime Minister MacIntyre was acting Prime Minister during the 1981 Springbok tour. Dave sat in on late night meetings with the chief of police and the chairman of the rugby union, as the tour unfolded. He was back at MAF in 1982 and working on some of the early methods of controlling how much fishing was undertaken in areas that were under pressure. Dave worked on controlling boat numbers and fishing effort in the national rock lobster fisheries, Hauraki Gulf wet-fish, Foveaux Strait oysters and Lake Ellesmere eels. His staff kept tabs on the 70 or 80 foreign vessels in the EEZ and the 300-odd squidjigging vessels that arrived each year for the squid season. In his spare time he worked on a team that was developing the QMS. One of Dave’s main roles in the QMS development was leading the team that worked out fishers’ catch history that would be used to base a fisher’s annual quota. Until then catch history was assigned to vessels, and vessels regularly NEW ZEaLaNd’S EXCLUSIVE ECONOMIC ZONE (EEZ) changed hands. So a vessel’s catch history might need to be spread between the current owner and several past owners. The results were always going to be open to challenge, and as soon as catch histories were assigned, Dave got to lead the team that managed the quota appeals process. “We dealt with 60 to 100 appeals at a different location every fortnight. Often we met with fishers and worked out the discrepancies before the appeal, but if we couldn’t agree, both sides gave evidence and let a mediator decide. It was an incredibly intense two years, and very satisfying.” With a new fisheries management regime in place, a new approach was needed for fisheries enforcement, and Dave started working on these issues as a manager, as he would do for the rest of his fisheries career. “In the past, we (fishery officers) had been hiding behind flax bushes waiting for people to do something wrong and nabbing them. That wasn’t suitable for enforcing the commercial rules under the QMS. We moved to a system where fishers knew their rights and obligations and were required to report back to us.” Poring over fishing returns to find offences requires a different set of skills, and the compliance group was soon employing people that could identify fraud, as well as those that could patrol the coast. Dave held many senior positions in compliance, including managing the whole compliance effort under the MAF structure, and post 1995, under the new Ministry of Fisheries (MFish) structure. In the past few years he has been involved in international compliance agreements for the high seas, working on specifications for the new Project Protector fleet, improving aerial surveillance capabilities of the Airforce’s Orion aircraft and the pleasant task of conducting an independent compliance review of the Western Australian pearling industry. Although there have been many highlights in his time with compliance, he says overseeing Operation Pacman, where 140 fishery officers, supported by 120 police and 40 military personnel, simultaneously swooped on paua poaching targets all over the country, rates very highly. The operation netted freezers full of paua, a plethora of boats and vehicles, a goldmine of intelligence about paua poaching, and led to dozens of prosecutions. Dave says his decision to retire was influenced by a stroke he suffered two years ago. To mitigate the shock of retirement, he has agreed to complete his commitment later in the year to the role of chairing the Compliance Committee of the Commission for the Conservation of Southern Bluefin Tuna. It doesn’t look like he’s finished with fishing yet. APRIL 2008 TheBite 15
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Meet the Ministrys new Chief Executive - Ministry of Fisheries

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