as part of scrutiny week<\/a>, and was asked about cuts to funding for fisheries enforcement and monitoring.<\/p>\nHe said the fact onboard cameras had captured an orca bycatch incident showed the current system was working.<\/p>\n
“It’s due to the cameras that the officials now know that, in one of the set nets, a fisherman caught an orca,” Jones said. “We wouldn’t have known that had it not been for the camera.<\/p>\n
“That fisherman followed the rules and it would all be revealed in good time. A rather unpleasant outcome.”<\/p>\n
The minister was subsequently told by officials that, in fact, two orca had been killed in two separate bycatch incidents.<\/p>\n
One of them was off Tairawhiti, another off the South Island, he said.<\/p>\n
“That’s an example of the industry abiding by the installation of cameras that are between 30-40 feet … and that’s the way in which technology can boost the confidence of the public that the industry is nowhere as bad as all these banshees… would suggest it is.”<\/p>\n
The orca may already have been dead when they became stuck in the nets, he said.<\/p>\n
“It gives you an indication that the system is working perfectly well. Not a happy outcome for the whale, but these things happen.”<\/p>\n
Jones has delayed a controversial bill that would have lessened monitoring requirements on the fishing industry.<\/p>\n
After the select committee, Labour oceans and fisheries spokesperson Rachel Boyack told media that Labour introduced cameras on fishing vessels so this sort of reporting could occur.<\/p>\n
“It’s why we opposed any changes to the act through the bill, [which] would have stopped people from being able to make official Information Act requests of this type of footage.<\/p>\n
“There’s been around 18 requests of footage since we introduced cameras on boats. All of those have been declined.”<\/p>\n
She called the orca deaths “devastating”.<\/p>\n
RNZ has made an Official Information Act request to the Ministry for Primary Industries to obtain the footage of the orca killed in nets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two orca have been killed by commercial fishing operators in bycatch incidents, the Minister for Oceans and Fisheries…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":744488,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[64,63,128,338],"class_list":["post-744487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=744487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744487\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/744488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=744487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=744487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=744487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}