5 Principles
that you can support to help rebuild our fisheries.
What we stand for
LegaSea has developed 5 Principles to describe what we stand for. These explain how we can achieve productive, abundant and diverse fisheries so future generations can enjoy a meaningful fishing experience.
In August 2014 LegaSea launched the Tip the Scales pre-election campaign aimed at generating public support for these 5 Principles. One of the campaign objectives was to show political parties that fish matter to the public of Aotearoa.
Another objective was to educate people so more of us can understand what needs to be done to rebuild our important fisheries and enhance our marine environment.
There are FAQs, videos and comprehensive, easy to read explanations for all the 5 Principles available on the Tip the Scales website or by clicking on each of the images below. While the 'take action' prompts on that site are now inactive the information is still valid today!
| 1. LET'S REBUILD THE FISHERY |  |
| Adopt international best practice by setting a target stock size of at least 40% of the original stock size that existed prior to modern fishing. We owe it to ourselves and future generations to officially adopt a minimum target of 40%. | |
| 2. STOP SENSELESS WASTE | |
| It's time to do away with old world fishing techniques that wreak havoc in our fisheries. Remove non-selective and indiscriminate trawling from within the 100m depth contour, to reduce illegal fish dumping, killing small fish and damaging sensitive seafloor ecology. |  |
| 3. THE PUBLIC OWN THE FISHERY |  |
| Our fisheries are a national resource and our country ought to derive a royalty from quota holders that exploit them for private profits. This will benefit many commercial fishers, the non-fishing public who buy fish, and reduce the incentive to abuse the fishery. | |
| 4. EQUAL SIZE LIMITS FOR ALL |  |
| It's just not fair to allow commercial fishers to profit from catching and selling smaller sized fish that recreational fishers must return to the sea, dead or alive. Let's ensure equality, commonsense and fairness. Let's set minimum size limits for sustainability reasons rather than to give priority to commercial fishers. | |
| 5. VALUE RECREATIONAL FISHING |  |
| Recreational fishing has significant benefits to the economy and these are simply not being measured, valued or considered. LegaSea wants your support to establish how much recreational fishing contributes to the national economy. It will be HUGE. | |
