Re-thinking recreational fishing – how a natural disaster presents insights and opportunities for achieving sustainability and equity objectives

Abstract

Pāua (abalone) are a treasured natural resource that supports a recreational fishery worth $2 million annually to the local economy of the Kaikōura district in New Zealand. From 2016, the fishery was closed for 5 years in response to widespread mortality caused by co-seismic uplift in the 7.8 Mw Kaikōura earthquake. The fishery re-opened in 2021 for three months with a recreational fishing allocation of 5 tonnes. We constructed scenario models informed by fishing pressure observations and show that this catch target was severely exceeded (by a factor of ∼9). We then evaluated alternative management settings involving daily bag limit (DBL) adjustments and temporal controls on the open season. Only the most drastic modelled scenarios could achieve the 5 t allocation with similar levels of daily fishing effort showing the need for a greater focus on fishing effort to achieve sustainable management. Severely reduced DBLs (1–2 pāua) were required in all scenarios suggesting a need for significant departure from this management focus since very low DBL settings force poor cost-return ratios on fishers. Instead, temporal controls that shift opening times away from high visitation periods provide a means of maintaining modest DBLs outside of longer-term protected areas. These seasonal timing strategies can also support a greater proportion of the harvest accruing to local fishers thereby influencing benefit-sharing aspects of the recreational fishery. We discuss insights for equitable solutions to potential influxes of fishing effort and highlight the opportune aspects of disaster recovery contexts for conceiving and implementing new policy directions.