The cat’s now out of the bag. Last year we received warning to look out for the next green strategy on how they intend to push for more marine reserves. We understand the environmental movement is infiltrating the high schools in an effort to apply for marine reserves. It’s a soft touch, and if we object we are seen to be the bad guys.

If you, the fisher, objects, your kids will get the soft touch of shame at school. Before we know it we may see a promotion for schools to adopt a marine reserve in their area. Multiply this by the number of high schools in coastal areas and that makes for a lot of marine reserves. The new bill will lend its support to this type of application.

What are high schools doing applying for marine reserves, you might say? We don’t wish to detract from the very good work the year 13 geography class of Kamo High School has done in their recently notified application to have a marine reserve consisting of three areas in Whangarei Harbour.

This application, we are told, has been in the making since 1990. Hang on a minute, 12 years sounds a bit long to stay a year 13 student, so who is driving the process and where is the funding and expertise coming from. Schools don’t have this kind of money to spare. Interesting.

Someone needs to question the prudence or creditability of schools making applications, under whose authority and funding source. Is this kosher! I think not.

This application may look cool and it creates a lot of warm fuzzies to support a high school. The real threat is that if a fisherperson were to oppose the application and had family at this school, can you imagine the peer pressure that can be brought to bear. Let’s not go there. The act needs to set clear criteria as to who may make applications, and that these are not done under the disguise of children and schools.

The next area of concern is the Health and Safety in Employment Amendment Bill. This bill will effectively take the responsibility for employee safety on vessels alongside and at sea away from the Maritime Safety Authority and the Maritime Transport Act, and place it back with the Health and Safety in Employment organisation.

While the MSA may well be contracted back to provide the management services, it will put them in the invidious position of having a potential conflict of interest with their contract to the Crown.

The MSA is at present committed to ensuring that safety at reasonable cost is applied to the maritime industry. No such provision exists under OSH, which operates under a culture of blame and punishment. The bill undermines international obligations and conventions such as the International Marine Organisation, and also challenges the master’s authority.

It applies a “one size fits all” approach to the maritime industry. It ignores our excellent safety record, the introduction of the Safe Ship Management scheme, and the recent reward of reduced Accident Compensation Corporation levies to the non-fishing section of our industry.

It gives crew the right to refuse to perform duties because of a potential risk, even though they are trained to deal with these risks at sea. The definition of a hazard is so broad that it includes harm from stress and fatigue. Can you imagine your crew refusing to go on watch or perform their duties while you are passing through a storm because it is hazardous, and might cause them stress and fatigue?

The New Zealand Marine Transport Association presented an excellent submission on behalf of our restricted limits industry to the Select Committee this month. Copies of this submission are available from the national secretary. It is important for all commercial operators to lobby their local Member of Parliament, including their list MP, to vote against including maritime safety in the Health and Safety Amendment bill.

It is essential that health and safety issues remain in the Maritime Transport Act under MSA control. Could you imagine non-mariners applying industrial safety requirements on your vessel? Your safety officer might be the deckhand who could stop you from sailing. Or picture this: your vessel is now festooned with the proscribed signage of multiple languages like Mind Your Head, Watch Your Step, and even This Vessel May Move Without Warning!

In this issue we welcome a new columnist, Barry Young esq., the recent publisher and editor of Coastguard magazine, who will be discussing issues surrounding safety at sea.  

Keith Ingram, Editor
 

COASTGUARD by Barry Young

Some weeks ago, Coastguard resources were so stretched that if an engine on one of its rescue boats had packed a sad, that rescue unit would have been beached. There were no spare engines and there were no funds to purchase another.

How is it that an organisation like the Royal New Zealand Coastguard Federation and its operating units (more than 60 of them are spread around the country) can find itself in such a situation?

The answer is quite simple. Successive governments have neglected the service for a long time, and the majority of professional and amateur boat operators throughout the country have taken it for granted.

Over the years, governments have sidestepped what many would see as an obligation. They have done this by watching the Coastguard annually negotiate for funds with the Lottery Grants Board. At one stage LGB funding built up to $1.8 million a year, but in more recent times it has been reduced to about $1 million.

It is simply not enough money for the Coastguard to continue to provide the service expected of it, and with the Lotto take down some $80 million, it can be anticipated that even the present $1 million might well be reduced.

Currently the Coastguard struggles along raising $300,000 from its annual lottery, with operating units around the country raising further money at a local or regional level with variable success. The Coastguard needs $5.5 million to maintain its current services and develop such basic operational back-up as spare engines. Is it worth $5.5 million a year? The facts speak for themselves.

If the government had to replace the Coastguard it would need a minimum outlay of $20 million for capital assets. (This does not include buildings or land.) Maintaining and replacing these assets would cost in the region of $5 million a year. Heaven only knows what it would then cost to establish and train crews around the country on an ongoing basis.

Then there is the value of lives saved by the Coastguard. Some years ago the Bureau of Economic Research Ltd, or BERL, calculated that the economic cost to the country of a life lost (for motor vehicle accident purposes) was $2.4 million. The government uses this value to prepare business cases (cost/benefit analysis). The Maritime Safety Authority also uses this value in its business cases to justify capital works expenditure.

Consider this

Each year the Coastguard assists approximately 5000 people to safety. Official statistics only record those who die. During 2001, according to Water Safety New Zealand, 19 people died as a result of recreational boating mishaps.

Police statistics for the 1999-2000 period record 550 lives saved, with the Coastguard being directly involved in 41 percent of these operations. In other words, the Coastguard saved 225 lives.

During 2000-2001, police recorded the number of incidents but not the lives saved. As the number of incidents increased by 25 percent over the previous year, it is reasonable to suggest this would represent 281 lives saved by the service.

Using the BERL figure of $2.4 million for each life, the Coastguard’s efforts over the last two years have saved $1.2 billion worth of lives, or $607 million worth of lives during each of the last two years.

Yet they receive nothing from the government, and only $1 million via the Lottery Grants Board. One million dollars a year is 1/607th of the value of the lives saved. Even if the government raised its contribution to $5.5 million a year, this is still less than one percent of the value of the lives saved.

This would have to be one of the great bargains of all time! Imagine what the Coastguard could do with a 10 percent return on lives saved, ie $60.7 million?

Now, let’s look at the value of vessels rescued. Not all of these would have been lost if they had not been rescued by the Coastguard, but in 2001 they had a value of $90 million.

Surely this is of more than passing interest to the insurance industry, another possible source of income. Then there are all those incidents during which Coastguard vessels stood by to prevent an incident from becoming a disaster. What value can you place on these?

Who runs the VHF network around the country? The Coastguard. And who runs so many of the marine education courses around the country - the Coastguard, although the Boating Education Service is pretty much a stand-alone profit centre, with its costs largely being offset by fees. Nevertheless, they are there, and to replace them would cost a fortune.

Whichever way you look at it, the Coastguard is worth many millions of dollars to this country. Yet the government, the institution responsible for the welfare of the people of New Zealand, pays virtually nothing towards its operation, although it has recently given some relief by way of fuel tax, which will amount to about $45,000 per year.

So what can the Coastguard do? Not all that much, if it continues with its policy of not rocking the boat. But it does have options, some of which might require significant policy changes, including its relationship with the police.

We will explore these in the next issue.
 

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FISHERIES NEWS - OPERATION PACMAN

Operation Pacman has hit at the heart of the black market paua and rock lobster poaching community, says the Ministry of Fisheries. March 11 was the first time that all 140 of the ministry’s fisheries officers took part in a single operation.

At least 85 people had been apprehended, and fishery officers had seized more than 30 vehicles, nine vessels, including three commercial fishing boats, and a variety of other equipment, along with a tonne of paua and 1500 rock lobsters.

Those apprehended face charges under the provisions of the Fisheries Act 1996 relating to engaging in unlawful commercial activity. Deliberate illegal fishing can attract penalties of up to $250,000 and five years imprisonment. Inquiries are continuing in a number of further cases.

Fishery officers from Kaitaia to Invercargill had assembled at the Ohakea airbase on March 11 under the guise of a national training conference. After intensive briefings, teams were deployed in simultaneous actions in Auckland, the Bay of Plenty, Poverty Bay, Wellington, Christchurch and other areas.

The success of the operation was based on exceptional work by two special duty fishery officers, said the national compliance manager for MFish, Dave Wood. They spent six months undercover, buying and selling paua and rock lobster on the black market and identifying the networks involved, he said. The ministry had identified sophisticated illegal trading of rock lobster within New Zealand, and the exporting to Asia of very large quantities of illegally taken paua.

“The other outstanding feature of the operation was the superb support provided by the Defence Forces, and in particular the Royal New Zealand Air Force, and the New Zealand Police, who contributed over 100 officers to the first crucial day of the operation,” Wood said. He also commended the support of Corporate Risks NZ Ltd, who provided the security infrastructure for the operation.

The manager national operations for Mfish, Steve Stuart, said the operation was highly successful on several fronts and had exceeded its objectives. “It shook up the poaching community, drew considerable public attention (to the ministry), and underlined the professionalism of MFish compliance work.”

“One of the drivers behind Pacman was that for some time we’d been frustrated about the poaching problem.” He said that “positional surveillance” (for example, at a beach) was resource intensive, and the ministry’s usual methods of detection were only having a limited effect, as poachers were becoming more sophisticated in finding ways to avoid detection.

“A cycle had developed: we’d catch them, they’d go to court, be fined and go back out poaching to pay the fine. So we started thinking about approaching the problem in a different way, and eventually developed a new strategy of an undercover operation.

“The result was that we really hit at the heart at the poaching and black market community, not just the poachers, but also the middle men and exporters of the product, which we’d had difficulty in getting to before.

“For us, that was a tremendous feat, to be able to progress up the supply chain to those people who are really driving the market. We think we’ve cleaned out a fairly significant part of the supply chain.”

Levels of illegal poaching and black-market sales were estimated to be in the order of 300 tonnes of paua and 100 tonnes of rock lobster annually from the Wellington and East Coast areas.

The undercover phase of Pacman had revealed an insatiable demand for black market paua and lobster, and how much money some people were making out of it, Stuart said.

“The problem is, the financial incentives are such that although we’ve punctured the supply chain for the moment, others will want to step in and take the risk. The Asian markets still want the product, and there’ll still be people in New Zealand trying to supply it. For that reason, in future we will be thinking about how Operation Pacman has changed the way they do business, and how we will react to those changes.”
 

A SURVEYORS VIEW - BOB HAWKINS

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