Observer Services Strategy

Background

Observers on commercial fishing vessels provide an independent source of high quality scientific and other information from commercial fishing operations. The integrity of information from observers is a key element of management decisions for New Zealand’s fisheries, particularly as an input to scientific stock assessments and for monitoring the environmental impact of fishing activities.

The costs of observer services are recovered from the commercial fishing sector.

The collaborative review aims to:

• Develop clear specifications around the need for and extent of observer coverage;
• identify ways of improving efficiency and effectiveness of delivering this coverage; and
• suggest how this might be implemented.

It is recognised that, in addition to the fishing industry, there are a range of stakeholders in the Ministry’s Observer program. All stakeholders will be consulted before any changes are made to the program.

If changes to the current service delivery are made, these are likely to be implemented around 1 July 2010.