First Impressions By Brendan Horan

The Bay of Plenty coastal area is an aquatic playground with an important Marine industry, but are we looking after it? Do we appreciate what we have and what is our long term plan to enhance and preserve a precious resource?

Last week a concerned group of recreational and sporting fishermen called Legasea met to discuss their concerns with locals and industry leaders. Their message is simple – the need to conserve fish for future generations.

I grew up fishing with Mike Beeching in Whakatane. Mike is now 80 but still fishes off his small commercial boat 'Heather” with its trusty British diesel engine. I spent many a day out there with him and his sons growing up and it reinforced my love affair with the ocean.

When I left school I spent a couple of weeks on a purse seiner out of Tauranga, the skipper was Colin Major.

This boat was about five times bigger than Heather and it was an amazing but sobering experience watching and catching 20 tonne of giant trevally, one minute shimmering like silver milk bottle tops on the surface, majestic and magnificent, but the next minute bloody and dead in the hold.

In those days it was nothing to see 50 tonne schools of various pelagic species within three miles of Tauranga, but with American super seiners and all types of other foreign fishing vessels, those days of abundance are now long gone.

Now when I go out on my kayak to fish sometimes I'll see a small school of trevally but they are flighty and small.

I'd like my children to experience some of the majesty I have and it's important that we save and protect fish stock, like kahawai, which sometimes is caught and used for fertiliser!

The recreational limit for fish is generally twenty per person, but does a boat with four anglers really need 80 fish? So with summer upon us, next time you're out on the briny fishing cast a thought for the future, catch what you need, just catch a feed.