Gemfish

Southern gemfish: “The assessment of the southern gemfish stock has not been updated since 1997. Landings from SKI 7 increased from 2000 to be a level over twice the TACC in 2004-05, but have decreased since then.”

Northern gemfish: For all three models: B2006 wasestimated at between 22% and 32%. “With catches at the current TACC the stock is projected to increase if recruitment returns to the [long term] 1978 to 2000 average level, but decline slightly if recent (1992-2000) recruitment continues.” (MPI 2016, p 388-391).

Inshore: after scampi, gemfish trawling had the highest impact of target fisheries in the Bay of Plenty (Cryer et al, 2002).

Deepwater: Bottom trawling within hoki and squid fisheries results in considerable damage to seafloor communities when caught by bottom trawl or midwater trawl which touches the bottom. Impacts include habitat modification, loss of biodiversity, loss of benthic productivity and modification of important breeding and juvenile fish habitat.

Seabird, fur seal and deepwater shark bycatch is associated with gemfish caught in the hoki and arrow squid fisheries.

Inshore: Inshore trawl fisheries have an estimated seabird bycatch of 4370 seabirds (this includes cryptic mortality of birds that strike the trawl warps and are not recovered in the nets). Species reported include white-capped albatross, Salvin’s albatross and white-chinned petrels. The flatfish fishery has an estimated 928 annual seabird mortalities, including cryptic mortality. Fur seal captures have also been estimated in the inshore trawl fisheries at about 20 per year.

Hoki trawl: An estimated 192 fur seals are captured in the hoki fishery (5-year average). Based on the recent catch spread of hoki the main captures occurs in the Cook Strait (54%), off West Coast of the South Island (24%), off east coast of the South Island and Chatham Rise (15%). The hoki fishery catches about half of the estimated fur seals caught by trawling. The sub-Antarctic and Snares shelf hoki fishery has a low capture rate for nationally critical New Zealand sea lions of about one a year. The trawl fishery also captures about 1420 seabirds a year (5-year average): the main species are Salvin’s albatross, southern Buller’s albatross, white-capped albatross, sooty shearwater, white-chinned petrel, and cape petrels. Protected coral species are also reported caught in hoki tows in most quota areas. The corals caught include gorgonian, hydrocorals, black corals (Antipatharia) and stony corals (Scleractinia) – which includes reef-like, tree-like, and solitary small corals.Other bycatch species include vulnerable deepwater sharks (e.g. shovelnose dogfish, seal shark and Baxter’s dogfish). These low productivity species also include threatened basking sharks (observed at one per year, but could be higher), deepsea skates and some other elasmobranchs.