Orange Roughy - Conservation

Conservation

Conservation measures consist of imperfectly enforced catch limits, and listings on various endangered species and do-not-eat lists maintained by governments and environmental activist organizations.

According to sustainable seafood guides, such as Seafood Watch (USA), the Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society of New Zealand, the Marine Conservation Society (UK), consumers should strongly avoid the species.

Orange roughy is New Zealand's highest value fishery, accounting for 17.2% of total finfish export earnings. The generally accepted fishery management practice is to quickly reduce the original biomass (fish down stage) to a target of 30%. Once this target is achieved, quotas are set. For example, assuming a hypothetical unfished biomass of 100,000 tons, 70,000 tons is considered "surplus" and unrestrained fishing is allowed to remove it. Quotas are set to maintain the 30,000 ton target biomass. The catch size that allows this is the maximum sustainable yield and was originally believed to be 1,200 tons per year. By 2005, it became obvious this quota was too high.

The New Zealand Ministry of Fisheries has reduced catch quotas each year because the species' maturation and reproduction rates have been repeatedly overestimated. Antons Trawling, Ltd. represents 66% of the orange roughy quotas, and appealed the northern fishery's (ORH1) 2008 quota, which reduced the total allowable catch (TAC) from 1,470 tons to 914 tons. In February 2008, the High Court overturned the new quota, ruling the Minister did not have the legal power to set quotas for ORH1 because the strict interpretation of the Fisheries Act required an accurate population assessment and comparison to how many there should be. Due to the expense and difficulty of conducting assessments, only 20% of the areas had assessments. The majority of the unassessed areas had TACs of 10 tons or less, with a few notable exceptions, such as ORH1. As assessments in these areas to replace existing monitoring systems were neither cost effective nor technically feasible, the court recommended amendments to the Act. However, the new quotas are estimated to sustainably support only 11% of the unfished population size. Also, catch misreporting is a serious and common problem, with one ORH1 permit holder pleading guilty in 2008 to exceeding his quota by 180 tons, which by itself represents 12% of the quota. Area limits and feature limits are also routinely exceeded. The Area A catch limit of 200 tons has been exceeded every year, while the 30 ton limit for the Mercury-Colville features has been exceeded in three of the last four years, including a catch of 64 tons in 2004-05. Since orange roughy is a valuable export, the Ministry of Fisheries has launched projects to study the fish.

In 2010, Greenpeace International added orange roughy (deep sea perch) to its seafood red list, which contains fish that are generally sourced from unsustainable fisheries.