The New Zealand Best Fish Guide - SEAFOOD Ecolabelling: Principles and Practice - page 385

collapsed fish stocks. This collapse has already been reached in the case of most
of New Zealand's orange roughy stocks (five stocks are below 20% of the original
biomass; fishing on two stocks was only closed when they reached 7% and 3% of
the estimated original biomass).

18.8 New directions

The Best Fish Guide is a snapshot assessment of New Zealand's commercial marine
fisheries in June 2004 which Forest and Bird intends regularly to review to record
long-term trends. New Zealand is in the process of adding new species to the New
Zealand QMS and commercialising new species. There is thus a need to extend the
range of species covered and to continue to update the guide in relation to individual
stocks as they change.
The reach of the consumer and citizen information programme needs to be ex-
tended to markets beyond the shores of New Zealand. For this new partnerships
are needed and academic and practitioner studies of the market and policy im-
pacts of the programme are welcomed. Generalisation of the understanding of the
risks to the marine environment and fisheries from particularly destructive methods
of fishing such as bottom trawling and day-time longlining is also needed. This
should include consideration of recreational and/or cultural significance of fish and
fisheries.

18.9 Conclusions

The Forest and Bird's Best Fish Guide is the first guide assessing different fisheries
in New Zealand. The development of the guide was a response to the failures
of the QMS to maintain fish stocks and environmental protection, and the severe
flaws in the MSC's certification of the hoki fishery. The guide assessed 62 different
commercially caught fish species. Most, but not all, of the species are managed
by the fisheries QMS. The guide is based on a set of criteria against which the
best available information was applied and fisheries scored, weighted, summed and
ranked. The criteria used by Forest and Bird are generally applicable to wild-capture
fisheries and could be applied in many other countries.
The Best Fish Guide programme was designed to inform consumers to allow
them to make more environmentally discriminating choices and also to raise the
awareness of consumers as citizens in the issues facing the marine environment.
A major remaining challenge is how to reach the consumers of the 85% of New
Zealand fish that is exported, and how to educate those consumers on their future
choices both as consumers and to engage them as part of the civil society not only
with respect to the New Zealand fisheries but with respect to fishing impacts and
fishing depletion globally.