Longfin Eel Fishing
The commercial fishing of Longfin eels started to gain momentum in the 1960s and had a 2000 tonne yearly catch by the 1970s. But the fishery went into decline in the early 1980s and in the 2000-2001 fishing season only 1079 tonnes were taken. The commercial Longfin eel fishing was included into the Quota Management System (QMS) in 2000 for the South Island and the North Island in 2004. This set limits as to the minimum and maximum size (220 grams and 4 kg) and the Total Allowable Catch (TAC). As of 2007 the TAC has not been reached in any fishing season since the implementation of the QMS. In recognition of the significance of Longfin eels to Māori they have a 20 percent allocation of fishery stocks. The capture and export of glass eels in New Zealand has been prohibited.
Read more about this topic: New Zealand Longfin Eel
Famous quotes containing the word fishing:
“It is long ere we discover how rich we are. Our history, we are sure, is quite tame: we have nothing to write, nothing to infer. But our wiser years still run back to the despised recollections of childhood, and always we are fishing up some wonderful article out of that pond; until, by and by, we begin to suspect that the biography of the one foolish person we know is, in reality, nothing less than the miniature paraphrase of the hundred volumes of the Universal History.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)