9:02 am on 4 August
2017
Eric Frykberg, Transport,
Energy & Resource Infrastructure Reporter
Hundreds of penguins
are likely dying in fishing nets each year, conservation group Forest &
Bird says.
It said the birds, including
the endangered hoiho / yellow-eyed penguin, were dying after being
unintentionally snared in set nets moored close to the coast.
The group said material
gathered from the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) under the Official
Information Act showed 14 penguin deaths occurred in the year from October 2015
to October 2016, but this was just the tip of the iceberg.
Thirteen of these were
reported by MPI observers but only 3 percent of boats had MPI observers
onboard, so the real number of penguin deaths had to be higher, it said.
Forest & Bird chief
executive Kevin Hague said this was not good news.
"It looks as if
the fishing industry is killing hundreds of penguins in set net fisheries and
almost none of it is being reported," he said.
That was because there
was no mechanism to determine how many were dying.
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