Science Centres: Fisheries

The Ministry of Fisheries has recently contracted NIWA to undertake stock assessments of two highly migratory fish species, swordfish and albacore tuna, in the New Zealand region. This is the first time that swordfish have been assessed here.

Although not a target species, albacore is a major bycatch in the tuna longline fishery. Swordfish is not a permitted target species, but is a valuable bycatch.

We will use catch and effort data to derive a series of catch rate indices that may reflect relative changes in stock abundance. We’ll then look for these catch rates in detail to identify any relationship with environmental factors such as sea surface temperatures, or other oceanographic features.

Of course, the fish pay no heed to national borders, so we’ll be collaborating closely with fisheries scientists and managers overseas. Information collected from the entire region, and for all the fleets of various nations, will be used in the models that have been developed for albacore by the Secretariat of the Pacific Community - Oceanic Fisheries Programme, and for swordfish by CSIRO, Australia.