A check on com­mer­cial and charter fish­ing boats around Stew­art Island earlier this month has been suc­cess­ful.

The Min­istry for Primary Indus­tries (MPI) and the navy’s HMNZS Taupō detec­ted three instances of alleged non-com­pli­ance, out of 14 com­mer­cial ships and a charter boat checked.

Fish­er­ies New Zea­l­and was mak­ing fur­ther inquir­ies into the alleged breaches.

The trip aimed to visit boats fish­ing in places MPI didn’t often get to, such as Half­moon Bay and Cod­fish Island.

HMNZS Taupō lieu­ten­ant com­mander Toby Mara said the navy ship was able to cover more ground in a day than MPI could alone.

“They could wake up and imme­di­ately start board­ing boats out at sea and do it until sun­set. They were also mak­ing boaties knew the legal require­ments,” Mara said.

“It was pretty good. We got out of Bluff and the weather was put­ting it on, so we headed straight south to Stew­art Island and out to the north­west­ern coast, which is nor­mally fur­ther than the MPI would go.

“MPI jumped on some ves­sels on the way down to Cod­fish Island, and a few more when we got there. Over­all we checked out 15 ves­sels in the three days we were out there.”

The MPI officers also did a lot of edu­ca­tion work, he said.

“Bur­eau­cracy is ever-chan­ging, and MPI were not just there to fine and charge boats but also edu­cate and make sure every­one was fish­ing sus­tain­ably.

“There’s new people on those boats, and it’s just mak­ing sure they’re aware of everything.”

Work­ing with Fish­er­ies NZ was a task they looked for­ward to, Mara said.

“It was a good oppor­tun­ity, and something dif­fer­ent for us … You get to write your own pro­gramme.”

Mara said the ven­ture was the first for many on HMNZS Taupō, and the first time in nearly a dec­ade the ship had ven­tured this far south. He hoped it would do so again in the near future.

“We exceeded expect­a­tions in terms of how many ves­sels we could board.

“Both organ­isa­tions share a sim­ilar com­mit­ment to pro­tect­ing New Zea­l­and’s valu­able mar­ine resources, so con­duct­ing this com­pli­ance oper­a­tion provides that crit­ical vis­ib­il­ity.

“It’s a great place to come and do some train­ing and something dif­fer­ent like help­ing MPI.”

The crew enjoyed Inver­car­gill and Bluff but were head­ing north, and would do some sea train­ing as they head back to Dav­en­port.

“Down south just provides us some dif­fer­ent con­di­tions to train in. Down here we get the rolling sea swell and it changes how you do things, but also adds an extra dynamic.”

The 55m-long Taupō could accom­mod­ate 37 per­son­nel, and was more com­monly used for RNZN Officer of the Watch train­ing, and to test the nav­ig­a­tion skills of newly qual­i­fied sail­ors.

Fish­er­ies New Zea­l­and’s com­pli­ance man­ager south Gar­reth Jay said the trip south proved fruit­ful.

“Work­ing with our navy part­ners gives us greater capa­city to inspect com­mer­cial fish­ing ves­sel oper­a­tions fur­ther out to sea and helps provide a greater pic­ture of fish­ing oper­a­tions throughout the Exclus­ive Eco­nomic Zone.”

Dur­ing the recent patrol, fish­ery officers inspec­ted ves­sels’ elec­tronic report­ing, paper­work, and fish­ing prac­tices.

“Our officers found a gen­er­ally good response from crew on board the ves­sels they inspec­ted, and the major­ity of the ves­sels were fol­low­ing the rules,” Jay said