Scientist emphasises greenhouse gas emissions are just one measure of our fishing industry's impact on the environment – consumers need to look more widely.
Steve Epiha has been working on fishing boats since he was 16; now he skippers a multimillion dollar Sanford trawler that takes its 30-strong crew out as far as the Chatham Islands to the east, and down to New Zealand's chilly sub-Antarctic outposts.
They go out for six weeks at a time; mostly they catch hoki 500 to 600 metres down. On the last trip they chased squid all the way down to the Auckland Islands.
Epiha's daughter Ciarna, 20, is following in her old man's footsteps. She's taken a liking to fishing and signed up to his crew last year. The long weeks at sea have strengthened their relationship, he reckons.
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At the end of the shift, father and daughter make themselves cups of Milo on the bridge. "She tells me all the tittle-tattle about what's happening around the boat," Epiha laughs. "She gets to see through her eyes what I went through that whole time she was growing up as a baby."
On Friday, they'll embark from Timaru for another month at sea. The two are at the forefront of the argument over the commercial fishing industry's commitment to the marine environment and reducing carbon emissions.
"In 25 years at sea, I've seen quite a lot of changes," Epiha says. "For example, they're not shy at upgrading boats. Now we're starting to see results from our fuel usage, fuel savings, reduced carbon footprint."
The 64-metre San Discovery, which he captains, is a deep-sea trawler that can produce fillets, headed and gutted fish, squid tubes, fishmeal and fish oil – all processed, packaged and labelled to export standards.
"What I can hand-on-heart say is, we do care a lot about the environment," he says.
"It's engrained in the way we operate, adjusting gear to make sure that it's less drag on the bottom, easier to tow, because all that adds up to less fuel usage."
NZ's deepwater fishing industry is hailing new research that finds the average carbon footprint of its wild-caught fish, caught and processed at sea, is one of the smallest among animal-based protein sources – though that's only half the story. Catching fish still emits more greenhouse gases than growing plant-based protein.
The research was paid for by the Deepwater Group of commercial fishing companies, whose members provided data from 21 vessels. It was conducted by the same AgResearch scientists who previously reported that New Zealand's dairy, beef and lamb industries had lower emissions than their overseas counterparts.
But the report's authors urge some caution. Dr Stewart Ledgard, one of the scientists who conducted the research, says he would have placed more caveats around findings than the Deepwater Group has in its draft press release.
Overall, he says deepwater fish like New Zealand hoki have a smaller footprint than beef, sheep, milk, pork and poultry – if they're fished at sustainable levels.
But he and co-author Dr André Mazetto didn't include emissions associated with bottom trawling, which disturbs the seafloor leading to increased organic carbon mineralisation and CO2 release. And most of the boats didn't report on refrigerants and packaging.
Most importantly, he says greenhouse emissions are just one measure of our fishing industry's impact on the environment – consumers need to look more widely. Other measures include the industry's impact on bycatch, birds, trawling over seamounts, and the eco-toxicity impacts of things like the anti-fouling chemicals used on vessels.
The study finds wild-caught fish has a smaller carbon footprint than farmed fish, beef and lamb, or dairy products – but Ledger points to other research showing that plant-based proteins like nuts, peas and seaweed have lower footprints.
Carbon footprint (kg CO2e / kg edible weight)
This coincides with a panel at the Bonn Climate Conference, overnight New Zealand time, that argued for cutting back meat consumption to reduce emissions.
"Even if we stopped fossil fuel emissions overnight, emissions from the global food system alone would make it impossible to limit global warming below 1.5 degrees," says Tim Werner, who was on the panel with Greta Thunberg and other environmentalists.
Earlier this week, Plant Based Treaty campaigners handed out 2,000 free vegan hot dogs to climate talks delegates. "Climate conferences should definitely be vegan, it's important we lead by example and show what can be done," they said.
One of the group's demands is financial support and training for farmers, ranchers and fishers (like Steve and Ciarna Epiha) to move away from animal production to diversified plant-based systems. They want countries to agree to ban the building and expansion of fish farms, and that there be no new large-scale industrial fishing vessels.
But in New Zealand, the new Ministry for Primary Industries draft fisheries industry transformation plan does the opposite: it proposes government subsidies to the fishing industry to build lower-emission vessels, including bottom trawl and dredge vessels.
New Zealand-based oceans advocate Karli Thomas says that is locking New Zealand into high-impact trawling for decades to come.
The AgResearch study fails to count the environmental impacts of the fishing method itself, either in terms of carbon emissions or the loss of ocean biodiversity and damage to ecosystems. "It’s like trying to measure someone’s footprint without checking whether they’re wearing hobnail boots."
She says the seabed is the planet’s greatest carbon sink, and bottom trawling releases carbon by dragging heavy nets over it. "The authors of this paper note that a recent study found bottom trawling causes significant emissions of greenhouse gases – but then they do nothing to assess these emissions from New Zealand’s trawl fisheries."
Thomas says comparing fish to farmed red meat is nothing more than a diversion. "It's a red herring cooked up by the bottom trawling industry, who commissioned the study, in a desperate attempt to get people to look the other way while it continues trashing the seabed. But New Zealanders are not so easily fooled, 79 percent of people want bottom trawling off seamounts; 84 percent want trawling and dredging out of the Hauraki Gulf.
"These methods are essentially scorched-earth fishing. Kiwis want to see our fisheries do better than that."
Newsroom asked whether it was fair to attack the science, just because it was paid for by the Deepwater Group.
"There are legitimate concerns," Thomas insists. "This is an industry-commissioned report, not a peer reviewed scientific paper. The data appears to be drawn from 21 vessels, over an unspecified time period. The primary data should be released so their methodology can be reviewed – beyond the obvious fact that they have left out the carbon released by the bottom trawl fishing method itself."
Seafood NZ Deepwater Council general manager Aaron Irving says the research was commissioned to enable the seafood sector to understand its carbon footprint, to demonstrate the sector’s commitment to reducing its energy consumption, and to assist in introducing lower carbon solutions for the deepwater fleet.
“We know that New Zealanders love eating seafood, but we also know that they also want to understand the carbon footprint of the food they choose to buy and eat," he says, in a statement.
The Deepwater Council represents quota owners of New Zealand fisheries who selectively fish for species like hoki, jack mackerel, orange roughy, and squid.
“When we were looking to commission this study, we asked the team at AgResearch to undertake it for us. They are New Zealand’s best scientists in this field, having undertaken remarkable work to calculate the carbon footprints of dairy, beef, lamb and milk.
“We are excited that consumers have increasing access to the most up-to-date science and information about the foods they choose because we know that our fish is a sustainable, low-carbon choice."
Greenpeace Aotearoa oceans campaigner Ellie Hooper disagrees, saying the report takes a "very narrow view" of the impact bottom trawling has on the climate – completely excluding inconvenient truths they’d rather not acknowledge.
"It has overlooked the carbon that bottom trawling releases from disturbing the seabed, as well as the carbon held in the fish and other marine life that this method removes from the ocean in droves," Hooper says. "In doing so, the commercial fishing industry is greenwashing its practices, when it’s well established that bottom trawling is hugely destructive to both the climate and biodiversity."
"Science shows that healthy, diverse and abundant oceans are far better carbon sinks than those that have been depleted and stripped of life – but this is completely ignored by this report, allowing the industry to crown themselves the kings of sustainability."
