Allegations of fish dumping, and "cruel" treatment of fishing-boat crews come as no surprise to an Otago helicopter pilot. Brian Grant has spent three years flying fish-spotters over the Pacific and says he has seen it all. Mark Price reports.
Accusations of high-seas slavery, cruelty and waste are engulfing the deep-sea fishing industry.
Earlier this month the Christchurch District Court heard allegations of cruel treatment of crew and the dumping of fish aboard the South Korean trawler Oyang 75.
This week United States Secretary of State Hilary Clinton released a report comparing those who run fishing boat crews to "slave owners".
And now New Zealand - at the UN sustainable development summit Rio+20 in Rio de Janeiro - has signed up to a global oceans partnership aimed at better management of fish stocks and the ocean environment.
Lee Stream helicopter pilot Brian Grant knows exactly how badly managed fisheries can be.
For three years he has been flying tuna "spotters" off fishing boats, far to the north of New Zealand.
His major criticism is of the observer system.
Every "purse-seine" fishing boat chasing tuna in the Pacific has an observer, on the lookout for illegal fishing activity.
They are paid to be on deck weighing fish, measuring fish and observing what species are caught and where.
But Mr Grant says it is not unusual for observers to receive a second income.
As well as collecting their wage, he says, some take bribes from trawler captains to not do their job - to stay in their cabins, to not observe and to fill out ficticious reports.
Mr Grant told the Otago Daily Times some observers were "very, very good".
But, "most of the observers in my experience are either lazy, incompetent or corrupt".
Pressed on what he meant by most, Mr Grant suggested 90% of those he encountered did not do their job properly.
Mr Grant believes observers are not well-paid - at between $30 and $70 per day.
"If the captain decides to pay $100 a day for them to stay inside their cabin what do you think happens?"
Mr Grant says he never actually saw money changing hands between captains and observers.
But observers he spoke to told him they were being paid bribes and the navigator of one boat told him they were bribing the observer.
On one occasion, the Taiwanese trawler he was on was arrested in the Marshall Islands for illegal fishing and fish-dumping.
Mr Grant says the arrest came about because the observer and the captain fell out over the size of the bribe to be paid.
"The observer said I'm going to tell on you.
"The captain left for Taiwan and because somebody physically had to go to the monkey house (jail) they put the navigator in jail."
Mr Grant regarded most observers he met as "just a waste of food on a boat".
"They really are.
"The last one I had was on an American boat. I think we had been at sea for three weeks before I even saw him. He was drunk all the time.
"But so are some of the captains."
To show observers were not doing their job, Mr Grant took videos as fish were being brought aboard.
"I took videos when they were 'brailing' (lifting fish out of the net) to show there was no observer out there measuring fish.
"What they do is they just make the numbers up and write them in the books."
Mr Grant also showed the Otago Daily Times videos and photos of whales being caught, fish being sorted for dumping, rubbish being readied for dumping and crew being put in dangerous situations and of poor quality food offered to crew.
He has posted some on the internet.
Mr Grant believed the prevalence of observers not doing their jobs undermined the veracity of statistics used to determine the fishing pressure on tuna.
"They are not accurately reporting on the fish that are caught and are just making statistics up.
"So really the fisheries commission has no real idea, I don't think, of the actual state of the fishery.
"It's just all made-up stuff."
He provided the ODT with a photo of what he says is an observer filling out a report on the deck above where the fish were coming aboard.
"This is quite a lazy guy ...just completely making it up.
"He's supposed to be down on the deck measuring."
Mr Grant could not remember how many observers he had encountered but he recalled "only one", a Marshall Islander, who did his job properly.
"The rest - some would do a half-arsed attempt but the majority of them didn't do anything."
Mr Grant's job was to fly off the boats, find schools of tuna, and report back on the size of the school - anywhere from 5 tonnes to 300 tonnes - the size of the fish in the school and the school's location.
The ship would catch a school by dropping a small boat off the back, to which was attached one end of a net about two and a-half kilometres long.
It would encircle the school - an operation known as "purse-seining" - while Mr Grant herded the fish into the net by flying low to the water and, if necessary, dropping dye.
The net is then closed at the bottom [pursed] and the fish brought alongside.
The fish normally die as the net is pulled on board.
The target fish were skipjack and yellowfin tuna but usually other fish were caught as well.
Mr Grant says often on board the Taiwanese and Korean boats he worked on:
• Small tuna were dumped because bigger fish are more valuable.
• Sharks would be "finned" and thrown back.
• Marlin would have their head and a small piece from their intestines removed and thrown back.
• Turtles would be served to crew.
• Big whales would escape but smaller whales would be thrown back dead or served to crew.
Mr Grant says Asian purse-seiners "catch a lot of whales" which is illegal and was often not reported by observers.
He says he videoed crew of the Taiwanese boat extracting five dead whales - possibly pilot whales or "false" killer whales - from its net.
Avoiding catching whales was as simple as not setting the net when whales were around and Mr Grant said this was one of the differences between the approach taken by Asian purse-seiners he was on and American ones.
The Americans would not set their net "anywhere near" a whale.
Mr Grant said pay, conditions and adherence to regulations were also far better on American purse-seiners.
"You stub your toe on their boat you fill out forms in triplicate; the coast guard will board you and inspect you; they won't fish anywhere where you are not supposed to go."
Mr Grant served on seven different vessels, mostly owned by South Korean or Taiwanese businessmen.
On his first seven-month trip, on the Taiwanese boat, Mr Grant says he lost 30kg after suffering dysentery.
As he showed the ODT pictures of the food served - including a plate that contained a chicken's head - Mr Grant said he "chuckled" at critical reports of poor conditions on Korean boats used in New Zealand joint ventures.
"... because the Korean boats I've been on, and I've been on three or four of them, they are quite palatial compared with the Chinese boats.
"The Korean boats are not the worst."
The Taiwanese boat was built for a crew of 36 but carried 42 "because we carried spare crew members for when people got hurt or killed".
"They expected to lose four a year."
The "spare" crew slept on a piece of cardboard on the floor.
Mr Grant showed the ODT video footage of what he said was a purse-seiner trying to refuel in rough weather and a huge wave washing over the crew in the bow.
Two crew members were later washed overboard and Mr Grant flew back to them and dropped them a buoy to hold on to while the captain continued with the refuelling.
Eventually, the ship turned back for the crew but only after the tow line and fuel line parted, and the tanker captain refused to continue.
Mr Grant is reluctant to work on another Asian purse-seiner but has no issues with the way American boats are operated.
He is one of many New Zealand helicopter pilots flying tuna spotters around the Pacific.
Contacted by the Otago Daily Times, a spokesman for the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission said in a statement that while it administers the regional observer programme, the "programme is a combination of the existing sub-regional and national programmes of Pacific Island countries".
WCPFC agreed a requirement for 100% observer coverage in the tropical Pacific purse-seine fishery in 2009, the spokesman, Matt Hooper, Ministry for Primary Industries principal adviser international fisheries management and WCPFC vice-chairman, said.
"This was a significant achievement in itself, driven by strong collective action on the part of Pacific Island countries, and has set a platform for increased compliance, transparency and accountability in the tropical purse-seine fishery as well as impetus for the creation of hundreds of observer jobs for Pacific Islanders across the region.
"The focus is now very much on raising observer programme standards."
The observations made by Mr Grant line up with accounts from both observers and vessel captains that have been reported to the WCPFC, Mr Hooper said.
"WCPFC members including New Zealand are well aware of the current shortcomings in the observer programme.
"There is a significant amount of work going on at present to bolster the capacity of Pacific Island observer programmes.
"This work is a priority for the WCPFC itself, but also for the Pacific Island Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA), the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC) and for the national observer providers themselves."
Improving Pacific observer programmes is a focus of the NZ Aid Programme's investment in Pacific fisheries and the New Zealand Ministry for Primary Industries is providing direct support to Pacific fisheries agencies, Mr Hooper said.
ODT: Can the statistics being provided through the observer programme be relied on to be accurate?
Commission: "The Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC), based in Noumea, is the 'science provider' to WCPFC," Mr Hooper said.
"The Oceanic Fisheries Programme of SPC collects observer reports from observer programmes accredited to the WCPFC Regional Observer Programme.
"While there are current concerns about the operation of the regional observer programme, including the capability of some observers and the fact that many reports aren't making it through to SPC at all, there is also a huge amount of highly valuable and accurate information being collected by well trained observers which is contributing both to better scientific assessments of tuna stocks and to compliance with conservation and management measures by fishing vessels.
"The scientific assessments carried out by SPC for the WCPFC on the status of Pacific tuna stocks are based on catch and effort reporting by vessels, observer reports, tuna tagging programmes, satellite vessel monitoring and consideration of environmental factors.
"Overall, scientific information about Pacific tuna stocks is considered to be of the highest standard and SPC is highly regarded internationally for the quality of the stock assessments it carries out."
Illegal activity, waste and dumping
While Mr Grant did not keep a log of the illegal activity he says he observed over the three years he was at sea, he recalled many occasions when the trawlers he was on broke fishing commission regulations.
They included -
FISH-DUMPING: Mr Grant said every fish caught was supposed to go into the hold but fish-dumping would happen on "pretty much most of the boats" except for the American boats.
Captains did not want to fill their hold with less valuable species or small tuna.
"If it's under two pounds, or 2kg, not sure, they get half of what they would get if it was a bigger fish.""If you have got lots of small fish, and I've seen them do this, they'll [bring in the net] just look at the fish and if they are really small they will just let the net go.
"The fish are dead at this stage. That's the worst part about it.
"It's quite a waste. You would seldom have less than 20 tonne or 30 tonne in there at that stage."
Mr Grant also took photos of crew working on a conveyor belt sorting out small tuna and non-tuna species to be thrown over the side.
UNDER-REPORTING: "When they come in they will say they have got 700 tonne on board and they actually have 1000 tonne."
FISHING IN PROHIBITED AREAS: "Sailing through [an area closed to fishing] you are not allowed to fish. But we obviously were doing that."
RAFT FISHING: Purse-seiners routinely set adrift small "rafts" (about as big as a table) with GPS transmitters attached. These rafts attract algae initially, which attract small fish and ultimately large fish such as tuna.
The rafts can be "fished on" at certain times of year but Mr Grant said some purse-seiners he was aboard would fish on them during the closed season.
Mr Grant said it was easier to catch raft fish than school fish.
OTHER INCIDENTS Dumping rubbish: "The rubbish just went over the side. It didn't matter what it was, it just went over the side ... plastic, oil, drums, anything.
"The first trip I was on they got water into the hydraulic fluid. So they got six or seven 44-gallon drums and they got the old oil and just put it back in there and ... it was just thrown over the side."
