The nation's recreational anglers and iwi will find out tomorrow whether taking their legal challenge over fisheries management to the highest court in the land has paid off.
The Supreme Court is expected to rule on a landmark case first taken by recreational fishing groups in 2005, the year after kahawai was brought into the quota management system.
They have sought a declaration in a bid to obtain a fair allocation in "shared fisheries", where commercial trawlers compete for the same species, such as snapper, blue cod, kingfish, paua, and rock lobster .
The non-commercial fishers have claimed that their allocation should allow for the social, economic, and cultural well-being of recreational and Maori anglers, not just as factors to be considered, but as objectives, once a sustainable total allowable catch (TAC) has been set.
The non-commercial fishers asked the Supreme Court to uphold the judgment of the High Court over that of the Court of Appeal.
The High Court ruled in 2007 that decisions on the total allowable catch for kahawai should be re-considered, to take into account social, economic and cultural well-being of Maori and recreational anglers.
But the Appeal Court last year substituted a direction that the next allocations should take account of recreational bag catch limits for recreational anglers.
The NZ Recreational Fishing Council and the NZ Big Game Fishing Council -- supported by Ngapuhi, Ngati Whatua, the Hokianga Accord, and lobby group Option4 -- criticised Fisheries Ministry reliance on catch histories.
When a fisheries minister reduced the total amount of fish allowed to be caught, recreational anglers using rods and lines were constrained in catching all the fish set aside for them, but commercial companies using high-tech equipment could effectively net their full quotas.
When the respective catch histories were then evaluated in the setting of the next year's total allowable commercial catch (TACC) for fishing companies, there was potential for recreational fishers to be disadvantaged.
This denied the potential for a species such as kahawai to become mainly a "recreational" fish stock, or available only as a bycatch to commercial fishers.
