West Coast whitebait fishing closed areas workshop

A review of the question of the usefulness of reserving waters for protection from exploitation in the whitebait fishery was undertaken at a small workshop. Creation of reserves has social, fisheries management and conservation imperatives. Administration of reserves has costs for the Department of Conservation. Evaluation of the value of reserves as places where whitebait stocks are protected from exploitation is seen as difficult and costly, and has medium to long-term research requirements owing to variation in habitat conditions between sites, intraand inter-seasonal variation in environmental conditions and in the size of the whitebait run, all of this made greatly more complex as a result of the multi-species composition of the fishery. It is suggested that DOC should: 1 Deal first with policy questions regarding the acceptance of the social function of reserves. 2 Conduct a preliminary survey of reserves and attempt to classify them according to their purpose and value for conserving whitebait populations. 3 Base decisions on the continuation of reserves on the results of these two undertakings. Research priorities need to be structured around the environmental and habitat parameters that control whitebait populations and how these are affected by establishment of reserves.