30/03/2014
in this friday update
Maori Fisheries Conference – Need to Enhance Industry Reputation
Heralding Healthy Fish
English Children Educated on Fish as Part of the Curriculum
Maui’s Dolphins and Cats
Survey Reminder
also this week
In the media
Scoop has carried a Sealord press release promoting its MSC certified New Zealand fresh hoki deal with Woolworths nation-wide in Australia. Sealord said its sales of New Zealand fresh fish to Australia will more than double in 2014. Woolworths’ Managing Director of Supermarkets and Petrol, Tjeerd Jegen, said Woolworths has bought frozen seafood from Sealord for more than 20 years and ‘this expanded partnership between an iconic New Zealand company and Australia’s fresh food people makes perfect sense’.
Waatea News has quoted BERL economist Ganesh Nana as having told the Maori Fisheries Conference that in the next ten years Maori of working age will increase as a proportion of the population, but jobs for them in the fishing industry will be outside the population centre of Auckland. Ganesh Nana said ‘the investment needs to be made now in training and infrastructure to ensure that Maori in the regions can meet their potential’.
NBR Food Industry Week reports middle aged Japanese men are three times less likely than males in North America to suffer from coronary artery calcification – because the Japanese eat on average ten times more fish. The article cites a US-Japan study which concluded that the omega-3 fatty acids in fish need to be consumed in large volumes for them to confer significant health benefits.
TVOne News has broadcast a report from its crew visit to Campbell Island, which stated that elephant seals, penguins and albatrosses ‘are in steady decline’ in the Southern Ocean. The reporter speculated that climate change may be responsible. Mortality from fishing was something ‘the industry has done a lot about’ though ‘mollymawks are so rare we couldn’t find one to film’. The reporter missed all the 24,000 pairs of Campbell Island mollymawks breeding on the Island at this time of the year with their chicks still in the nests.
The New Zealand Herald has published a review of Ponsonby’s Coroco restaurant, with its seafood choice of grilled Antarctic toothfish, snapper and Ora King salmon sashimi, octopus on cucumber or tuna on turnip. The reviewer chose the toothfish and wrote ‘When I took my first mouthful of the delicate fish - sweetly marinated in miso and grilled to soft perfection, enhanced with a pungent and refreshing citrus foam - I did weep’ in appreciation.
The New Zealand Herald has also reported Ukraine’s Combat Dolphins have fallen into Russian hands and California salmon are being trucked for breeding since rivers are drying up.
unsubscribe
If you no longer wish to receive this email please unsubscribe.
Maori Fisheries Conference – Need to Enhance Industry Reputation
The Maori Fisheries conference, hosted by Te Ohu Kaimoana in Auckland this week, focused on co-operation and reinvigorating activities to boost the economic return on quota assets.
Sanford chief executive Volker Kuntzsch drew on his substantial international experience in saying collaboration was needed to get to the next level. New Zealand does not have a seafood marketing initiative, we are a very small player and we need to build on our fantastic reputation overseas, he said.
Aotearoa Fisheries chief executive Carl Carrington saw our right to operate as being under continuous threat, something we cannot ignore.
Seafood NZ also developed the argument of needing to enhance industry reputation, that it was not alright to blindly assert property rights whilst grumbling about the media and anyone who dares criticise us.
The conference concluded with the traditional debate, a robust affair that requires a quick wit and a hide tougher than shark skin. The moot was It’s Not Convenient, Let’s Flag It but the speakers saw little reason to stick to that.
One of the few repeatable lines was courtesy of Te Ohu chairman Matiu Rei: “Oscar Wilde said the only worse thing than being talked about was not being talked about and you (the opposition team led by Te Ohu chief executive Peter Douglas) know a lot about that.”
The shiny domed Matiu advised he shaved his head three times a week – on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays – “but on the weekend I let it grow wild”.
The conference dinner is renowned for its lavish seafood and did not disappoint. The menu included crayfish, oysters, smoked eel, salmon and tuna sashimi, snapper and clams.
Heralding Healthy Fish
In March we farewell our Fish of the Month series, with squid the final species featured this month. The Fish of the Month promotion has had a great run for more than a year and is transitioning into our broader Healthy Fish programme. So while you won’t see a monthly spotlight on one fish species, you will continue to see a regular promotion to the public of all things good about New Zealand seafood. That will range from highlighting seafood events around the country, promoting health benefits and new research, to great examples of sustainability. And of course we will continue to promote seafood in season, whether it’s the launch of the Bluff oyster season, availability of fresh hoki or albacore tuna.
If you have any questions, or things you’d like to see added to the Seafood NZ Healthy Fish calendar, please contact Karin Kos at Seafood New Zealand, [email protected].
English Children Educated on Fish as Part of the Curriculum
Every primary school in England is to get an education resource pack that encourages 5-8 year olds to eat fish as part of a healthy balanced diet.
The pack has been developed by Fish is the Dish, the consumer and education face of industry levy funded body Seafish, in response to the reintroduction of the compulsory teaching of cooking and nutrition on to the curriculum in England.
Maui’s Dolphins and Cats
John Muollo, of Wellington’s DeepBlue Seafoods, recently supplied some net props for photos of a cat – to illustrate a story in the next edition of the seafood magazine on diseases of marine mammals (sea lions and Maui’s dolphins) and where these diseases come from in the first place.
It got him thinking, and writing;
“Let the public now make a social decision as to what should be done to save the endangered Maui’s Dolphin now that the biggest killer is in fact in CAT S**T!
Will they kill off all cats in the Manukau area and all along the coastline or finish killing off the other endangered species…… the Fisherman?
That scientist woman that says we should do everything physically possible to save the dolphin is right… I noted she had a cat, as in the interview on TV. I’m sure I saw it walking around in the background on the 60 Minutes documentary .
Will she dispose of the said cat to save the Dolphin or will the public once again kick up a stink like the Snapper Debacle and say it is their right to have a cat which may be the cause of the extinction of the Maui’s dolphin.
Now that the boot is on the other foot let’s see what Nick Smith has to say about it.”
