From Rhetoric to Reality – Delivering an Integrated Catch Estimation System with Correlation and Calibration for New Zealand Amateur Fisheries

For years people have bemoaned the conflicting research results arising from onsite versus offsite amateur fisheries harvest estimates. Much has been written of the need to verify offsite data in some manner with onsite data, or as some people describe it: dead fish are real data, anything else is fishers' tales. This rhetoric has remained unresolved in our fisheries management system largely due a lack of clarity with respect to fisheries management objectives in shared fisheries, low research priority and limited research budgets.  As a result of a combination of political, economic, social and technological factors in New Zealand we have moved in the last few years from discussing the rhetoric to being in the process of implementing an integrated catch (harvest) estimation system.  In this paper we outline what we consider an integrated catch estimation system to be, how we are utilising calibration and correlation as part of the system and the current state of implementation of the system for New Zealand's amateur fisheries.