The proposed changes to your snapper allocation pits leisure fishermen against commercial operations. Harry Pearl reports.

In 1999, Darryl O’Keefe had been made an offer he could not refuse. His father-in-law, Roy Andrews, who’d spent years focusing on the mussel barges dotted among the list of overseas islands between Coromandel and Colville, had heard of prospect of a fishing charter away from Coromandel city.

The mussel farms – therefore the barges that harvest them – attract ratings of snapper. The mussels and shells that fall off the buoyed longlines and tend to be crushed during processing really are a food that is ready when it comes to scavengers.

Mr Andrews works the barges through the week, then simply take individuals fishing during the week-end – anchoring from the neat rows of mussel longlines sheltered within the islands.

Finally, in 1997, the demand had been decided by him ended up being here and bought a barge entirely for fishing. He known as their charter Mussel Barge Snapper Safaris and, couple of years later, asked if Mr O’Keefe wish to work with him.

The fisherman that is”maddest ever” promptly tossed in the task being a carpet layer in Napier and headed north. A decade later on, he and their wife purchased the company.

Now, he states, the charter ferries about 9000 leisure fishermen to and through the mussel farms every year. Read More