Industry bodies, such as the New Zealand Seafood Industry Council, SeaFIC have consistently opposed every effort to improve the protection for these animals or to achieve better observer coverage, including taking the government to court on several occasions in an attempt to overturn new regulations.

Despite overwhelming evidence, New Zealand’s fishing industry still asserts that the “Best available information suggests no immediate crisis exists for either Maui’s or Hector’s dolphins”. Ironically, for most commercial fish species in New Zealand, there are no estimates of population size, reproductive rate, survival rate or many of the other parameters needed to determine if the fishery is sustainable.

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