Dear Ministry for Primary Industries,

Late November 2017 a Sanford fishing vessel returning to Port Timaru with a number of fish bins of salmon.
Pegasus Fisheries, also landed a number of bins of salmon.

Many keen salmon fishermen and former volunteers for Fish & Game have gone on one of these Salmon By-catch Monitoring trips into the "Salmon Conservation Area"
which this just raises many further questions:-

1. Are Fish & Game still permitted to have volunteer observers on trips into the SCA?

2. Who decides whether or not a Chinook salmon trawled out of the sea is a farm escapee or a wild fish? How can they tell the difference? They're not tagged. They are the same species. What's to stop all salmon caught being called "farm escapees" and hence not part of the 5-tonne annual quota?

3. If 5000 kgs can legally be caught each year, and sold, from within the Salmon Conservation Area, what weight can be caught outside the area, and sold?

4. Who within MPI and Fish & Game organizes these trips?

There is a formal record kept of all sea-caught salmon sold by Licensed Fish Receivers (MPI Returns) and would like a copy of the figures for the last 10 years.

Yours faithfully,

Graham Carter