Design Report for Napier Port and Ahuriri Inner Harbour

BiosecurityNew Zealand TechnicalPaperNo: 20212/10

An updated risk assessment was conducted for 54 New Zealand marine mammals using a multi-species spatially explicit risk assessment. Goodness-of-fit assessments indicated reasonable performance to predict total number of captures for pinniped and delphinid species with >5 captures, but poor performance to predict the spatial location of those captures. Poor performance may be due to inappropriate structural model assumptions or to biological inputs. Results should be interpreted with caution.

New wildlife tracking devices have demonstrated promising results in seabird monitoring and fisheries management. Xargos and Xsputnik loggers were deployed on Antipodean albatrosses in 2019, making use of X band navigation radar detection and real time GPS technology to study seabird movement and foraging patterns at sea, allowing monitoring of in situ interactions with fishing vessels and analysis of which fisheries pose the highest risk of mortality amongst foraging seabirds.

This report details an exploration of the decision context for land use change as an adaptation to climate change in the primary industries. This project focuses on the dynamic interactions between values, rules, and knowledge used by decision makers. The aim is to support adaptation planning in the primary industries, by contributing to the evidence base, and enhance capability and capacity for responding to the risks and opportunities due to climate change.

The document reviews previous risk assessments related to the biosecurity risks from importation of horse meat and meat products. It provides evidence for the development of an import health standard for horse meat (all edible parts of the animal) from all countries. Food safety risks are out of scope.
Two of the organisms assessed may represent sufficient risk to warrant biosecurity risk mitigation measures. The risk level has changed for five organisms compared to previous assessments.

Keywords: Import risk analysis, risk analysis, risk review, horse, equine, equids, meat, meat products, offal

A new model-based approach to calculate New Zealand red rock lobster reference levels was developed, documented, and applied for five Quota Management Areas. Reference levels are based on intermediate-term projections of fixed catch and fishing mortality rates, designed to maximise catch while meeting the risk constraint of remaining above the soft limit and limiting catch variability over time.

This research evaluated using the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) methodology to assess climate change risk in forestry businesses. The key benefit of the TCFD approach is that it exposes business strategy, governance and operations to risk analysis and management and focuses on understanding any financial risks. This research is the first step on what the TCFD suggests is a five-year process. This analysis can start to define the climate change risk analysis.

Keywords: Forestry, climate change, risk assessment, business risk,

This literature review synthesizes the current state of knowledge of marine non-indigenous species treatments, to help address biosecurity risks evident in two focal areas of relevance to marine biosecurity management in New Zealand. These two areas are:
1. the proactive treatment of shellfish aquaculture stock to facilitate biosecure stock transfers; and,
2. the reactive treatment of non-indigenous marine species to enable eradication at the landscape-scale.
The review summarises ~280 published papers in the global literature, outlining a number of chemical, physical and biological treatment options that have been tested to varying degrees. Each identified treatment type was assessed for several attributes in the review, including application regimes, efficacy, safety, the ability to monitor during deployment, biosecurity risks, and the regulatory environment that may influence acceptance and use in New Zealand. A number of these treatments are believed to be effective at small scales. Scaling-up one, or a combination of these identified treatments is likely the most efficient development route. Co-development and collaboration with the aquaculture, marine construction and commercial diving industries is likely to be critical to developing safe, effective and efficient implementation-ready treatment protocols..

This study developed a method to assess risk to benthic habitats from fishing, using holothurians on the Chatham Rise as a case study. A spatial population distribution layer was developed. This layer and the bottom-contacting trawl footprint were then used in a Bayesian spatial population model to calculate the biomass trajectory and spatially and temporally explicit impact overlap statistics for the taxon. Species susceptibility was either assumed or estimated within the population model.

The purpose of these guidelines is to inform the sustainable development of open ocean finfish farming in New Zealand by providing robust and practical guidance to minimise and mitigate effects on seabirds. The guidelines focus on mitigation of interactions through site selection, design, and operation of farm infrastructure through carefully designed monitoring programmes to assess the effectiveness of mitigation measures.

This report describes bycatch of non-protected invertebrates from commercial fisheries and research trawls. Over 660 distinct taxa were identified which contribute to the ongoing discovery and taxonomic description of the New Zealand biodiversity. Specimen records and distribution points inform fisheries interactions with non-target benthic invertebrate bycatch and contribute to research on spatial planning and development of ecological risk assessments of fishing impacts on benthic habitats.

To examine the loss of seabirds (cryptic mortality) during a typical pelagic longline fishing trip, seabird ‘surrogates’ were manually attached to longline hooks under controlled conditions during a typical pelagic longline fishing operation. A single bird was attached to each hook in one of three ways. Almost all the surrogates were retained on retrieval of the gear. This study provides information that will permit refinement of scalars for cryptic mortality associated with pelagic longlines.

This study, conducted in stages over four years, synthesises available information on CO2 and climate-induced changes that affect the New Zealand region and our fisheries. The report reviews the known implications of these changes to the physical and oceanographic system in the coming decades, the state-of-knowledge of how specific fisheries may be affected and, where known, combines this information to determine potential risks to these fisheries.

Electronic monitoring (EM) for seabird capture data for the 2017/18 fishing year was compared with a NIWA audit of the footage and observer data. For the 26 trips in common, the audit recorded 5 seabird captures, as did the EM data reviewed by Trident Systems. However, both missed a seabird capture that was recorded by the other. For the observer data on trips with reviewed EM, 5 seabird captures were recorded, the same number as EM for these trips.