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Commercial fishing boat - Source: ONE News -
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A Tauranga fisherman has been fined $27,000 for illegally dumping snapper, after traces of paint from his boat were found in the scales of the fish.
Ross Harvey pleaded guilty in September to being a party to the dumping of snapper by West Coast Fishing Limited.
Around 1000 legal size snapper were found by a diver, four kilometres north of the Ohiwa Harbour entrance in the eastern Bay of Plenty on August 6, 2009.
Harvey was the skipper of the fishing vessel Garraway at the time, and the Ministry of Fisheries used forensic evidence to determine the dumped fish had come from his boat.
"The Fishery Officers found blue paint embedded under the scales of two of the snapper," Tom Teneti, Field Operations Manager for Poverty Bay said.
"The paint was scientifically tested by the University of Otago Chemistry Isotrace unit. This contributed to identification of the source of the dumped snapper - the Garraway."
Electronic data collected from the vessel also helped place it in the area at the time.
"A process of elimination was applied to make sure no other vessel could have been involved in the vicinity of the detected dumping," Teneti said.
Dumping of legal size quota species of fish is prohibited under the Fisheries Act 1996 because all legal size quota species must be landed and counted against the fisher's annual catch entitlement.
Harvey's fine is believed to be one of the largest for this type of offending.
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