From April, it will be illegal to hunt, kill or otherwise harm great whites within the countryÂ’s Exclusive Economic Zone, which extends 200 miles from its shores.
The law will also apply to nationally flagged vessels fishing further afield. And it will be illegal to possess or trade in great white shark curios (teeth and jaws can be worth large sums of money) or other body parts on New Zealand territory.
Passed under the countryÂ’s Wildlife Act, the protection measure is backed by serious penalties – a fine of up to NZ$250,000 (about £86,000) and/or up to six months in prison.
It is not yet clear whether fishermen who kill great whites accidentally as by-catch will be encouraged to report such incidents without fear of punishment. The alternative will be that carcasses are released at sea and the deaths go unrecorded.
Jim Anderton, Fisheries Minister, has stated that “any fisher inadvertently catching one will have to return it to the sea, intact, and alive, if possible”. This implies that latitude will be granted over by-catch deaths where it is accepted that full effort was made to save the shark. |
