Feeling lucky with a life on the waves

Bluff fisherman Tane Fisher never tires of his expeditions to Fiordland to catch crayfish destined mostly for the Chinese market. He talks to Sally Rae about a career on the water.

Fisher by name and by nature. It was somewhat inevitable that southern fisherman Tane Fisher would follow in the family footsteps; his father and uncle were both fishermen while his younger brother runs his own boat.

But while it was something Mr Fisher, 54, always knew he wanted to do, his mother could never quite understand it given his propensity for seasickness.

It took a long time, but he eventually grew out of it.

Born and bred in Bluff, Mr Fisher has been fishing "pretty much" ever since he left school. After crewing from his teens through to his mid-30s, he and wife Maree bought their first boat in 2000.

They started with a 38-foot vessel and worked their way up to the piece de resistance, a 65-foot purpose-built crayfishing boat named Te-Maree, which was launched in Picton last year.

Primarily designed for crayfishing, Mr Fisher said the couple also wanted it "reasonably comfortable" for when they were holidaying on it, with space to take other couples with them.

Below deck, there are three bedrooms — two featuring queen-size beds — and an en suite, while another bathroom is on deck for the crew.

The intention over the next few years is for Mr and Mrs Fisher to live on the boat for two to three months each year, travelling around the country.

The boat was built in Picton and designed by Wally Edwards, of TCC Boats, with input from retired boat designer Colin Neill, of Waimate, who designed Mr Fisher’s previous boat.

Many of the boats built in the last several decades for crayfishing had been made at Gough Brothers in Invercargill, but the crew there had been busy building a boat for his cousin at the time and were unable to do it, Mr Fisher said.

TCC Boats had never built anything like what Mr Fisher envisaged for his business — "so there was nothing for me to compare it with".

But the end product was "way beyond" what he imagined.

"They did an absolutely beautiful job. I was absolutely stoked with it," he said.

Mr Fisher was later approached by the organisers of the New Zealand Sail Grand Prix to charter Te-Maree for four days for the event on Lyttelton Harbour in March this year, as the "mother ship".

Another benefit of the new boat is a helicopter landing pad. All their crayfish are flown from Fiordland to Bluff and the faster the fish get to the factory, the better the product.

Previously, it was rowed ashore, left on a beach and picked up by helicopter.

While the boat was being built, Mr Fisher started contemplating landing the helicopter straight on deck. After getting the required measurements, he came up with a plan.

"That’s been a life-changing thing for us. It saves us so much time and a lot of work and the pilots are happy to land there," he said.

Mr and Mrs Fisher leased most of their quota and, most years, fished between 30 and 35 tonnes of crayfish from Fiordland, where the fishery was "really, really healthy".

That was a far cry from a few decades ago when the fishery was overfished and "pretty much buggered", which led to major quota cuts and other initiatives, including adjustments to pots to help smaller crayfish escape.

Since then, it had "just been a big success story", he said.

The CRA8 fishery is the largest mainland fishery geographically. The region extends from Long Point south to Stewart Island and the Snares, the islands and coastline of Foveaux Strait and then northwards along the Fiordland coastline to Bruce Bay.

During the 1980s-90s, various events occurred that ultimately led to the formation of the CRA8 Management Committee Inc (now the CRA8 Rock Lobster Industry Association Inc.).

Despite the introduction of quota in 1990, as the years progressed it was clear to many in the CRA8 industry that the fishery was in trouble.

The Southern Rock Lobster Research and Development Committee turned its attention to advocating for a change in management strategy to arrest the decline in the fishery and return it to a sustainable level.

The latest Ministry for Primary Industries Situation and Outlook for Primary Industries report showed rock lobster exports reached an all time high of $371 million in the year to March 31, 2023, primarily due to a record price of $139 per kilogram.

Even though the amount of exported rock lobster slightly decreased by 0.3%, revenue increased by 4.7% compared with the previous year. China was the main market.

So is crayfish a regular fixture on the Fisher family menu?

"Not really. I do like them. We don’t eat ... a lot, not as much as people think. We have a feed every now and then. We’re not sitting there chewing on them every day," he said.

Mr Fisher felt fortunate to have only had about six crew members over the 23 years of running a boat and three have gone on to run their own boats.

Duncan McCulloch has been with him for about 13 years while Callum Jones began at the start of the new season.

Prior to Covid, he and the crew could be away for up to 10 to 12 days and they were working long hours, starting at 6am or 7am and not finishing until about 12 hours later.

But the pandemic had changed how they operated and now they mainly work to orders, usually over about a six-day period.

Mr Fisher never tires of the trips to the silence of Fiordland, describing it as paradise: "I love it, eh. I just love being on the boat and being up there. It does my head in when I haven’t been there for a wee while."

And despite those early bouts of seasickness, he has had no regrets about his chosen career.

"There’s nothing else I would have wanted to do. I feel very privileged to do what we have done and lucky the fishery has been so healthy."