What are Fisheries Observers?

Fisheries observers are government employees who are assigned to fishing vessels to collect information that help manage New Zealand’s fisheries. Their main tasks include independently estimating vessel catch and bycatch, undertaking biological sampling, recording seabird and marine mammal interactions, and assisting in studies. Observers also have a role in compliance monitoring — recording whether vessels are following the law, but they don’t have an enforcement role.

Life as an observer on a vessel is not always easy as it often entails long periods of isolation under arduous conditions in an environment that, at times, can be openly hostile. Globally, abuses towards fisheries observers are well documented and occasionally severe with suspicious disappearances of observers being recorded across a number of nationalities.