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. Legally, their role is to collect reliable and accurate information for fisheries research, fisheries management, and fisheries enforcement. Within the fishing industry, people often speak about observers having a role in ‘compliance monitoring’ as shorthand for their role in documenting and reporting fisheries violations.

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 countries.