Gemfish (southern kingfish) are found throughout New Zealand waters and are generally caught by trawl fisheries in depths from 150 to 500 metres. There are two New Zealand stocks of gemfish, with the southern stock caught around the South Island and a northern stock caught off both coasts of the North Island.

 

The trawl fisheries taking gemfish around the South Island were described for the period 1989–90 to 2019–20, using commercial catch and effort and observer data. Eleven standardised catch-per-unit-effort (CPUE) analyses were investigated as potential abundance series. South Island gemfish are thought to mainly live in the waters south of Stewart Island during the spring and summer and to migrate in the winter to the west coast of the South Island to spawn. Gemfish on the east coast of the South Island appear to be less abundant than on the west and south coasts of the South Island and their spawning migration patterns are not well understood.

 

Catches of southern gemfish were high in the 1980s and their abundance dropped by the early 1990s. Catch limits were curtailed, and commercial catches dropped to low levels from the late 1990s to the early 2010s. From the mid-2010s gemfish were increasingly caught in fisheries targeting hoki and squid.

 

All the analysed data sets indicated that the relative abundance of South Island gemfish had substantially increased, beginning in the mid-2010s. However, the size of increase was not consistent among the various indices and areas, and a CPUE based management reference point was not established.

Document date
Tuesday, 23 July 2024

Document type
V 1.3

File format
Adobe PDF

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11.2 MB

Reference number
2024/39

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FAR: 2024/39;
ISSN: 1179-5352;
ISBN: 978-1-991308-18-4;
AUTHOR: Starr, P.J.; Tornquist, M.G.; Middleton, D.A.J.; Neubauer, P.; Langley, A.D.;

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