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Location of area swept by Trawl Catch Effort Processing Returns vessels

Many areas in New Zealand’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) are not targeted by trawling.

The map shows that several areas within New Zealand’s EEZ have received much greater trawl effort during the 15 year period than others. The areas that have received the greatest trawl effort are:

  • the area off the east coast of the southern North Island,
  • the area east of Kaikoura out to the Chatham Islands,
  • the area off the west coast of the northern South Island,
  • several areas off the southern coast of the South Island down to the south of the Auckland Islands with less trawl effort out to and around the Campbell Islands.

Text description for map showing the location of commercial trawling effort (total area swept in square kilometres within 25-square-kilometre cells) by Trawl Catch Effort Processing Returns vessels, 1990–2005

The map shows where trawling effort occurred in New Zealand by showing the total area swept (in square kilometres) in each 25-square-kilometre ‘cell’ fished.

11 classes ranging from less than one to over 2000 square kilometres represent different levels of trawling effort. The trawl classes are: < 1, 1 – 5, 5 – 10, 10 – 20, 20 – 50, 50 – 100, 100 – 200, 200 – 500, 500 – 1000, 1000 – 2000, > 2000. The figure also shows the 1000 and 2000 metre depth contour lines inside New Zealand’s marine area.

Data source: National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research.


The above information has come from the latest national state of the environment report, Environment New Zealand 2007.

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Last updated: December 2007