When it first began fishing, its sea time was approx 5 weeks arriving back into Port with a full load of processed and cartoned fish - the majority of catch was Orange Roughy.

In 1988, 60 tonne nets full of orange roughy were commonly caught in less than an hour © Westerskov’s 1988

Over a period of approx ten years the time at sea to full the vessel became longer and longer, until it reached the point that it was uneconomic and the vessel was laid up in the Port where it stayed for a period of years.

Now in 2005 dragging bottom trawl nets across the sea floor for 6-7 hours result in small catches of orange roughy © Greenpeace Pullman 2005

The simple fact was that because of overfishing world wide and the reduction in fish resources the vessel was no longer viable.

Of course when we asked questions on ability of the Orange Roughy fishery to with stand the onslaught of these large bottom trawlers we were told by industry sources that there was no problems at all.

Our research told us that this species was long lived but the industry told us Orange Roughy possibly lived up to 20 years. As time has gone by and the resource in rapid decline, we now find that some experts are saying they live up to 135 years old.

This species never had a chance. The Japanese Company took millions of dollars out of our precious resource with absolutely no thought of sustainability, what is even worse they wrecked the environment and many forms of sea life on and around the seamounts they fished with their destructive bottom trawling.

Sure, the local community gained a lot of work from this vessels activities, in the short period of time (approx ten years) that it took to complete its damage.

However, the ongoing effects of this greedy operation is that the fishery will probably never recover, and we have left a legacy for future generations that will never be forgiven.

As a waterfront worker at that time, I was part of the process and I feel ashamed at having in part of it."