Hi I’m Rusty, an orange roughy! How much do you know about orange roughy?
If you want to test your knowledge about us I have ten questions for you! Take my quiz and if you don’t know much about orange roughy then you’ll also find out a bit about me.
Unfortunately my friends and I are in trouble – bottom trawling is destroying our coral forest homes, which means our population is declining.
We’re deep sea creatures that are targeted by New Zealand fishing boats. But us orange roughy live a very long time and reproduce slowly, which makes our populations vulnerable and easily overfished.
Bottom trawling is a method of fishing that involves dragging heavy weighted nets across the sea floor. It’s highly destructive as it catches and damages everything in its path – including coral, sharks and many juvenile fish.
In New Zealand, bottom trawling is still permitted. In fact, New Zealand is the only country still trawling in the South Pacific high seas!
Greenpeace is campaigning to help us out and ban bottom trawling, particularly in key marine habitats, like on seamounts and the Hauraki Gulf.
