had catch limits reduced to one tonne to allow the stocks to rebuild. In one New Zealand fishery, the Total Allowable Catch (TAC) was reduced in 2008 from 1,470 tonnes to 914 tonnes, but this reduction was challenged in court. In February 2008, the High Court overturned the new quota, ruling that the Minister of Fisheries did not have the legal power to set quotas for ORH1. This was because of a strict interpretation of the Fisheries Act that required an accurate estimation of the biomass that could support the maximum sustainable yield. As a result of this decision, the Fisheries Act 1996 was amended to allow TACs to be set based on the best available information in the absence of an estimate of the biomass that could support the maximum sustainable yield. Current situation (2016) The New Zealand fishing industry contracted a pre-assessment of selected orange roughy fisheries against the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) Fisheries Standard in 2009. Following the pre-assessment, the industry representative body (Deepwater Group Ltd) put four orange roughy fisheries into Fishery Improvement Plans (FIPs) to deliver improvements in the fisheries that would enable them to meet the certification requirements of the MSC. These FIPs are public and have been monitored by the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership. In 2014, Bayesian model-based stock assessments were completed for four of New Zealand's main orange roughy stocks, one of which had been closed to fishing since 2000. The stock assessments used data collected by research surveys carried out by research organizations and the fishing industry. A key factor was the use of new acoustic technology, developed by the fishing industry, in recent surveys. The multi-frequency acoustic optical system (AOS) enables scientists to differentiate the types of fish acoustically ‘seen’ during the survey and works on slopes that previously made effective surveying impossible in some areas. The AOS also has the potential to allow scientists to see in real-time video, what is being measured by the survey. Other research-derived data were also critical to the success of the stock assessments, notably age-frequencies from improved ageing methods. The 2014 stock assessments, which were subject to a robust peer review process, indicated that three of the stocks had recovered enough to sustain increased catches. The TACs for these stocks were subsequently increased. The fourth stock was estimated to be at a low stock status and the TAC was reduced by over 40% to