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As Kiwis spend their first summer without fresh scallops, communities are raising an outcry supporting a permanent ban on trawling and dredging in the Hauraki Gulf Marine Park.
The park, also known as Tikapa Moana and Te Moana Nui-a-Toi, is New Zealand’s first marine park and was formed in 2000 and spans 1.2 million hectares, from the southern foot of the Coromandel Peninsula in the Bay of Plenty, all the way past Auckland to the edge of Bream Bay in the north.
Two years ago, the alarming disappearance of local scallops sparked a huge effort by thousands of people bordering the Hauraki Gulf, including hapū, ratepayers, holidaymakers, and conservation and fishing groups, to ban harvesting to save the species.
The movement has now swelled to form the Hauraki Gulf Alliance, aimed at ending all destructive bulk harvesting methods in the marine park.
The alliance membership includes an unprecedented broad swathe of unlikely bedfellows that includes environmental groups such as Forest & Bird, Greenpeace, the Environmental Defence Society and World Wildlife Funf (WWF), the New Zealand Sport Fishing Council, LegaSea and the Outboard Boating Club, as well as 75 businesses. Members are united in their aim to help revive the marine park. They are pushing to permanently phase out all trawling of the marine park using huge nets dragged across the sea floor, or Danish seining using a weighted rope to pull a massive net closed and dredging.
Consultation will open in coming months on the draft Hauraki Gulf Fisheries Plan, with the cautionary example of scallops still fresh.
In the current draft, officials propose that bulk harvesting of tonnes of fish using bottom trawling and Danish seining will be able to continue in the Hauraki Gulf Marine Park, despite the known damage to fish habitats caused by these methods.
Known then as “power fishing”, trawling in what is now the marine park dates back to the late 1880s, when fishers using small, weighted nets and steam boats began exploratory trawling between Tiritiri Matangi and Cape Colville.
Most bottom trawling and Danish seining nowadays occurs in the outer Hauraki Gulf, outside the line between Coromandel and Kawau, but still inside the park. Species such as red gurnard, trevally, snapper and tarakihi are targeted. There are also other bottom contact fishing methods used from one end to end f the park to the other.
Hauraki Gulf Forum chief executive Alex Rogers points to the forum’s official stance supporting a ban on any trawling and dredging within the park.
The people of Auckland appear to agree.
Last year, the Forum commissioned a Horizon Research poll of 1020 Aucklanders that showed 84 per cent supported banning trawling and dredging from the marine park.
Auckland’s new mayor, Wayne Brown, is another supporter.
“Of course I support a trawling ban and a ban on the idiotic idea of the port to dredge two million cubic metres in the Rangitoto channel,” he messaged during his election campaign.
Recreational fishers, too, have gone all in to help, by reducing snapper bag limits and increasing the legal size while promoting returning large fish to the water.
The Hauraki Gulf Forum’s 2020 State of the Gulf report shows boaties and shore fishers are now taking nearly 30% less than a decade ago, while commercial fishing has increased by 30% since the park was established.
In order to really see a difference, the park now needs to see an end to bottom-contact bulk harvesting that takes out huge numbers of fish using destructive bottom-scraping fishing methods.
