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Coast residents are being urged to help shape the future of Auckland’s coastline, with less than two weeks remaining for public submissions on proposed restrictions aimed at protecting increasingly pressured rockpool and intertidal ecosystems.
Fisheries NZ is reviewing recreational shellfish harvesting rules for the Auckland Coromandel and Waiheke Island area following mounting pressure from local communities, iwi, and scientists over the condition of intertidal habitats and unrelenting harvesting pressure on accessible reefs and rockpools.
More than 500 submissions have already been received by the department with the consultation closing on June 12.
The review and its four proposed protection options were discussed at a recent public information evening hosted by Hibiscus and Bays Local Board chair Alexis Poppelbaum held at the Sir Peter Blake Marine Education & Recreation Centre. Speakers included representatives from Fisheries NZ, Ngāti Manuhiri Settlement Trust, Protect Whangaparāoa Rockpools, Protect Piha Rockpools and marine ecologist Simon West.
Senior fisheries analyst Tracey Turner told attendees that the department had undertaken extensive research for the review, including examining Australian approaches to managing intertidal areas, where stricter protections and harvesting limits already exist in many states.
The proposed protections follow the temporary Section 186a closure and rāhui now in place across parts of the Hibiscus Coast, including the Whangaparāoa Peninsula, where the gathering of most shellfish, marine invertebrates and seaweed is currently prohibited from the mean high tide mark to approximately 200m offshore.
Ngāti Manuhiri Settlement Trust chief executive officer Nicola Rata-MacDonald said the review represented an important opportunity to secure broader long-term protections for Auckland’s fragile coastal ecosystems and offered insights from the iwi’s recent S186a application process.
“If we are going to do something, we have to do it at scale,” she said.
Rata-MacDonald urged residents seeking stronger protections to ask for the highest level possible, saying their experience with the S186a application showed compromises were often made during the process.
“We have another chance to get it right and for other communities to have a chance to get protection,” she said.
“We aren’t going to see the benefits, but I hope our grandchildren, our mokopuna will see them. That’s what it’s all about, doing it for the future.”
Protect Whangaparāoa Rockpools spokesperson Mark Lenton said the group had already noticed small signs of recovery at Army Bay under the current ban, including the return of seabirds, although illegal gathering continued, particularly at night.
The group supports Option 3, which combines a full intertidal closure with tighter daily shellfish limits outside protected areas.
Protect Piha Rockpools spokesperson Luella Bartlett said concerns about overharvesting along Auckland’s coastline stretched back more than a century.
“New Zealand government records from 1898 describe intertidal beds on the Auckland and Coromandel coastlines as in ‘a most deplorable condition’, stripped bare by unregulated harvesting, with inspectors warning the damage would take years to recover,” Bartlett said.
She also warned that displacement harvesting was intensifying on the West Coast as protections expanded elsewhere.
The four proposed options range from full intertidal closures through to partial closures with varying shellfish limits outside protected areas.
Information about the proposals and how to make a submission is available on the Fisheries New Zealand consultation webpage.
