Published in Mahurangi Matters, June 9 2025
By Sam Woolford, LegaSea Project Lead
As winter bites, many of us were left reminiscing about warmer days at last month’s Hutchwilco New Zealand Boat Show. For LegaSea, the show is a yearly highlight, connecting with passionate Kiwis about issues impacting our marine environment – from Caulerpa to Shane Jones’s proposed ‘reforms’ to the Fisheries Act.
By the end of day four, our stand was a fish frenzy, with snapper, marlin, gurnard, and kingfish images covering our entire backdrop, each one placed by you – the people. It was a powerful display of public support for abundant fisheries and a thriving marine environment for future generations.
But instead of offering real solutions, the government is pushing through a flawed fix. Tama Potaka, Minister for Conservation, is championing the Hauraki Gulf Tīkapa Moana Marine Protection Bill, seeking to establish 12 new High Protection Areas (HPAs) across the Gulf from Kawau Bay to the Aldermans. The HPAs would prohibit some commercial and all recreational fishing.
On paper, the Bill’s purpose is to contribute to the restoration of the Hauraki Gulf. Incredibly, a few of these ‘highly protected’ areas will still allow commercial gillnetting. So local families can’t fish for food, but selected commercial operators can carry on? That’s not protection – that’s hypocrisy.
The current Bill lacks meaningful, diverse and widespread management and until we see this, abundance won’t be restored.
The Hauraki Gulf Marine Park spans 1.2 million hectares. So, protecting a handful of small areas won’t fix widespread depletion. It won’t reduce the excessive volume of fish exported from the Gulf. And it won’t stop pollution flowing from land to sea.
Take the local oyster growers in Mahurangi and Matakana, whose oysters are being turned into a health hazard due to land-based runoff and toxic waste. Restricting public fishing won’t solve this.
On top of this Shane Jones, the Minister for Ocean and Fisheries has announced he’s scrapping previously agreed upon plans to restrict destructive bottom trawling within the Hauraki Gulf Marine Park stretching from Bream Bay down to Waihi Beach. This could signal more trawling along our coastline, further destroying the seafloor, stirring up sediment, and depleting fish stocks.
The Hauraki Gulf is in such a dire state that it requires integrated management to address some of the main stressors impacting the health of our marine environment including land-based pollution, destructive fishing methods, and overfishing.
This could be a mixture of temporary closures, land-based controls and a transition away from destructive fishing methods. Enabling finer-scale management would mean catch and effort limits can be tailored specifically for the Gulf.
We’ve been calling for a holistic solution for over 20 years, but we’re not throwing in the towel.
Restrictions on our ability to catch fish to feed our family is a consequence of our coastal fisheries being so depleted. That’s why LegaSea is pushing for real, meaningful change to bring the Hauraki Gulf back to life.
The most meaningful action you can take is to subscribe to receive our LegaSea newsletters. We will keep you up to date on how you can help us work towards restoring abundance and maintaining fair access to our fisheries.
