In the beginning, the fight to improve the Hauraki Gulf was one of unity. It was with no small amount of optimism that the fishing industry got onboard with what was to be an holistic, collaborative, and wellintentioned push to bring all users of the Gulf to the same table, with a common ambition to improve the health of New Zealand’s largest recreational marine area.
And there was no arguing that urgency was needed to address the Gulf’s many challenges.
It was a chance to take an ecosystem-based approach to the problem and to look at all the factors putting pressure on this critical piece of water space.
Commercial fishing was already restricted under the Fisheries Act and further prohibitions are to be imposed with the advent of trawl corridors proposed in the Hauraki Gulf Fisheries Plan.
In the end, the Revitalising the Gulf proposals have become an inter-agency race to implement their preferred options, with very little thought about what is best for the habitats and ecosystems of the Gulf. The Marine Protection Proposals that are part of Revitalising the Gulf are labelled a marine protection plan when, in fact, they are a simplistic approach that proposes special legislation to restrain fishing activities, in the hope that would be the solution. What it does, is replicate the proposals of the Hauraki Gulf Fisheries Plan and double up on fisheries prohibitions already in place. Together, they culminate in fisheries closures that are excessive in scale and do not address any other threats to the habitats and ecosystems of the Gulf. To ignore the very real threats to the Gulf because they are too difficult, is short sighted and dangerous.
Every High Protection Area (HPA) and Special Protection Area (SPA) will have adverse effects on commercial fishing, whilst providing little rehabilitative capacity to the Gulf’s marine habitats and ecosystems.
In turn, the displacement of that fishing activity will see added pressure to areas outside those closures. As we saw most recently in the closures of Maui dolphin territory, fishing has taken the fall for other detrimental impacts on the marine environment, whether they be land-based, climate-driven, or biological in the case of toxoplasmosis. As an industry, it is difficult to engage in good faith if the outcome is already determined, or simply refined after the fact because to do the job properly, is just too hard. No matter how many times this industry reaffirms that it is in our best interests to have a healthy, thriving marine environment, it is lost in the clamour of voices peddling simplistic and ineffective “solutions”. We are dependent on the marine environment for our living, and we care very much about any degradation. We also know we must make sacrifices for that. We just believe that if the intent is to improve the environment, all factors impacting on it must be addressed. In fact, the Revitalising the Gulf strategy spells out that ecosystembased management must consider all elements within an ecosystem and how they interact with each other, including human activities. There has been no integrated approach taken to the Hauraki Gulf. The proposals are based on an idealistic view that closing marine areas to fishing is always the answer.
The Gulf is under threat from all manner of other factors, including sedimentation, reclamation, sewage discharge, sand mining, discharging of harmful toxic chemicals and nutrients, climate change, and intense recreational use, but all meaningful prohibitions are based primarily on commercial fishing. Even after the lengthy process that has brought us to this point, there is still no site-specific biodiversity objectives on the table.
Identify the threats and let’s address them with the most appropriate management tools. This should be the first step in effective marine protection, not one of the last.
(Article originally published by, and supplied Courtesey of Seafood New Zealand Ltd).
Diagram Source:
Department of Conservation, 2022.
