Apart from the hordes of sightseers, surfers, divers and shore scavengers the festive season has so far been nothing out of the ordinary down here in the Bay. Mind you, the weather has not been too flash which is a bonus for those of us who live here because it means there will be something left of our seafood supplies when the temporary residents finally scarper back to wherever they came from. Bad weather has brought choppy seas and muddy waters – great deterrents for the diving population. And only just in time given the stacks of empty shells scattered in rock pools and found poorly hidden under bushes.
But it seems we might not be doing as badly in the Bay as other coastal areas in the North Island. There is current controversy in Auckland and points north about hordes of predominately Asian people descending on coastal areas and progressively stripping all marine life from the littoral zone.
The controversy centres on heavy shellfish and seaweed gathering at places like Whangaparāoa/ Army Bay and how some locals are racialising what is, in part, an over harvesting and regulation problem. Residents on Auckland’s Hibiscus Coast report rock pools being “stripped bare” of shellfish and other intertidal life, sometimes with chisels, piano wire and large bins, and say this has intensified over the last two years.
Media and blogs record some residents and commentators blaming “Chinese” or “Asian” groups specifically, using language such as “ethnic vacuum cleaners” and “Chinese/Asian people raping it all,” which has inflamed racial tension and garnered media attention (of course).
Fisheries officials and some researchers instead highlight population growth and changing food preferences across a more diverse Auckland as drivers of pressure, stressing that many people from various backgrounds are gathering within legal limits.
But in their current mood the local residents will not be satisfied until action is taken. In similar situations here and overseas the operational measures include: seasonal closures timed to spawning or recruitment, gear restrictions (e.g. bans on crowbars or chisels on rocky shores), and strict daily bag and size limits for intertidal invertebrates, backed by fines and confiscation.
Local Iwi say current levels of gathering are ecologically unsustainable and have applied under section 186A of the Fisheries Act for a two year ban on taking shellfish and seaweed along parts of Auckland’s eastern coastline.
The Ministry for Fisheries will be backing that one because it’s an easy fix to keep the Whangaparāoa/ Army Bay locals quiet, even though they too lose access to what is essentially their ‘front-yard fishery’. However, proper enforcement of any closure will require use of targeted Fishery Officer patrols at predictable low tide periods, probably supported by community rangers or co management committees that report poaching and help interpret rules to local and migrant harvesters.
To which I have to say, good luck with all of that because closing the area to the shore-based harvesters will do little else but to shift their effort somewhere else along the coast. (On a Chinese social media platform there are people advertising bus tours to gather seafood.) I reckon that MPI, DoC and the local Council have a massive task ahead of them to influence significant changes to attitudes and behaviour across ethnic groups – including Europeans and Maori – when it comes to our coastal marine resources. Locking up coastline is a cop-out
