Bagged frozen paua, dive gear and freezers were some of the items seized in a black market fisheries operation on November 24 and 25.
Bagged frozen paua, dive gear and freezers were some of the items seized in a black market fisheries operation on November 24 and 25.
More than $15,000 of paua collected by a black market shellfish ring has been seized after a year-long investigation.
Fishery officers seized paua, dive gear and electronic equipment in raids in the Bay of Plenty this week. Along with police, the officers searched houses across the Western Bay, and severalbusiness premises, including a powered-storage facility at Mount Maunganui, where they seized two freezers containing 116kg of paua with a commercial value of $15,000 - 210 bags in total. The black market ring allegedly involved divers gathering paua and kina and selling them to a network of buyers in Tauranga, Whakatane, Hamilton and Auckland.
Two freezers containing 210 bags of paua were seized as part of the operation.
A Tauranga food business is alleged to be involved in the sale of paua and kina.
Ministry for Primary Industries district compliance manager Waikato and Bay of Plenty Brendon Mikkelsen said this week's operation was the result of 12 months of investigation and analysis into black market activity. During the time, it was believed 231kg of minced paua with a commercial value of $30,000 was poached and sold. It was believed 43 litres of kina were poached and sold for $3500.
"Paua and kina don't move around much and need to be in reasonable numbers to successfully reproduce. Such offending in concentrated areas may impact on the species' ability to breed and on other people's opportunity to gather," Mr Mikkelsen said.
"People like this are effectively thieving seafood from their own communities to make a quick buck."
Mr Mikkelsen said fishery officers would be going through the seized electronic equipment and doing further investigations before considering laying charges.
