"I've done more than 5000 dives out there and many thousands of trips. But this is the first time I have been truly shocked and have seen a commercial boat in the zone (allegedly) clearly fishing."
Mr Edney motored over and asked the crew "what the hell they thought they were doing".
They informed him they had their chart plotter on and were outside the exclusion zone.
They carried on retrieving fish and sharks while Mr Edney took photos and video and checked the GPS co-ordinates.
"These guys according to my GPS and according to the other charter boat I called over to verify ... were about 600-700m inside the one nautical mile exclusion zone for commercial fishing," Mr Edney said.
Mr Edney said he rang a Department of Conservation ranger who checked the co-ordinates and confirmed they were fishing illegally. But DoC do not have jurisdiction outside the 800m reserve; instead it was up to MPI.
Dave Moore, a Leigh-based commercial long-line fisherman, said Extreme Limits was part of his fleet of 6 long-line vessels. He had spoken to the skipper who said he was outside the zone. "It's an allegation we deny," he said.
Mr Moore said his company was very respectful of marine reserves and they had never been in this position before.
He was aware of the social media conversation but until he had the full facts he could not make any further comments.
In a written statement the Ministry of Primary Industries said officers did not respond to the alleged incident as they were not advised until after the event.
"We are now investigating and as this is ongoing we will not be making any further comment," the statement said.
Our standard approach to conducting an investigation of this type is to talk first with the complainants to understand the nature and details of the complaint before approaching any alleged offenders.
The penalties for breaching the exclusion zones are a fine of up to $100,000 and forfeiture of the vessel.
