Harbouring resentment in a place of beauty

Mikaera Mirubelieves action is needed to save the fish stocks. Pictures / Greg Bowker

In a century-old white-painted kauri house Christine Yardley looks out the kitchen window at the million-dollar view. Across the way a rolling hill is lush, covered in the almost golden grass of the Kaipara.

Below are the ever-changing hues of the harbour, its waters grey and choppy today as a biting wind blows in from the west.

Christine loves this view from the window. So does husband Peter, a low-key commercial fisherman in tiny Whakapirau settlement on the Arapaoa River, a channel in the northern reaches of the harbour.

The colours are different here on the west coast. They are beautiful and muted, like the tones of a water-colour painting compared with the bright oil colours of the east coast.

The view sustains the Yardleys. From here they watch the seasons pass, the storm clouds power by, the sky turn blue, the sun shine and set and the moon rise. They see dolphins, the occasional orca or seal and a diversity of seabirds.

It saddens them to think that directly in front of this kitchen window eight new sections have been carved up.

A small subdivision is on its way, squeezing in new baches on impossibly small spaces. Out-of-towners are voraciously buying land to build weekend getaways on this, until recently, forgotten and isolated wonderland within easy distance of Auckland.

The Yardleys are optimists though. It might be good for the economically depressed area to have new blood, they reason.

The out-of-towners are nice people who bring new ideas and perhaps new skills, say the couple in their 50s, who raised five children here and who are eagerly awaiting the birth of their 12th grandchild.

This is just one subdivision. Many more are springing up around the Kaipara Harbour - the second biggest harbour in the world - which seriously worries the Yardleys, local Maori and conservationists.

What of the ecological impact on their beloved harbour? What of the silt that might clog the waterways? What of sewerage and its potential to further pollute shellfish beds already struggling from poor water quality?

But this is only the latest concern. What this couple really want to talk about are the fish, or, rather, the lack of them.

The fish have turned tranquil Kaipara Harbour, with its 3000km of coastline, into a battle ground.

The Yardleys have spent a lot of time talking about fish already, most recently to documentary-maker Barry Barclay, who has captured the passion and community spirit of disparate groups who live around the harbour's sprawling shores.

The Kaipara Affair is part of the Auckland International Film Festival and has its first public screening tomorrow.

It is a film about shots ringing out over the water, of fishing quotas and stand-offs between big-money commercial fishing companies netting thousands of tonnes of mullet, flounder and rig, and locals who say they are gutting the resource - and, in consequence, a way of life - for everyone.

It is a film of the people, Maori and Pakeha, who live and work side by side on the harbour, yet whose livelihood is controlled from Wellington.

Barclay lived on the Kaipara for three years and came to know the real-life characters and the issues. "This story seemed to me a parable of what happens to people at the fringe," he says. "They're governed by the centre and often treated with contempt."

He thinks the Kaipara will be saved: "Well, the alternative's horrendous, that we kill the harbour and it's right on the verge of that."

The changes above ground are echoed under the water.

Subdivisions are springing up here as other areas, for example Mangawhai on the east coast, become over-developed. Similarly, because other areas have been over-fished the commercial fishers are moving to the Kaipara.

Locals say the outsiders' ventures into the harbour were paved by the quota management system, which opened the area up. Under the system, introduced in 1986, fishers with quotas can take their catches from anywhere in a particular area.

Area One, which incorporates Kaipara, gives fishers an enormous catchment, from Raglan all the way north.

More fishers arrived over the past 20 years, pitting smaller local commercial fishers against them and each other. Issues of "spatial conflict" - too many boats in too little water - arose.

Cars and equipment were vandalised and threats hurled.

About eight years ago at Ruawai a man was hospitalised. One boat ran over the nets of another fisherman who was knocked unconscious by a runaway anchor and ended up in the water.

It was kept quiet - it is said nobody wanted to fuel tensions.

When Maori imposed a rahui, or ban, at Tinopai in 1997, which extended 15sq km, some fishermen defied it and threats were hurled in both directions.

These days, says Yardley, the local commercial fishers are fishing more carefully and considerately. He puts this down to education and community pressure.

But still outsiders come, dropping their nets and going away, leaving them in the water too long. The haul includes undersized and damaged fish, which Yardley says, are simply dumped.

"The problem comes in with the modern commercial fishing nets that we've got, they're quite indiscriminate in their catch, this is what upsets me. The nets are left lying around the harbour for long periods, because by law you can leave them for 18 hours, it's quite legal."

Kaipara Harbour was once New Zealand's busiest harbour. In the early days kauri timber and gum and flax were exported from here. But it was dangerous, with its high tides and shifting sandbars. It is a graveyard of shipwrecks.

After the timber and gum was depleted, the port was closed in the 1940s and dairy farming took over as the main industry, leaching contaminants into the water.

The harbour was pretty much forgotten about, so much so that in the 1960s the Kaipara district was touted as an ideal spot for a nuclear power station.

The last group of British settlers arrived in the area in the 1860s, landing at Port Albert with a dream of building a great city. However, the dream faded when they encountered the tough environment.

Now locals fear the city is coming anyway, through housing developments. This, combined with the fish situation, frightens them.

"Kaipara's always been a bit of an economic backwater," says Christine Yardley.

"It's always been a place where people come in and take stuff out, from the gum in the early days to the fish now, to the sand, to whatever, without a lot of regard to the effect. It's time to turn that around."

The community has worked hard to address concerns about fish stocks. One man, Mikaera Miru, who lives in Tinopai, is credited with getting it started.

Miru achieved infamy when, back in 1991, he fired shots into the air to warn fishing boats away. By 1997 he had gained enough community backing for the rahui, a traditional Maori ban, to be implemented at Tinopai so fish stocks could recover.

Several years later the Government legalised the rahui, but only for two years. Three years ago it expired. A frustrated Miru warned tensions would rise again if commercial boats ventured into the rahui area.

Another group of locals were trying other ways to protect fisheries. A committee known as the Study Group, which initially involved Miru, the Yardleys and local commercial fishers, spent three years investigating the harbour and coming up with a management plan to protect it.

More than a year ago the group gave that plan to the Government. One suggestion is for the 500sq km harbour to be a separate quota management area. Another is to increase the legal size of net meshes so juvenile fish are not caught and wasted.

The group also wants a reduction in the time that nets can be left in the water and a two-year ban on collecting scallops so depleted beds can recover.

It is common sense, not rocket science, says the group, but still it waits for an answer. But it has had a minor victory - the two-year scallop ban is to go ahead.

It is a victory described as a "crumb" - but to Miru, who quit the Study Group out of frustration, it is a sign the locals can win the battle.

MIRU gives strict instructions on how to make it up his steep, metal driveway. It's a short, tough drive but the view at the top is worth it. Miru's small green house, which runs on generator power, is set in a small hilltop clearing of manuka trees and has spectacular views of the forests and harbour surrounding Tinopai.

He makes a cup of tea and says he has faced a tonne of racism since he began this fight 20 years ago.

Bit by bit there has been progress - yet in other ways there has been only stagnation.

Miru was not the least bit popular with the local commercial fishers when he declared the rahui, but attitudes have turned around since then.

The fight is by no means over, though. Miru left the Study Group out of frustration that yet another report had been given to the minister and virtually disappeared.

"Because the heat has died down from the issue. Bullets? Are there any bullets flying around the harbour at the moment? Well there's no bullets so they can sit back and say 'okay, continue to extract revenue out of that harbour regardless of the environmental impact'."

When Miru, now 52, was a boy there were "masses" of fish just outside the Waiaotea Marae on the harbour shore. He remembers splashing around in the water chasing flounder, "I could have caught a kete of flounder in about 10 minutes.

"Look, this is my ancestral home. This is my right to go out and catch fish. And it's our right to go out and gather shellfish to feed the manuhiri [visitors] that come to our marae.

"Now, it's got to a state where the shellfish have been wiped out in front of the marae, it's got down to where the fish have got wiped out in front of the marae.

"We're talking about ecosystems here. We're talking about ecosystems that have been thrashed. We're talking about ecosystems that are on their last legs in areas where there were multitudes, whether its shellfish or types of fish in their environment, they've been absolutely decimated."

Chris Matich comes from a long line of commercial fishermen in Ruawai. His father Doug, 77, is already out on the water. "We all reckon he's mad. He doesn't know anything else."

I have been warned to block my ears when the name Mikaera Miru is mentioned but the gruff 47-year-old is mild. Miru is "all doom and gloom", he says.

"He's a Maori activist isn't he? Nobody likes him, he ain't got no friends. Even the local Maoris don't want anything to do with him. It's his way or no way."

Matich is standing by his boat about to head back out on the water to catch mullet. He works five days a week and three or four nights. It's a tough life.

Even so, he says there are "heaps" of mullet out there. In fact, the pasttwo years have been the best mullet season ever: "There's nothing wrong with the fishing."

He scoffs at Peter Yardley. What would he know about fish stocks, he only fishes in one spot, he says. Matich travels up and down the harbour.

But he says there are some good things in the management plan. He hopes the mesh size of nets is increased and the time they can soak in the water is shortened.

There are good fishers and bad fishers, he says, and he has no time for the ones who leave their nets all night and kill the young fish.

The Ministry of Fisheries, too, says it not as bad in the harbour as many locals think. It has acted on the report: there is the scallop ban and it has been reviewing catch limits on the three species of most concern, mullet, flat fish and rig.

"It's a great thing that we've gone out and been able to review these catch limits for them," says Jodi Mantle, senior fisheries management adviser, northern inshore area.

"It's just a shame that the scientific information that we had didn't show that there was such a sustainability risk that they believe. But at the same time we've still gone out and proposed some options. "

Fisheries Minister David Benson-Pope says he is not unsympathetic to the Kaipara locals - but the fish in the Kaipara belong to everyone, not just them.

"It's a hard one because it's sort of like 'this is my patch, I live here, they're my fish, go away', and they're pretty solid on that in the Kaipara. My response is well, actually, the fish also belong to me even though I live in Dunedin."

While he does not buy in to the territorial argument, he does buy in "absolutely" to the need to set the available catch to ensure sustainability.

The scallop bed is closed, but while the fish numbers are being reviewed, Benson-Pope cannot say whether the quota will be reduced.

It is all rhetoric to Miru, who says the fight in the Kaipara is not over yet.

He is thinking of lobbying support to put a wahi tapu [a sacred place] on a large subdivision planned for Tinopai Forest and, as for the fish, perhaps the next step is to shut the whole harbour down to commercial fishing.

"People will say, 'Mikaera, you'll never do it' but that's exactly the same crap they said right at the beginning."