Harbour off Waiheke Island, looking towards the Coromandel Peninsula. Photo / Supplied
OPINION:
If bulldozers busted through ancient, native forests in regional parks, there’d be widespread outrage. Activists, my friends, community and I would be chaining ourselves to the trees in time-honoured non-violent direct action to prevent the destruction of our collective conservation.
It’s impossible to do that kind of body-on-the-line protection when the destruction is deep underwater. Out of sight and, the commercial fishing industry hopes, out of mind.
The Hauraki Gulf Marine Park Act has been in place for 23 years this year with the purpose, amongst other things, to “sustain the life-supporting capacity of the soil, air, water, and ecosystems of the gulf, and protect the natural and historic resources of the park”. It sounds nice. In practice, the law simply set up a framework for reporting every three years to paint increasingly dire pictures of biodiversity collapse. The “forum” established to do so is presently legally prevented from advocating for greater ecological protection. It’s one of the many reasons that reserves still make up just 0.3 per cent of this so-called “marine park”.
Ten years ago, recognising the unsustainable strain Tīkapa Moana was under, “Sea Change – Tai Timu Tai Pari” was formed. Publishing a report in 2017, they called on government - central and local - to act now with 180 recommendations.
These included an end to “activities that damage habitats” - such as dredging, bottom trawling, Danish seine net fishing, dumping and seabed mining - by 2025.
In June 2021, the Government responded with its own “Revitalising our Gulf” report, arguing unconvincingly for the retention of “trawling corridors”. Later that month, Minister David Parker defended the backslide from 2017′s ground-breaking consensus under questioning from my colleague Hon. Eugenie Sage, stating, “If we’ve got limited corridors for bottom trawling, we will be able to carry out some in-depth science as to what is the effect of bottom trawling in the areas in which it remains compared with the environmental outcomes in other areas.”
I’m not sure if the Minister for Oceans intended this to sound like Japan’s long-standing and much-ridiculed defence of so-called “scientific” whaling.
A few months before the Government pushed ahead with bottom-trawling after being handed every reason and excuse not to, a landmark international study found the practice releases around as much carbon emissions as global aviation. That’s a special, climate-change-charging bonus on top of the evidence which shows these literal “habitat-damaging activities” produce sediment plumes which choke filter-feeders, like mussels. It’s estimated that with just one commercial trawl, a plume the size of Goat Island’s marine reserve has been generated - smothering all it touches.
With the climate-change-charged devastation of Cyclone Gabrielle, you no longer have to imagine what the proverbial native forest bulldozers could do if they also spewed slash throughout the larger region. We aren’t putting up with it any longer on land. We shouldn’t put up with the same commercial privatisation of profit and socialisation of cost under the sea.
Politics and policy is often made out to be a lot more complicated than it is. The question is whether we want our laws to err towards protecting our precious ecosystems, or commercial fishing profits. When it comes to protection of our ocean, especially when you take out the unsustainable and made-up commercial rules, it’s pretty simple.
Every second breath we take comes from the sea. It’s the world’s largest carbon sink, covering 70 per cent of Earth’s surface. The OECD estimates more than three billion people rely on it for their livelihoods. Mana whenua have a deep and intertwined relationship with the moana, which the Hauraki Gulf Marine Park Act itself outlines.
The rules in place today are enabling its rapid destruction. Climate scientists point to the collapse of our oceans’ ecosystems and its acidification as one of the death-knell feedback loops which, if pushed past a certain point, will make our job to keep warming below 1.5 degrees Celcius all the harder.
Late last year, fishers reported catches of “milky”, mushy, starving snapper in the Hauraki. MPI, Niwa and Biosecurity New Zealand are all still scrambling for answers. Last week in Parliament, Hon. Eugenie Sage and I again put it to the minister that when an unprecedented and deeply concerning issue arises, a precautionary approach should be taken. That means cutting out the things we know can and do cause harm.
The minister pointed again to the Government’s Revitalising our Gulf Plan, with the expected presentation of the Hauraki Gulf Marine Protection Bill in 2024. In other words, the zombie fish are to be ignored; the Government plans to meet the 2025 Sea Change target for the complete end to habitat-destroying activities with the retention of some. Stranger than fiction.
While we can’t physically block the underwater bulldozers as we might for native rākau, Forest & Bird and Greenpeace are rallying boats, kayaks, stand-up paddle-boards and more for an on-water demonstration this Saturday April 15, 2pm at Mission Bay.
Community actions like this are precisely what has paved the way for the few Hauraki protections we’ve managed to win this past decade.
On Aotea Great Barrier, the furthest reaches of the stunning (if I don’t say so myself) Auckland Central electorate, Ngāti Rehua Ngātiwai ki Aotea, the Local Board and MPI have made strides on a nation-first “mana-enhancing agreement” to try to eradicate Caulerpa brachypus - an invasive seaweed that smothers everything in its path. It needs more funding and it definitely doesn’t need to encounter bottom trawling, which would rapidly multiply its spread.
In May 2022, Eugenie and I wrote to the minister backing the call of Aotea Local Board and many others to close rapidly depleting tīpa/scallop fisheries at Hauturu-a-Toi Little Barrier and Colville Channel. The Government finally acted to do so in December.
On Waiheke, Ngāti Pāoa laid down rāhui restricting take of scallops, mussels, crayfish and pāua for two years, with huge community and conservation support. It was given formal teeth 10 months later by MPI.
The week lockdown lifted in 2021, I was out with Ngāti Whātua and Revive our Gulf as they laid down 60 tonnes of green-lipped mussels in Ōkahu Bay to restore, scientifically monitor and continually improve the ecosystem in the area.
Time and again, regular people show our values. We value a flourishing ecosystem and a healthy ocean below the waves. Our laws must follow suit.
It’s time to ban bottom trawling. It’s time for 30 percent protection of our oceans. It’s time to respect the raw, still mystical power of nature’s lungs - scientists have more accurate maps of the surfaces of Mars, Venus and Mercury than they do of the deep blue.
