By STACEY BODGER
TE KAHA - A tiny East Coast community pushing for a two-mile trawler exclusion zone has stepped up its battle after hundreds of dead baby fish were dumped close to shore at the weekend.
Residents of Te Kaha, 66km northeast of Opotiki, first signed a petition calling for the
exclusion zone five years ago.
A similar zone, which prevents trawlers and boats from fishing with seine nets, runs from the Waihi coast and along the Bay of Plenty shoreline.
It ends at Torere, 45km south of Te Kaha, which led to a second petition and several public meetings over the past two years seeking to convince then-Minister of Fisheries John Luxton to extend the zone.
Te Kaha residents say they are not opposed to trawlers -- they just want them banned close to shore where they net undersize fish from spawning areas.
A Te Kaha charter boat operator is stepping up the fight after seeing about 300 dead, undersize snapper being dumped from a trawler only 400m offshore on Saturday.
Paul O'Brien said he and six others were sickened by the sight of the area's future snapper population floating on the water.
The onlookers took photographs of the scene and scooped up about 60 fish as evidence of their case for fisheries officers.
"It was just disgusting to see the waste and know that those fish will not have the chance to grow and spawn themselves," said Mr O'Brien.
"We recognise that it is legal for trawlers to dump their excess catch but they must have been trawling so close to shore to have caught that many tiny fish."
A Ministry of Fisheries spokesman, Richard Fanselow, said neither Mr Luxton nor the present minister, Pete Hodgson, had considered the issue because it was being dealt with under the ministry's recent disputes resolution process.
