Underwater cameraman Steve Hathaway’s mission to save NZ’s marine life

Steve Hathaway with daughter Riley in Whangārei recently filming orca. Photo / Jodi Bryant

Underwater cameraman and marine educator Steve Hathaway is so passionate about what’s going on under our ocean, he often gets overcome with emotion when talking about it. Over his 40-plus years diving, he has seen many changes and believes we need a drastic overhaul of how we view and treat our ocean. He talks to Jodi Bryant about his mission to reshape New Zealand’s marine ecology through the next generation of voters.

Underwater cameraman Steve Hathaway vividly remembers his first magical experience below the surface in Northland, aged 12. What he saw led to his career capturing the underwater world for a global audience. However, what once was his happy place, now often devastates him.

“Over the last 40 years that I’ve been diving, I’ve seen magnificent kelp [seaweed] forests,” Hathaway says.

“The first amazing clear water I ever experienced as a kid was at Whananaki actually, around the island just off Otamure.

“I can still visualise it; the kelp swaying back and forth, schools of blue maomao in the beautiful light.

“It’s an image that’s etched in my mind forever. But, over the last 12 years or so, a lot of these are almost gone now.

“I can swim for a kilometre or two and hardly see any kelp at all. I just can’t believe the life that’s disappeared.”

Today, the seaweed is depleted by the burgeoning kina population due to a decreasing snapper and crayfish presence from over-fishing, which Hathaway equates to “underwater deforestation”.

“It’s similar to the forest on the land; you mow down the forest, you’re going to have no birds, reptiles, or insects – you lose all diversity of life.

“If you get rid of the forest under the ocean, there’s no life there as well. The difference is that underwater, you don’t have unlimited vision. When you’re on a boat, you’re out there on this beautiful surface catching fish and you think, ‘Wow, amazing’.

“But if you get underneath, you will see that there are some serious things going on.”

Steve Hathaway has filmed for both local and international documentaries, including for the BBC, Discovery, National Geographic and Our Big Blue Backyard. Photo / Robert Lehmann

The father of four believes that if the same thing was happening on the land, there’d be a national outcry – “We’d be beyond upset, we’d be ropeable” – and it’s vital that we do something to change it.

So, he is. Along with daughter Riley Hathaway, 24, they’re changing the mindset of future generations by educating students at schools through a programme they created called Young Ocean Explorers.

The idea for Young Ocean Explorers came about in 2012 when Hathaway and his then-12-year-old daughter made a video together about turtles for a school project.

Hathaway had previously quit his construction business and took the plunge in pursuing his 30-year dream of having his own underwater TV show.

A series of chance encounters with the right people, including Northland-based orca expert and biologist Ingrid Visser, led to Hathaway subsequently working on a number of local and international documentaries, including for the BBC, Discovery, National Geographic and Our Big Blue Backyard. In 2018, alongside the camera crew, he won a Bafta for his work on the acclaimed documentary Blue Planet II, filming with false killer whales, and he recently worked and featured on TVNZ series Mammals.

Riley Hathaway presenting at Mangawhai Beach School for the Young Ocean Explorers programme.

As Riley Hathaway presented her father’s footage to the classroom, Steve Hathaway watched on, stunned at how captivated the students were.

“I just saw all these kids, their eyes were wide open, and they were fully engaged and I just had this lightbulb moment and realised the resolution was sitting under my roof all this time.”

Using her dad’s video footage, Riley Hathaway fronts the camera for presentations, TV series and social media, where they have over 13,000 followers. “One of my favourite things is showing Dad’s footage and you kind of transport these kids into the underwater world and they’re like, ‘Oh my gosh!’” she says.

They became part of the What Now show and featured at the most-watched time due to their popularity, before creating an online platform.

“We decided to target teachers because every teacher I get, I get 30 kids, and that turned out to be hugely successful with 6500 teachers signed up to the website,” Steve Hathaway says.

Young Ocean Explorers has now become a 21-day challenge every term and currently has almost 18,000 children taking part (including home schoolers) from more than 600 classes. More than 20 Northland schools are currently involved. The free, pre-made lesson plans cover the curriculum at Years 1-4, although can be adapted for various levels.

Compiled by a group of teachers alongside Steve and Riley Hathaway, it includes maths and literacy and captures children’s imaginations through story-telling, bringing the beauty, awe and fascination of the ocean and its inhabitants alive.

“My aim is for every child to, at least, have done one 21-day challenge in their life so we need to grow it significantly,” says Steve Hathaway, who plans to take a presentation to Parliament later this year, with thousands of letters from children for the Prime Minister about why the ocean should be protected.

Adds Riley Hathaway: “I think kids are some of the most influential voices in society and, if they all join together, who can say no to thousands of kids?”

Steve and Riley Hathaway spent nine hours in a wetsuit and snorkel masks in a bid to get Chris Martin’s attention during the Coldplay concert last year, bringing the spotlight to their campaign. It worked and he ad-libbed a song to them, to everyone’s delight.

With New Zealand made up of 93% ocean and only 0.38% of it protected, this puts us in one of the worst ratios in the world for marine-protected areas, Steve Hathaway says.

In a recent documentary called A Sea of Hope – Aotearoa New Zealand about kina barrens that he worked on with Canadian film-maker and marine biologist Paul Nicklen, he states: “New Zealand used to be a leader as far as marine conservation. We had one of the first, if not the first marine reserve in the world in 1975. But since then, New Zealand protects only less than half a per cent.”

Adds Nicklen: “New Zealand has its reputation for eco-tourism and environmental protection on land but, on the ocean, it’s failing.”

In the documentary, Hathaway takes Nicklen to the Poor Knights to show him what the kelp forests were supposed to look like.

They come across recreational fishers illegally fishing the protected marine reserve. After videoing footage to send to the Department of Conservation (DoC), they approach the vessel and Hathaway advises the men that they are fishing in a reserve.

“There’s plenty of places to catch fish. We’re protecting them for future generations eh?” he can be heard saying, struggling to keep the emotion from his voice.

At the documentary’s conclusion, Nicklen states: “In order for New Zealand to live up to its reputation as a global leader in conservation, they’re gonna have to get their marine protected areas up from 0.38% to 30% by the year 2030 or sooner. New Zealand is an incredible place and we have to save it.”

When asked why the depletion has increased over recent years, Hathaway puts it down to a number of factors: “New Zealand’s population has increased quite a lot and also our accessibility to the ocean has increased as there’s a lot more boats and they’re bigger.

“There’s also more knowledge and technology, for example, there’s so many YouTube videos that show how to get crayfish in the shallow and the crayfish population around the coast has plummeted significantly.

“So we’ve fished out the reef of big predators and, all of a sudden, there’s a lot more urchins and they just get on top of the kelp and mow it down.

“We’ve created a situation where we’ve taken too much out and we’re fishing things down beyond what they should be.

“If you talked to our grandparents 30 years ago, they would not have believed there’d be no snapper, pipis, scallops or crays but this has happened in a short period of time.

“I’m all for getting a feed of fish from the ocean but it’s about limiting your catch, rather than catching your limit.”

In terms of solutions, he doesn’t believe any one particular thing will resolve the situation.

“One thing that could solve it is if we took the ocean more seriously and treated it how we treat the land and realised it is just as valuable to New Zealand. Over 80% of our native species actually live under the ocean and we’re losing our kelp forest.

“Wouldn’t it be great as a nation if we have some courageous vision of looking after it, just like how we protected the forest all these years ago?

“It’s like a gift that we’re giving the future and our ocean is vital for the health of the planet.

“Instead of thinking about what we’re missing out on now, it’s about thinking about what are we gifting the next generations and, yes, there will be some sacrifices, but we probably all need to take a hit and go, ‘Hey, it’s not working, what we’re doing’. It’s about protecting areas and cutting back on what we’re taking.”

However, he believes, with the work they are doing through Young Ocean Explorers, the country is on track to make positive changes. “We can just see the power of what we’re doing.

“I think this generation of kids are environmental natives. There’s no previous generation that’s been so aware that the planet is in turmoil. We want to have a whole generation of kids that knows the ocean is just as important as the land.

“We want to share hope stories with them as well and I think it’s important that they know we can make change.

“They know how to find any issues, put steps in place to change it and it makes a difference so I think, without a doubt, I hold a lot of hope because of this generation of kids. I am absolutely convinced we’re going to change New Zealand’s story.”

To find out more about Young Ocean Explorers, go to: youngoceanexplorers.com or follow them on Facebook.