Community leaders warn racism and ethnic profiling are worsening at local beaches. Photo / 123RF
By Jessica Hopkins of RNZ
A week since a two-year harvesting ban on the Hauraki Gulf coast in north Auckland came into force, no fines have been handed out.
It is now illegal to take seaweed, shellfish and other rockpool sea life from intertidal zones along the Whangaparāoa Peninsula, and further north at Kawau Bay and Ōmaha Bay.
Fisheries north regional manager Andre Espinoza said officers had “educational discussions” with six groups who were planning to harvest at the newly protected beaches this past week.
All were co-operative and unaware of the rules.
“You’re always going to have a few people who are unaware,” Espinoza said.
“There’ll be a very small minority that will just continue doing it anyway, and they’re the ones that are very much of interest to fishery officers.”
He said they had several conversations with people about taking seaweed.
“After a big storm, and seaweed has been washed up, you can take it if it’s above the high-water mark. If it’s below the high-water mark, it’s prohibited to take.
“People who take seaweed are across the spectrum, pretty much all ethnicities. People use it for gardening and various purposes.
“Seaweed has its place in the ecosystem, so it’s really important everyone sticks to the rules so we can see recovery faster.”
He said racism, particularly targeting Asian communities, has been troubling.
“Some bus tour groups intercepted by very passionate locals looking to do the right thing were church groups, not there to gather shellfish but for a picnic. But because they were of a certain ethnic group, they’ve been challenged for being at that beach.
“There is a very small minority who take it too far and judge people based on their race. We have on a number of occasions had complaints saying a certain ethnic group has arrived at the beach, they must be doing something wrong.
“It’s something that I really struggle with on a personal level, the profiling and dehumanisation.”
He said Fisheries was focused on educating, not shaming. About 60 signs have been put up in the area, and the new rules are being promoted on social media platforms, including Facebook, RedNote and Sky Kiwi.
He encouraged people to report any suspected illegal activity through the appropriate channels.
Protect Whangaparāoa Rockpools founder Mark Lenton said people using the rockpool issue to voice hate speech was shameful.
“It doesn’t help the cause. It doesn’t help the credibility,” Lenton said.
“Blaming any single ethnicity for what’s going on is just plain stupid.”
He believed it would take more than two years for the rockpools to recover and that it would be a long-term commitment.
“We need to discourage the promotion of this term called beachcombing, which actively encourages people to go to a beach and take whatever they can find whenever they can find it.
“That’s the attitude we need to shift, and that also is done through targeted education.”
Chief executive of the Ngāti Manuhiri Settlement Trust, Nicola MacDonald, applied for the ban. She said beaches were for everybody.
“It is not a vigilante witch-hunting exercise, because nobody wins out of that.
“People who may be indulging in harvesting like that will continue to take those practices elsewhere and harvest in areas that may not be protected, and we don’t want that.”
She called for more education, which was inclusive of Aotearoa’s diverse communities, so everyone could understand why people were concerned about the amount being taken from rockpools.
“We want people to understand these are species that we absolutely protect so that our children, our next generations, don’t have dead oceans.”
Sir Peter Blake Marine Education and Recreation Centre general manager Yuin Khai Foong agreed that education was crucial to protect marine life across the country.
“We have this displacement effect that kind of says, well, if we can’t collect here, then a very natural and understandable human response to that is to go somewhere else. That’s because legislation has boundaries.
“Education doesn’t really have boundaries. So it’s a really good complement to legislation, if we understand why the legislation had to be put into place and why the marine ecosystem is so important.
“It’s about people understanding what a rockpool actually is, what the species are, how they work together, how the whole ecosystem functions, and that the health of the ocean ultimately is going to impact the health of humans.”
But he said a kind approach was needed to raise awareness.
“As a migrant from Southeast Asia, a lot of my views on conservation have been through fundamentally my parents, understanding why we made the move to New Zealand and how special New Zealand is as a country and celebrating all those things.
“And then having the lived experience that I’ve had of engaging in natural spaces and engaging in the ocean, reinforced why our country is so special and why it’s so important that we take care of it.
“If we don’t take care of it, we’ll lose it.”
Meanwhile, Luella Bartlett, from the community group Protect Piha Rockpools, said harvesting on Auckland’s West Coast had not slowed down, and a similar ban was desperately needed for places like Muriwai, Bethells and Piha.
She said if harvesting continued at its current rate, they would not only lose species like green shell mussels, but also the snapper that fed on them.
Racism had also been an issue there.
“People are making assumptions that aren’t necessarily true. It’s causing huge social problems.”
She said a two-year ban was their best course of action, and her group had been talking to the local iwi about applying for one.
Suspected illegal harvesting or fishing activity can be reported to the toll-free hotline at 0800-4-Poacher (0800-476-224).
– RNZ