Around the time of the millennium when I was a Waiheke Islander involved in council affairs, the Labour Government promoted a catch-all "Oceans Policy" that promised to legislate all the various rules rights and responsibilities for all parties wishing to work or play on or under the sea. I attended an Auckland City-hosted high-level seminar with Dame Cath Tizard fronting the roadshow set up to explain the intent and gather feedback, hoping there might be a real chance of getting some form of moratorium on fishing in the Hauraki Gulf pushed through on the back of the then-proposed HG Maritime Park Act.
But the too-pat, too-general, too-much-hyperbole presentation and answer session stank of a PR-only exercise - and so it proved. After a handful of broad-brush promises and a smidgen of extra Niwa research over the next couple of years, the whole holistic concept sank without trace. Which was a pity, because the Gulf was already overstressed and over-fished, with 90 per cent of the inner harbour - everything inside Rangitoto - effectively a benthic desert where only foreign invasive organisms grew. Asian immigrants were stripping the foreshore of "non-traditional" species like periwinkles and mud-crabs, and the commercial shellfish catch had shrunk to the point it was essentially uneconomic. Too, while ever-optimistic fishermen insisted finfish stocks were fine, truth was the only time anyone caught decent-sized snapper was during the couple of months of the spawning season, when all the big fish from Whangarei to the Bay of Plenty gathered in the outer gulf to breed. So when, a week ago, out of the blue a collection of smiling Nats announced the Gulf was to be commercial-fishing free as part of an overhaul of the Marine Reserves Act, I was (belatedly) overjoyed. Then I read the fine print. Bottom line: this is not, as the present Act intends, about protecting fish stocks and biodiversity; it's about enshrining the rights of recreational fishers. In other words, it's a sop. The proposed network of recreational reserves is not designed as environmental protection - any that occurs will be incidental - but as permitted exploitation. That you can't then change a recreational reserve into the genuine no-take article shows how little real regard the review gives to future impacts and needs. The needs of the ocean, that is, to survive and recover from human plunder. Don't say it's a "step in the right direction". It isn't. Banning commercial fishing in a few selected spots within coastal waters does not address the deepening crisis under the seas. That the proposal won't extend into the exclusive economic zone, or in any way limit oil, gas, and mineral "rights", reinforces the exploitation focus.
Hardly a surprise, given the neo-liberal outlook, and as much as the PR-spin tries to dress it up in positives, it's nowhere near the all-encompassing Oceans Policy Labour ran out (and ran out on). Sadly there are no longer more fish in the sea; at the present rate of decline, within a couple of decades "take a kid fishing" will be a tall tale a grandparent relates, not an actual activity. The recreational lobbyists who think they have won this round had best think a little deeper. How much worse is the Hauraki Gulf now from 15 years ago when it was declared a maritime park? And if we cannot contain ourselves, by way of moratorium, long enough for that small area to recover some of its bountifulness, there's no reason to believe we mean the sea anything but harm. That's the right of it.
- Bruce Bisset is a freelance writer and poet.
