Global news: Rastovich paddles 350km for Maui's

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Renowned kiwi-born surfer, Dave 'Rasta' Rastovich, completed an epic 350km paddle up the west coast of the North Island on Saturday, drawing attention to the plight of the Maui's dolphin and raising awareness about seabed mining.

Seabed mining prospecting is already underway by several companies including foreign-owned Trans-Tasman Resources (TTR), who gained two exploration permits this March covering some 333,090 hectares of ocean floor from the Awakino River mouth to Port Waikato and out to 12 nautical miles. See more here.

Rastovich's west coast paddle saw him calling into coastal towns from Cape Taranaki to Waitakere's Piha where various events were planned ensuring that coasters were well informed about seabed mining whilst trying to inspire surfers and communities to be coastal custodians.

Rastovich, well known for his political acitivism including co-founding the whale, dolphin and porpoise protection group Surfers for Cetaceans, said that seabed mining will majorly affected the coastal environment.

"People the world over come to experience the raw, untouched waters of New Zealand and celebrate a space not yet disturbed by industrial humanity. Yet, if widespread seabed mining reaches the coastal waters of this country, the allure of visiting a once pristine place will disappear," he said.

"When I heard about the potential seabed mining which would surely wipe out the Maui's it seemed like the clock was ticking, and something had to be done."

Dr Liz Slooten, Otago University's Associate Professor of Zoology, said that seabed mining causes disturbance to bottom dwelling sea creatures and the sea floor.

"With sand mining, what they do is they literally hoover up the sea floor and get the iron and other metals out of the sand and put the sand and the organisms back down. So, for relatively hardy organisms, like shellfish, they get through this kind of equipment unharmed, but for softer-bodied species like worms and small fish and that kind of thing they don't make it through... You end up with some live organisms, some dead and some in really bad state which will end up being preyed on by scavengers... If you are sand mining, it takes a decade or two for the system to recover back to a normal, pre-mining system."

This impact on the lower echelons of the marine ecosystem could have huge effects for dolphins, Slooten asserted. "Some fish species are going to scavenge in this environment, so they wouldn't be affected, but others won't be able to adapt. So there will be changes in the fish life, which in turn will limit food for the Maui's."

Slooten stated that prospecting for oil has also been approved about 10 miles off the coast of Auckland, in Maui's habitat. In New Zealand, you don't need to do an Environmental Impact Assessment (an assessment detailing the impact of the activity on the surrounding environment) until the final stage of drilling, following intial seismic testing and prospecting. She pointed out that the recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico occurred during prospecting.

"The prospecting stage is much more dangerous, because you don't quite know what the material is. So basically we have approved a drilling operation similar to the Deepwater Horizon off the coast of Auckland. For the Maui's dolphin, they've got that just off their doorstep and a prospecting license for sand mining and prospecting licenses throughout their whole habitat."

"From my point of view as a biologist, Maui's dolphins are critically endangered," she said. "It's mind-boggling that that kind of activity is allowed in New Zealand. It'd be like saying, 'Let's build a hotel on Codfish Island where endangered kakapo live'... But somehow in the marine environment a whole different bunch of rules appear."

Rastovich, who paddled 6-7 hours a day, was lucky enough to spot Maui's just before the entrance to the Manukau Harbour.

"When I was about 4 kilometerss south of the Manukau entrance... about eight of them popped up next to me and a little baby was in the mix. Literally right next to me, and at one point one of them tapped the front of the board with its dorsal fin. I'm out in the middle of nowhere, on my own for hours, and they just came and surfed along with me for about 30 or 40 minutes. To have an animal that is so few in numbers and to have that interaction is amazing," he said.

Rastovich found that after talking to people up and down the coast, most want to bring Maui's back from the brink. "People want it to happen but maybe haven't spoken up about it and informed the govt of their wishes. Everyone we've spoken to along the coast feels a little embarrassed that it's got to this point."

He cited other cases where animals have come back from near-extinction, for example Tonga's humpback population which dropped to around 55 individuals. Following a full protection order from the King of Tonga in 1978 which outlawed hunting of the mammal, they are thriving and a lucrative whale watching industry has taken off.

"Those sorts of cases happen when countries make those decisions that these animals are valuable for ecosystems to survive, for human industries able to survive off whale watching and eco tourism ventures."

Dr Slooten formed part of an expert marine panel that met in June and discussed the future of Maui's dolphins. The panel ascertained that the most serious threats to Maui are in fact fishing. "The first major issue is fishing, and if that can be solved then the two issues are mining, both sand and oil, and tidal energy generation".

The expert panel also found that there were only 55 Maui's dolphins over one year old. But, said Slooten, that doesn't mean we should write them off as extinct. "Sure enough, sometimes you do need to make a triage decision as to whether they can be saved or not, and if it was really at that point with Maui's I'd be the first to pull the plug. With Maui's we don't need to do anything complicated, we don't need to feed them artificially or artificially inseminate them, the only thing we need to do is to stop killing them in fishing nets. It's certainly not too late and the panel agreed that if we stopped killing them in fishing nets then they would recover."

About 39,000 submissions have been received by DoC and the Ministry of Primary Industries around the Maui's dolphin, and analysis is due soon. But Slooten stated that there are plenty of other ways to take action on the issue; "Write a letter to the Minister [of Primary Industries], visit your MP or talk to your friends and family about it".

Speaking at Piha on Saturday, Rastovich urged New Zealanders to sign up to KASM website (http://kasm.org.nz/) so that when TTR put out their application to government they can be contacted and make submissions in opposition or support.

Life on the road

There's no space for a chillibin on Rasta's paddleboard, so the surfer survives with two bottles of water and dark chocolate, dates and almond bars in a pelican case on the front of the craft. A lot of his journey was spent in his own company, but he has been joined by surfers from Waitara, other locals, seabirds and seals on his journey. During his solo missions, his satellite phone was his only safety fall-back.

"I have a lot of faith in the ocean and myself and what i can do in the water - that seems to have worked really well over the last few years. A lot people have many strange phobias and fears about the ocean, but for me I'm far more scared about crossing the road in peak-hour traffic, the ocean for me is a really familiar place."

After nearly two weeks of lying and kneeling on his 17 foot paddle board (apart from a short stint out following a shoulder injury) Rastovich is heading for "three straight days of eating and sleeping and not lifting my arms above my head."