March 29, 2022
Scallop fishery to close as beds ravaged
Oceans and Fisheries Minister David Parker has closed scallop fisheries in Northland and most of the Coromandel to allow them to recover.
The closure is part of the twice-yearly review of a selection of fish stocks to support their sustainability.
Mr Parker says scientific surveys have confirmed iwi and community concerns that scallop beds in the region are in bad shape.
Factors contributing to the decline include sedimentation, dredging and the use of GPS technology to locate and exploit scallop beds.
The total allowable commercial catch in the Coromandel scallop fishery was halved in 2016, and the Northland scallop fishery was reduced by 75 per cent in 2020.
Iwi have been calling for the closure, with four Hauraki iwi declaring a rāhui on Te-Whanganui-ā-Hei Mercury Bay and the northern Coromandel Peninsula.
Joe Davis from Ngāti Hei says some commercial operators were deliberately flouting the rāhui, including flying a pirate flag while dredging a restricted area.
“They’ve had 40 years of dredging and bottom trawling, which is what we’re dead set against. It’s destroying our beds and everything else as well. We’re blaming kina with kina barrens and all that. You can’t pin it on the old kina. It’s got to be the bottom trawling that’s at the heart of the problem,” he says.
Other changes include reducing the total allowable rock lobster catch for Northland, increasing it for Otago and Southland, and setting catch limits and allowances for hāpuku and bass stocks off the west coast and top of the South Island and Taranaki for the first time