The Hauraki Gulf Alliance, a group of diverse organisations representing more than 1 million people, has rubbished proposals to continue trawling and dredging in New Zealand’s first marine park, the Hauraki Gulf Marine Park.

The Hauraki Gulf Fisheries Plan aimed at “revitalising” the ailing park is now out for public consultation. The alliance is calling for New Zealanders to oppose trawling and dredging in the park as the plan will allow these destructive techniques to continue indefinitely. Submissions are due by 3rd March.

The combined group of environmental, conservation, fishing and boating organisations is outraged that commercial bottom trawling would be allowed to continue, and calls for the damaging methods to be banned to allow for the area to recover.

All the scallop beds in the park are shut due to mismanagement yet the plan would allow commercial scallop dredging to resume if/when the fishery reopens. This is despite dredging being named as one of the factors in the species’ demise, and recreational dredging already being banned from the Marine Park.

“We have a once in a generation opportunity to protect the Gulf properly for the future, to allow it to recover and thrive again,” says Greenpeace Oceans Campaigner Ellie Hooper. “But half measures aren't going to cut it. Bottom trawling and dredging have devastated this ecosystem for a century.

“We need the Minister to step up and be bold, ban trawling and dredging from the entire Marine Park so recovery can start in earnest. The Minister has the opportunity here to leave a lasting ocean legacy. Let it be the right one.”

Forest and Bird’s Hauraki Gulf Coordinator Bianca Ranson said she was incredulous that the plan proposes continuing to allow trawling and dredging just weeks after shutting the last commercial scallop beds in the park. “Have we learned nothing from the cautionary tale of tipa [scallops]? We call this a ‘marine park’ but we would never allow such destruction in a national park on land. Bottom trawling and dredging must end in the park if we want any hope of restoring its mauri.”

LegaSea team lead Sam Woolford says the Fisheries New Zealand proposal is “a verbose and disingenuous attempt at retaining the worst of the status quo”.

“How can Fisheries New Zealand even propose to continue destructive bottom contact fishing in the park when it is clear from successive State of our Gulf reports that the Hauraki Gulf ecosystem is under enormous pressure, and is in a far worse state now than it was 20 years ago when the Hauraki Gulf Marine Park was established. There are widespread kina barrens, significant benthic habitat loss such as important three dimensional nursery habitat for fish, overfishing is occurring, tarakihi, and bait fish are in trouble, rock lobster have been defined as functionally extinct due to commercial overfishing, and many shellfish species have collapsed.

“Even worse, Fisheries New Zealand refuses to tell us where swathes of trawling would be allowed. It’s backwards legislation that ignores the environmental interests of the marine park’s communities.”

He points to a survey of Aucklanders carried out by the Hauraki Gulf Forum, set up to safeguard the park since its inception in 2000. The Horizon Research poll of 1020 Aucklanders showed 84 per cent supported banning trawling and dredging from the marine park. The Forum also has an official stance against all trawling and dredging within the park.

New Zealand Sport Fishing Council president Ian Steele says recreational fishers have gone all in to help reduce their impact on the park, supporting a reduction in snapper bag limits and increasing the legal size while promoting returning large fish to the water, bag limit reductions of crayfish and hapukū. They also strongly support banning all dredging in the Gulf, to save the last few remaining scallops.

“The Hauraki Gulf Forum’s latest State of our Gulf 2020 report shows boaties and shore fishers are now taking less nearly 30 per cent less snapper as well as less john dory and terakihi than a decade ago, while commercial fishing catch has increased by 30 per cent since the park was established.

“In order to see a difference we need proactive, conservative decision making. That begins with the Minister banning all mobile, bottom-contact bulk harvesting methods that extract huge numbers of fish using destructive bottom scraping fishing methods.”

The Hauraki Gulf Alliance is made up of environmental and conservation organisations, fishing, boating and diving representatives and about 80 businesses. The Alliance has labelled the Fisheries New Zealand plan an attempt to avoid doing anything that would change the way commercial fishing operates. The groups are concerned the plan does nothing to make a difference to the park’s abundance.

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