Newstalk ZB
Fisheries inspections at Northland’s Tauroa Peninsula have sparked questions about fisheries management in the area, including whether national catch limits there should be relaxed. While a rāhui (ritual prohibition) remains on taking pāua at Tauroa, whānau can still gather other kaimoana (seafood), including tuatua, kina, snapper and kutai (mussels). Fisheries New Zealand director of fisheries compliance Steve Ham said the recent inspections found a high level of compliance. Local kaitiaki (guardian) Reuben Taipari, who voluntarily monitors fishing activities at Tauroa, especially Ahipara, says the inspections raised a question of whether rigid national catch limits should apply in areas where tikanga-based fisheries management has produced strong local outcomes. Taipari said years of local stewardship, including rāhui and voluntary compliance, had helped restore and protect seafood stocks at the peninsula. “Our pāua rāhui is going amazingly. Our tuatua are in great stocks – everything’s in great shape, and that’s got a lot to do with our own voluntary input into looking after our local environment,” Taipari said. He acknowledged that while inspections were part of fisheries management, he believed some had been carried out in ways disconnected from the collaborative approach the community had worked hard to establish. Taipari said it highlighted the need to revisit how limits were set and enforced when species are abundant. Taipiri said some whānau gathering tuatua – which have a daily recreational limit of 150 per person at Tauroa and most parts of the country – have been repeatedly required to demonstrate compliance. “I’ve known people who’ve had to count every single tuatua two, three times over just to get a specific count,” he said. “We’re just trying to get a feed here for our families.” National catch limits did not always reflect regional variation or seasonal abundance, particularly in rural coastal areas where whānau relied heavily on kaimoana, he said. “These environments are organic – they’re living,” he said. “The abundance here is totally different to Houhora or Whangaroa. And the people best placed to understand that are the people who live here.” Taipari said the issue was heightened by cost‑of‑living pressures, with rising food and fuel costs meaning more families were turning to locally gathered seafood. “There’s a lot of pressure on everybody with the economy now,” Taipari said. “People want to do the right thing – they want to respect both customary rules and the law – but they still need to feed their families.” A fisheries officer inspects a local gatherer's tuatua take on a beach at Tauroa Peninsula. Speaking on behalf of the Ahipara Marae Takiwā – a collective of Roma, Wainui and Korou Kore marae – local kaumātua (elder) John Paitai said the takiwā (district) remained strongly supportive of working with Fisheries New Zealand to protect kaimoana. “They’ve got the legislative teeth we don’t have, and we can’t advance the preservation of our kaimoana without that support.” Paitai said Taipari raised legitimate points about applying limits to species that were currently plentiful. “The tuatua are so abundant at the moment, they’re almost pushing each other out of the sand,” Paitai said. “You can see them lying up on the surface because there are so many of them.” He believed asking people to repeatedly count tuatua was “a bit full-on”, particularly when the species was currently abundant. Paitai agreed rising fuel costs and wider cost‑of‑living pressures meant families in rural Northland were increasingly reliant on kaimoana as a food source. “So kaimoana becomes about putting food on the table,” he said. In December 2025, Kaumatua Haami Piripi led a karakia at Patito, Ahipara, to mark a recently-imposed rāhui on gathering pāua from the area. Fisheries New Zealand said catch and legal size limits had been adjusted elsewhere, including seasonal rules for the Kāikōura pāua fishery and parts of the N...
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