It seems as if bottom trawling has gone from environmental activism – t-shirt slogans and signs tacked on Waiheke power poles – to an issue which could decide the next government.
It is one of the Opportunity Party’s five lines in the sand. Party leader Qiulae Wong is willing to budge on her flagship land tax and universal basic income in coalition talks, but not a comprehensive ban on bottom trawling.
“[We] will require an end to bottom trawling in sensitive areas, including the Hauraki Gulf, immediately. And we’ll begin work to progressively phase it out completely,” she says.
Fishing policy is suddenly a hot button election issue. Earlier this month, National leader Chris Luxon announced marine policies which sounded more like the Green Party than a government which has spent years pretending the dog ate its Waiheke Hākaimangō-Mātiatia Marine Reserve application. Luxon has even called for “a new Waiheke Island marine reserve”, which was pretty rich coming from him since it’s been mouldering on his conservation minister’s desk for two years.
As Forest and Bird spokesperson and Waiheke Local Board member Bianca Ranson noted wryly on Radio New Zealand (RNZ): “It’s great to see some energy around protection for the gulf, but it is very much a case of why did they not act on it this term.”
Luxon’s newfound enthusiasm for the health of the moana looks like jumping on a wave he never saw coming. In the last election, National’s fishing policy was sparse.
ACT had no fisheries policy in 2023 but is now calling for a daily bag limit of 10 shellfish, and regulations “to ensure higher fish stocks”.
What gives? Why this sudden interest in the marine environment from the political right?
Maybe it’s the David Attenborough effect. Who can forget the horrifying scene in his 2025 documentary film Ocean as a trawling net gobbles a vast array of fleeing critters? “Over three-quarters of a trawler’s catch may be thrown away,” Attenborough lamented. “It’s hard to imagine a more wasteful way to catch fish.”
In a Spinoff piece titled ‘Why fisheries policy is such a hot issue this election’, writer Joel MacManus blames Shane Jones, Minister for Oceans and Fisheries, for rocking the boat. Jones is deputy leader of New Zealand First, and once chaired Sealord – the biggest fishing company in New Zealand.
Jones adores the fishing industry, and the fishing industry adores him. In April, Peter Vela, the founder of Vela Fishing, donated $150,000 to New Zeland First; Talley’s, Sanford and Westfleet Seafoods have also contributed to the party’s election coffers.
Jones’ Fisheries Amendment Bill was so pro-industry it was fought by more than the usual environmental groups, the kind he seems to enjoy flicking off.
Well-heeled ‘recreational fishers’ hated it too, and they were a different story. MacManus describes them as “male, older and wealthy enough to own boats”. Any voting constituency spring to mind? National and Act’s support for the bill melted away faster than ice on the deck in summer – and Luxon had himself photographed on a spearfishing trip.
While David Attenborough and Shane Jones both did their level best to keep us worried about the health of the moana, it was the smaller parties who lit dynamite under the issue this election.
The Greens are powerful campaigners against bottom trawling. In Chlöe Swarbrick’s words, they will “phase out bottom trawling, starting with seamounts and ecologically significant areas like the Hauraki Gulf”.
There’s “phasing out”, and then there’s “phasing out completely” – Qiulae Wong’s promise.
Most of New Zealand’s fishing catch – about two-thirds – comes from trawlers. A total ban on bottom trawling would up-end not only the fishing industry, but its Treaty of Waitangi fisheries settlements.
“[Opportunity’s] trawling ban policy,” writes Newsroom’s Jonathan Milne, “makes no mention of the hundreds of millions of dollars in treaty settlements tied up in fishing.”
Even Greenpeace is not calling for an immediate nationwide ban, but a “phased, targeted ban on critically vulnerable areas”, as Greenpeace spokesperson Ellie Hooper told RNZ.
Chris Hipkins said recently that Labour would ban bottom trawling in the Hauraki Gulf, but a wider ban would be difficult.
“It can’t be done immediately. There’s a need for us still to fish. There’s jobs associated with that.”
What is clear, at least to the political left and centre, is that trawling – the way we catch around two-thirds of our fish – has to change.
It contributes to climate change, is horrendously wasteful and damaging, and should have been banned from the Hauraki Gulf years ago – ideally back in 1901, when Mr Francis Barber told a fisheries commissioner that he could no longer make ‘tucker’ fishing, and fish salesman Charles Bishop noticed “snapper and flat fish had greatly decreased in the gulf”.
It had been just two years since Albert Sanford fitted his 31-metre steamer Minnie Casey out for bottom trawling in April of 1899.
• Jenny Nicholls
