Decades of fishing bans have not rescued seafood delicacy toheroa

Friday, 1 March 2019

Toheroa was a favourite NZ seafood delicacy of the 1900s. It was vastly over-harvested and collecting was banned in the 1970s. In the decades since, it has not recovered. Why not? Will Harvie reports.

It would probably appal Kiwis who feasted on toheroa in the last century that the seafood delicacy is now almost forgotten.

Until the 1960s, toheroa was New Zealand's 'great contribution to the epicurean world'.

The kai moana was 'highly esteemed by the most fastidious gourmet' and a 'gift of nature … that has done much to advertise the Dominion all over the world', according to the NZ Railways Magazine in 1936.

Toheroa thrived on the western beaches of the North Island – Ninety Mile, Ripiro and Muriwai. It abounded on the beaches of Kāpiti-Horowhenua near Wellington. Mysteriously, it thrived on Oreti and Te Waewae beaches in Southland. There were pockets elsewhere.

* We must keep toheroa within arm's reach

The prize: a toheroa freshly dug from Baylys Beach near Dargaville by a researcher. The clams once seemed an inexhaustible resource but harvesting has been banned for decades.

* Tuatua gatherers taking prohibited toheroa

* Tuatua boom could put toheroa at risk**

The surf clam was a staple of the Māori diet for centuries. In the 20th century, it seemed to be an 'almost inexhaustible resource' to many.

From 1928-69, Northland factories canned about 20 tonnes of toheroa a year. In 1940, they canned 77 tonnes, the record.

Recreational fishers were just as hungry. In 1966, it's thought 12,000 cars and 50,000 people visited Ripiro beach and harvested about 1 million toheroa – in one weekend.

And then the fishery collapsed. Commercial canning was banned in 1969. Regional closures were staggered and the last legal recreational catch occurred in 1979.

Large numbers gather toheroa in August, 1978. This must have been one of the last such events, as recreational harvesting was banned the next year.

All that's left is a supposedly 'limited' harvest for customary purposes – meaning by Māori but not exclusively – and poaching.

When the bans were imposed, it was hoped the New Zealand native would recover on it's own. Stop the harvests and toheroa would come back.

But it's been 40-45 years and toheroa has not come back.

Despite being New Zealand's most protected shellfish, numbers have largely collapsed on Ninety Mile, Muriwai and Kāpiti beaches. Ripiro is hanging on. Only Southland's animal numbers are remotely positive.

What's going on?

In late 2015 Dr Phil Ross, a marine ecologist at the University of Waikato, and colleagues got a big Marsden Fund grant and other money to find out.

Dr Phil Ross, marine biologist and toheroa expert.

'It's the great mystery of New Zealand marine ecology,' he said in an interview.

Their research is now getting published and the reading is grim.

'Illegal harvesting of toheroa is widespread and frequent,' they report. The customary take is probably out of control in some places.

Driving vehicles on beaches – that great Kiwi way of life – crush the beach clams or exposes them to predators and killing heat.

Other factors probably include pollution, a lack of fresh water coming onto beaches from inland, and gas bubble disease – something like the bends in scuba divers.

Toheroa, in other words, largely haven't been left alone to recover.

The flavour

Cooks should mince a dozen fresh clams, simmer them with onion and stock, thicken with flour, cinnamon, curry powder and half a pint of milk, according to an undated recipe credited to the Country Women's Institute.

The result was a creamy green soup that tasted 'like clam chowan [chowder] only more so,' according to a 1925 advertisement in the Auckland Star.

'Toheroa was rather better than oyster,' according to a 1927 report in the Waikato Times.

Tinned exports to London were sold as 'New Zealand oyster soup', according to a 1936 report in the New Zealand Herald.

A 2015 Ngāi Tahu video demonstrates how to make fritters, using toheroa from Oreti, Southland: Mince the clams, mix in eggs, onion, flour and baking powder. Fry in hot oil.

Label from a tin of toheroa soup. Creamy and green, it was like clam chowder soup, but better. It was exported all over the world.

Phil Ross, the ecologist, has studied the species for years and eaten exactly one – shucked fresh out of the sand. It was sweet and beautiful, he said.

Customary harvests & poaching

In almost all discussions of the customary harvests of toheroa, words such as 'limited' and 'restricted' are used to indicate these are minor events.

But there's evidence and testimony that customary catches of toheroa are neither.

'Based on our observations and communications with kaitiaki, honorary fisheries officers and residents at Ripiro, and to a lesser extent at other locations, it would appear that the levels of human harvesting are significant,' wrote Ross and co-authors in the main paper on toheroa to come out of the Marsden funding.

'Illegal harvesting is common,' they wrote.

'Poaching events range in size from residents or visitors just getting a feed every now and then – which may be once a year or once a week – to large-scale illegal harvesting for the black market.'

'Based on our recent observations in Taitokerau [Northland, roughly], illegal harvesting of 'protected' toheroa is widespread, frequent and has in some cases resulted in the reduction and disappearance of adult toheroa beds,' they wrote.

'In Murihiku [Southland, roughly], a recent estimate suggests that the combined customary and illegal harvest of toheroa could easily account for as much as 13 per cent to 50 per cent of the toheroa population each year.'

There are important differences between legal customary harvests and illegal poaching, although the lines between them may also blur.

Customary harvests are designed for special occasions such as hui and tangi. The Ministry for Primary Industries issues iwi with the power to issue permits and they in turn identify a kaitiaki (custodian, guardian) to issue permits and place rāhui (restrictions) on beaches if needed.

Permits are not exclusive to Māori. Ngāi Tahu, for example, has in recent years permitted the Riverton RSA to harvest about 100 toheroa from Oreti to mark Anzac Day.

The regulations are complex and variable. Some iwi-kaitiaki are expected to report harvest numbers to MPI, others only when requested. Some voluntarily provide information. MPI reports show variability in measurement. Are the 50 units permitted in 2016 individual clams, kilograms, buckets or something else? How large were the clams taken? It's not known.

Perspectives from the beach

The five men forking the shellfish out of the sand glanced again at the incoming tide, then redoubled their efforts. They knew they could take as many toheroa as they liked. Working on a contract basis for a canning factory, they did this six days a week through July and August . By the end, they will have dug about half a million toheroa. July 1962.

In a 2013 report to Niwa, EAM Environmental Consultants interviewed 18 'key informants' on Ninety Mile and Ripiro beaches. Ten were men, eight women. Sixteen were Māori, two Pākehā. They were between 32 and 88 years old with an average age of 62.

These informants knew what was actually going on and were granted anonymity to encourage truthfulness. The report was called 'Perspectives from the beach'.

The informants took the 'strong view' that the 'permit system does not promote sustainable customary harvest'.

One informant said he'd seen 'take as much as you can' permits. Another permit allowed 'bins full'. Another permit allowed a harvest of 5000.

To put this in perspective, the last open day for toheroa on Oreti was in 1993. The bag limit per person was five.

EAM also learned of discrepancies between and within iwi.

The informants 'felt that in many cases people who were issuing permits had no right to issue them in the first place, had little knowledge of the current status of the resource or little regard for the sustainability of the resource'.

If an iwi placed rāhui on a beach, local marae were not necessarily stopped from issuing permits and applying to MPI for new permit books.

“When the permit issuer runs out of permits he just gets another book,' an informant told EAM. 'He’s the designated one from that marae. It’s got nothing to do with the iwi, it’s the marae committee … they can still do their own thing.”

In Northland, 'no-one really has a handle on it', said Ross, the lead scientist, in an interview.

'Current harvest levels (illegal and authorised customary take) are largely unquantified,' he wrote.

He didn't believe current harvest levels were entirely to blame for the failed recovery but it was contributing to low numbers.

This situation has existed for decades.

In 1998, the Evening Post (now the Dominion Post) reported Kaitaia police ignored an 'illegal' toheroa digging expedition on Ninety Mile Beach … Far North Maori, claiming customary rights, at the weekend carried out the shellfish dig in defiance of Fisheries Ministry regulations'.

At the time, an area Māori leader said he was reluctant to criticise the move as his father was arrested in 1942 for taking toheroa in a protest over customary rights.

In 2001, the New Zealand Herald reported, 'Far North Māori are flouting customary fishing rules and fighting over who has authority over different stretches of coastline, leaving Ministry of Fisheries staff almost powerless over who can issue permits under Treaty of Waitangi provisions of fishing law'.

Toheroa on right, compared to a tuatua in August 1974. These days, finding a toheroa that size on the North Island is rare and the two clams are often mistaken. Tuatua may be collected, toheroa cannot without a special permit.

The report included the claim that a man was caught with 60 toheroa on Ninety Mile Beach. He claimed to have a customary permit, but couldn't find it and so wrote himself a new one.

Some Māori do not accept that MPI and predecessors – representing the Crown – has any authority regarding toheroa. Sovereignty over toheroa was never ceded and Māori may gather as they like, they assert.

New Zealand courts – also representing the Crown – have prosecuted nine poachers for improperly taking more than 50 toheroa and 44 infringement notices have been issued for taking less than 50 clams over the last five years, according to MPI.

MSc student Nicola Fothergill measures sediment temperatures near and away from streams to understand how disappearing fresh water may change habitat suitability for toheroa.

Mātauranga Māori

Dr Phil Ross insists all is not lost.

Toheroa, Paphies ventricosa, is a broadcast spawner. A single adult female can spawn 15 million to 20m eggs in one go. If conditions are right, huge numbers of junior toheroa can survive and grow.

In Northland, this happens but the clams disappear before maturing, he said. It's not clear why.

Ross and many others want the species to recover, to make occasional feeds on the beach possible again. Some dream of a renewed commercial fishery and even aquaculture.

Toheroa researchers doing field work on Ripiro Beach near Dargaville. The surf clams beds were often associated with fresh water and streams.

None of that will happen without co-operation from iwi, marae, kaitiaki and individuals.

Ross wants to align western science with Mātauranga Māori, or traditional knowledge in all its subtlety held by Māori.

The 36-page main Marsden paper is largely an attempt at this. The authors compare 'our current scientific understanding of toheroa against the knowledge held by local experts [to] provide a comprehensive summary of toheroa-related knowledge'.

'Now is an appropriate time.'

Ross has spent several years travelling to toheroa beaches, meeting the mostly Māori communities protecting and harvesting the clams.

Although not Māori, he has plainly gained some trust and learned some traditional knowledge.

Fresh water comes up often. There's both evidence and knowledge that toheroa probably need clean, fresh water coming onto beaches from inland. It probably cools them and they probably get nutrients from it.

Toheroa diggers on Muriwai Beach, August 23, 1962.

In Northland, where many streams and seeps have dried up, there are questions from locals whether this has contributed to the decline.

'There are also accounts from elders of streams 'running black' after logging operations and this coinciding with the disappearance of the toheroa bed at the end of that particular stream,' he wrote in an email.

'There is clearly a relationship between toheroa and streams, we just don't understand it yet. Which makes it difficult to advise land and environment managers. We are working on it.'

Across many North Island iwi, toheroa is closely tied to the dune grass pingao. There are several stories from Māori lore on the connection and Ross thinks the association is worth investigating further.

'It has also been suggested that Māori may have preferentially harvested middle-sized toheroa … leaving larger individuals in place as broodstock to sustain the resource,' the co-authors wrote.

There's also hope in Southland. DNA analysis showed southern toheroa there were perhaps translocated by Māori before European contact.

'Early Māori were prolific users of aquatic resources and were adept at food cultivation and translocation,' Ross and others wrote in another scientific paper.

'Māori also domesticated and translocated numerous endemic plants and are thought to have translocated freshwater fish into lakes where they did not occur.'

It's not a great leap to think they moved toheroa to Southland, where they do well. If Southland, why not back to Northland?

Southland also points the way to the successful protection and use of toheroa.

'It's well managed,' Ross said. 'The collaboration between Ngāi Tahu, MPI and council brings clarity around permitting.'

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