Take starfish ‘off the menu’, says iwi asking MPI for ban

Friday, 24 October 2025

A community campaign to save Auckland’s rock pool species from “localised extinction” has placed its hope in an iwi application to Ministry of Primary Industries for a temporary rahui.

Ngāti Manuhiri chief executive Nicola Rata-MacDonald says she has been “devastated” by the rampant plundering of East Coast beaches.

“Reports have come to us of people using piano wire to scrape the sides of rocks, collecting huge buckets of starfish, little crabs, limpets and all of those very small species,” she says.

Rata-MacDonald, who is also co-chair of the Hauraki Gulf Forum, says the wider impact on the ecosystem is “highly concerning”.

“Rock pools don’t grow back overnight. If you scrape it out with wire, that's it, that rock pool's dead.”

The taking of shoreline invertebrate species has been something of a blind spot in official rules, as traditionally they haven’t been seen as palatable eating.

“It's not unlawful, but morally, most of society that has grown up in New Zealand would have looked sideways [at harvesting them]. I know I'm certainly looking sideways.”

Ngāti Manuhiri is urging Aucklanders to submit on MPI’s consultation on a proposed two-year ban of taking all invertebrate and seaweed species from Te Arai to Mairangi Bay. Submissions close at 5pm on Tuesday, November 28.

“This is about re-educating some groups of people that these creatures are not on the menu. If you want fish stock, go to Pak n’Save and buy a box of fish stock,” says Rata-MacDonald.

And she says that as “the face of New Zealand” and its cultural make-up is changing, community awareness campaigns about the fragility of ecosystems are needed.

She says there’s an opportunity for “a whole army of community educators” to be trained and working the beaches if a ban is successful.

“We’ve had heaps and heaps of volunteers … It’s absolutely not vigilantism, it’s providing good education and then if they see something, contacting MPI and fisheries.”

In 2022, Omaha’s Mary Coupe presented a petition to Parliament with 3000 signatures asking for a change to the rules, and says the problem at her beach has only since continued.

“I’m surprised that anything is left. The anemone that you used to put your finger into as kids, they use a screwdriver to scoop them out.

“Any kind of little creature, if it's alive, it will be eaten.”

She was interviewed by BBC World on the issue, and has been calling for the Government to take the lead on encouraging new arrivals to the country to join locals in being “kaitiaki”.

Whangaparāoa Peninsula’s Mark Lenton says in recent years he’s been shocked to see minibuses arrive at the beach dropping off people with buckets and tools.

“It's mum and dad and the kids, or you might get commercial scale gatherers coming at night with full body waders scouring the coast and taking everything that moves.”

He’s started a group online and says the membership has reached “1900 pissed off locals” who want the fishery rules changed.

“You've got limits for things like paua and scallops, but a person can take up to 50 of the ‘all others’ [category] - that means one person can take 50 starfish in a day or a group of 10 can take 500 between them.”

He says a group of concerned locals have been trying to encourage gatherers to return their harvest back to the sea, but they’re “up against it”.

“I've had a knife pulled on me a couple of times by people that just didn't want their buckets going back in the ocean.”

Lenton says since starting the group he’s had people from as far away as Hawke’s Bay and Oamaru get in touch with similar issues.

“We actually need to raise awareness as a country.”