Hook, line and stinker: Boat blockade coming to Auckland over Hauraki Gulf plan

Thursday, 20 November 2025

On Saturday, fishers, boaties, divers and paddlers will tow everything from battered tinnies to gleaming hard-tops and jet skis in a convoy through Auckland in a show of anger.

The One Ocean protest will aim to “block the city with boats”, born from mounting frustration among recreational fishers who say the Government’s new Hauraki Gulf protection rules are both unfair and illogical.

Organiser Ben Chissell says he’s not letting the Government off the hook for shutting down “awesome public fishing areas then allowing commercial [fishers] to smash it to bits”.

“There's obviously a lot of people that will will read a headline or read a little bit and go ‘f…ing rich, f…ing white bastards, all they want to do is bloody catch all the snapper in the Hauraki Gulf’.”

That’s not the case, says Chissell, the main point of the protest is because in the process of creating widespread protections for the Gulf, the Government has decided to allow commercial fishers exclusive access to newly created highly protected areas (HPA).

If recreational fishers are banned to protect the Gulf, commercial fishers should be banned too.

“The precedent they’ve set is dangerous,” says Chissell.

The tension comes after more than 10 years of kina barrens, starving snapper, obliterated ecosystems, scientific warnings, stakeholder negotiations and political wrangling.

Last month, the Hauraki Gulf/ Tīkapa Moana Marine Protection Act finally came into force, delivering the biggest expansion of marine protection in more than a decade.

The law establishes a network of new marine protected zones, including seafloor protection areas to protect sensitive habitats by prohibiting activities, like bottom trawling, and HPAs, where most commercial and recreational fishing is banned to allow marine habitats to recover.

It has been hailed as a vital step towards bringing Auckland’s treasured Tīkapa Moana (Hauraki Gulf) back from the brink of ecological collapse.

But the protections came with compromises - most controversially is the late-stage decision to give five commercial ring-net fishing operators exclusive access to two of the high protection areas at Kawau Bay and Motutapu to fish for mullet, parore, trevally and kahawai over winter. Ring-net fishing is a technique used by small-to-medium-sized boats, using a single large net to encircle schools of fish.

The permits will be reviewed after three years.

Jones said the exemption was needed to provide essential protein to Māori and Pacific Island communities in South Auckland over winter.

Department of Conservation (DOC) documents show the carve-out only emerged after Conservation Minister Tama Potaka met Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones in September last year. Six days later, a recommendation was made to Cabinet.

DOC didn’t support the move. In a briefing, officials warned that ring-netters could relocate their catch with “minimal impact”, and that allowing them into HPAs “would undermine the biodiversity outcomes” and create “significant equity issues” by giving one commercial group access, while others - and all recreational fishers - were banned.

Officials also cautioned that granting commercial access to supposedly high-protection zones without publicly naming the operators “would be widely criticised as lacking transparency”. Yet the identities of the five ring-netters remain secret after they told the Government they feared harassment. DOC noted that the risk of abuse was “created or exacerbated through the legislation itself”.

Officials suggested a sunset clause after either one or three years - instead the Government went for the weakest option of a review after three years.

Environmental advocates WWF-NZ, which campaigned strongly for full protection, called the concession “sleazy, backdoor lobbying”. Seafood New Zealand rejects that, calling ring-netting “small-scale, low-impact” fishing mostly done on 6-metre boats, and says the exemption was a necessary “just transition” to protect livelihoods.

Jones brushed that off.

“I don't bother responding to ideological spitballs,” Jones told The Post.

Jones, also the NZ First deputy leader, called the concessions for the commercial sector “tiny” and said that they hadn’t signed up to the protections. Jones says if NZ First had its way, there would be no marine reserves at all.

“All of these closures, they represent an ideological approach in terms of how best to secure better conservation,” he says.

“New Zealand First as a part of the coalition agreement, and coalition dynamic, had to be pragmatic and accept that this is the direction that the National Party wanted to travel.”

Jones also argues that recreational interests were represented throughout the SeaChange process via advocacy group LegaSea. “They were part of the ideological crusade,” he says.

Chissell strongly disagrees.

“A lot of our values align, and I have a lot of respect for the majority of what LegaSea do … but we are not LegaSea.”

LegaSea program lead Sam Woolford supports the protest and will attend on Saturday and says just because his organisation was in the room during the SeaChange process - the blueprint on which the legislation is based - doesn’t mean they were listened to.

The collapse of key species such as crayfish and scallops shows how overfishing and slow political action pushed the Gulf to the brink, he says.

Marine reserves alone aren’t enough, Woolford says. Without management plans to reduce total catch, restrictions simply shift pressure to unprotected areas.

“The public have lost faith … I can completely understand how we got to the point where people want to protest.”

He says LegaSea has no issue with the ring-netters themselves, but says the precedent is dangerous: high protection areas should be fully protected, not selectively opened.

For example, in New South Wales in Australia, about 80% of marine parks are open to recreational fishers and many forms of commercial fishing.

“If you're going to have a high protection area, have a high protection area,” Woolford said.

Potaka said the Hauraki Gulf/Tīkapa Moana Marine Protection Act was a compromise. Some people wanted more protection, others wanted less and that was needed to get the legislation passed.

“We got to a place where there was a political compromise in order to get that legislation passed.”

If recreational fishers felt the law was unfair because commercial operators could fish in safe and popular areas where hobbyists couldn’t, Potaka said the fish “swim around through the sea”.

“Fish aren't restricted. They're not like cattle or sheep that are in fence lines. They swim around in the water and they come in and out of those areas.”

Seafood New Zealand warns that while it respects peaceful protest, “any outcome that resulted in commercial fishers being harassed or unfairly targeted would be completely unacceptable”.

It also says protest organisers misunderstand the nature of the exemption.

Chissell rejects that outright.

“I think we’ve understood it much better than they intended us to … they are still allowing commercial fishing in HPAs.”

Saturday’s demonstration will be the first protest Chissell has ever attended, let alone organised. He says the same is true for many who have pledged to tow their boats 30km from Albany to Mission Bay at dawn.

He won’t guess at the turnout but says the movement has attracted major backers, including fishing equipment manufacturers Shimano, Daiwa and Okuma.

“We care about the precedent, we care about the loopholes, the grey areas,” he says. “Because it’s always a little bit, a little bit, a little bit - until it’s a lot.”