Tīkapa Moana, the Hauraki Gulf, is considered one of the great marine taonga of Aotearoa, but the 4000 square kilometre stretch of water is severely under stress.
Overfished and over-harvested, quite simply, the gulf is in crisis, but all hope is not lost.
As kaitiaki, iwi are doing all they can to protect the gulf. Rāhui is in place and Māori scientists are at the forefront of research into how we can recover.
"Māori have been custodians since time immemorial. And what we're seeing now in the 21st century is making best use, best practice of everything that we have in our toolbox for survival," said Nicola MacDonald, co-chair of the Hauraki Gulf forum.
It's hard to believe how plentiful kaimoana, especially shellfish, once were in the Hauraki Gulf. Giant crayfish (kōura) were huge and easy to catch - now they're functionally extinct. Scallops and paua are non-existent and the mussel beds have all but disappeared.
On Waiheke Island, stocks have been badly affected. In June more than 100 divers surveyed all of the island over eight weeks looking for crayfish. They found just 22.
"Living off the moana when I was a child, to the state it's in now where my grandchildren and my children cannot just go out and harvest and get a kai. For most species it's all gone," Herearoha Skipper from Waiheke Island's Ngāti Paoa told The Hui.
Ngāti Paoa placed a rāhui on the island 18 months ago, banning the gathering of shellfish and crayfish.
"The thing with rāhui is that you put a rāhui down, you let it rest, you let it restore, and then you shift the rāhui to another location so that one can open up," Skipper said.
The Waiheke Marine Project has also joined iwi in the fight to protect the area. It's looking at bringing in crayfish from other parts of New Zealand to replenish the island's stocks.
Without crayfish or plentiful snapper, kina has taken over and is eating all of the seaweed and the Marine Project now removes hundreds of kina each summer.
MacDonald from the Hauraki Gulf Forum and Ngāti Manuhiri Settlement Trust blames our fishing practices for the state of the gulf, including dredging and bottom trawling.
"There's no place in the 21st century for these archaic methods. And if we want to be serious about restoring the gulf for our future, future generations, then we actually need to say to all holders of quota, stop dredging the mussels, stop dredging scallops and everything else," she said.
Just two spots remain legally open for scallops in the gulf: Te Hauturu-o-Toi (Little Barrier) and Aotea (Great Barrier). But MacDonald recently visited the beds with NIWA only to find them destroyed.
"Where there has been commercial dredging, those scallops have not returned. If anyone thinks that you can keep these beds open and continually dredge and they'll replenish themselves, you've got to be joking," she said.
Ngāti Manuhiri has purchased three police boats to do surveillance and it's done the largest-ever drop of mussels near Mahurangi, north of Auckland, to try to replenish the beds. Called the kidneys of the sea, mussels clean up sediment - something that's become another big issue for the gulf.
"All the land of the catchments around the Hauraki Gulf used to be covered in native forest and we've chopped that down either to create pasture land or to extract the valuable timbers. And as a result of that, millions and millions of tonnes of sediment have slowly through those 150, 160 years been washed down into the Hauraki Gulf," Auckland University scientist Daniel Hikurua said.
Hikurua is working hard for a mātauranga Māori approach to be adopted by authorities.
"Let's remember that Māori have been living in and around the gulf for four centuries and they lived with it in a way in which they understood the cycles, they understood about managing themselves and the interactions with gathering kai," he said.
This month Ngāti Paoa will also launch a five-year project to look at how to protect the ocean using Māori practices.
"Western science is good for identifying the issues but not resolving the issues. What we are doing at the moment is bringing in all our mātauranga experts and coming from a Māori worldview in regards to the state of the moana and what type of practices can we put in place to support the restoration and regeneration of our moana space," Skipper said.
The kaitiaki of the Hauraki Gulf said they are hopeful with all of these measures in place the waters of the gulf can be restored to their former glory as a place of abundance for future generations.
Made with support from Te Māngai Pāho and the Public Interest Journalism Fund.
