The population of kina has exploded so much in parts of Northland, the Fisheries Minister wants to cull them.
Overfishing of the predators of kina has allowed the numbers to grow unchecked, and now Shane Jones wants locals to be able to remove more of the unwanted sea urchin.
Kina have sustained our coastal communities for centuries, but overfishing of snapper and crayfish is causing problems further down the food chain.
"We all want to go and catch them and get the big photos, right, but when we take them out there's nothing eating the kina, so the kina are running rampant," said Sam Judd from Ko Waitangi te Awa Trust.
Tana Apiata, kaimahi at Te Tii Marae in Waitangi, is on the hunt for kina off the coast near Tutukākā.
He knows quality is thinning, now that seaweed and summer are waning.
"Outside of those times, you'll see there's a decline in the condition of the kina or available meat," Apiata told Newshub.
Here's the problem: when humans overfish and feast on snapper or crayfish, the kina the fish eat multiply.
In turn, they munch through Ecklonia seaweed, where 138 species of fish would normally breed. That leaves fish stocks further depleted - and so it goes on.
About 20 minutes north of Tutukākā, it would have been teeming with snapper and shellfish a few years ago, but now all that's left is kina.
It's what's called a kina barren.
"People have been harvesting a lot of snapper around here and taking out a lot of the kōura [crayfish]," said Judd.
"It's changing the ecosystem," he added.
Judd, who's a former commercial freediver, used to harvest kina for a living.
He now works for Ko Waitangi te Awa Trust and the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI).
Judd trained Apiata and others to freedive and collect data.
"So I reckon we're going to have a barren here with bugger all seaweed, not much mauri, not much lifeforce, not much going on," said Judd.
Judd is right. Few of the kina here are healthy.
"This one here's obviously had food available to it to eat, and this [other] one shows what lack of available food looks like," said Apiata.
Judd and Apiata's data show the difference between areas like Deepwater Cove - where there's a rāhui on fishing - and areas where there isn't.
"And the difference is dramatic, like we have a massive problem with too many kina," Judd said.
"I've been advised that in 7.5 hectares, 400,000 kina were extracted. It's an industrial-sized, industrial-grade problem," said Fisheries Minister Shane Jones.
He's trying to rebalance the ecosystem.
"I want to empower local communities to exercise direct guardianship," Jones told Newshub.
He wants to do that by culling kina barrens and increasing the recreational bag limit for kina, while closing more fisheries to increase the abundance of kina predators like rock lobsters.
"Being responsible kaitiaki on our moana is something we desire. We would love the ability to enact the same actions our tūpuna did," said Apiata.
Jones said the Government doesn't have the resources to arrest every environmental problem.
He trusts local communities to act in their own best interests.
