In a submission against official advice, the Board backs a full intertidal closure and asks the chair to write to the Prime Minister and four ministers
The Howick Local Board has called for a full closure of shore-based shellfish gathering along the area’s coastline, going further than its own council officers and Fisheries New Zealand recommended.
The Board resolved that many Howick coastlines “have suffered heavy and sustained stripping” of the intertidal environment and needed “a significant period of protection to recover.”
In its feedback on a review of shellfish harvesting in the Auckland and Coromandel area, the Board backed a full intertidal closure, known as Option 3, where council staff and Fisheries New Zealand had preferred a partial closure with exceptions for some species.
The Board argued that only a full closure, combined with limits on harvesting outside the closed area, would give the environment “a genuine chance to recover.”
It is not the first such closure on the Howick coast.
Cockle Bay was closed to shellfish gathering year-round from 1 May 2021, under the Fisheries Act, after monitoring and community reports showed a decline in the number of large cockles.
That closure followed years of campaigning by Cockle Bay residents, including active community member Barry Wood, who grew alarmed at the volume of cockles being taken from the beach.
“Some 15 years ago I became concerned at the number of people taking large numbers of cockles from Cockle Bay beach,” Wood said in an account on the Cockle Bay Residents and Ratepayers Association website.
He said he joined an Auckland Council shellfish monitoring programme and became a volunteer fisheries officer, finding that “over harvesting was one of the main problems, but there was also an environmental effect.”
The closure the Board backs would not cover kina, the sea urchin, which is not a shellfish. The Board asked that kina harvesting continue, noting that overfishing of its natural predators had driven an explosion in their numbers and the creation of “kina barrens” where kelp forests have been stripped bare.
It also said a total ban would be easier to police, and simpler to follow for gatherers with limited English.
The Board recommended a formal review of the closure at five years, when limited harvesting of some species could resume if populations had recovered.
The Board resolved that its chair Bruce Kendall write to Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, Pakuranga MP Simeon Brown, Takanini MP Rima Nakhle, Fisheries Minister Shane Jones, Associate Minister Jenny Marcroft and local iwi Ngai Tai ki Tamaki, seeking support for strong protection of the intertidal environment.
The Board adopted its position on 28 May. The consultation closed on 12 June, and its stance now goes to the Council’s Governing Body, which will decide the region’s final position.
