Source: Radio New Zealand
Maitai Bay, on the Karikari Peninsula, is a popular Far North holiday spot. RNZ / Peter de Graaf
Life is returning to a Far North bay once compared to an underwater desert, eight years after local hapū declared a fishing ban that makes up for its lack of legal clout with tikanga and staunch local support.
A no-take rāhui was declared at Maitai Bay in December 2017, covering the popular cove on the Karikari Peninsula and most of neighbouring Waikato Bay.
Annual monitoring since then has shown growing variety, numbers and size of fish, with a seven-fold increase in snapper leading the resurgence. In the past few years, crayfish have also started to reappear.
Te Rangi-i-Taiāwhiaotia Trust chairwoman Kataraina “Kui” Rhind said alarm about the state of the bay came to a head around 2014.
“We had a couple of whānau who’d spent their lives swimming in this bay and started realising there was absolutely no sea life left in here. It had become a kina barren.”
Rhind said over many decades all the bay’s big crayfish and snapper had been fished out, leaving the kina, or sea urchins, with no natural predators.
Te Rangi-i-Taiāwhiaotia Trust chairwoman Kataraina Rhind, centre, with Mateata Tetaria and Theo Guilloux visiting from Tahiti to learn about the rāhui. RNZ / Peter de Graaf
As kina numbers exploded, the creatures ate every last bit of kelp, leaving reef fish with nowhere to live.
The result was a kina barren, or bare rock populated only by hungry kina.
Rhind said local hapū Te Whānau Moana and Te Rorohuri held a series of hui to discuss what could be done.
At first, locals considered calling on the Ministry of Primary Industries to protect the bay, with an official marine reserve for example, but they soon had second thoughts.
“We had a vision ourselves of what we wanted to achieve and it didn’t include being told what we can and can’t do by MPI. So we decided we’d carry on by ourselves. We don’t have the law, but we have tikanga.”
That meant the no-take rāhui could not be enforced by way of warnings, fines or prosecutions.
Signs around the bay alert visitors to the no-take rāhui. RNZ / Peter de Graaf
However, Rhind said signs had been put up in prominent locations around the bay, pamphlets were handed out to campers, and locals kept an eye on the water.
A gate to neighbouring Waikato Bay, used in the past for launching boats, had been locked by the land owner over separate concerns about vehicles hooning on the beach.
Rhind said it was hard for would-be fishers to escape the sharp eyes of local kids.
“We’ve got our children, all our mokos, along the beach, and if they see anybody fishing they say, ‘Hey, we got a rāhui in here’. And sometimes these people say, ‘It doesn’t matter, we’re taking’. That’s really sad for our mokos. We’re trying to teach them how to rejuvenate, how to restore this place. And then you’ve got arrogant people who just think they’ve got the given right to take whatever they want.”
The hapū took an “education over enforcement” approach, explaining to would-be fishers why the rāhui was in place rather than trying to physically stop them.
Despite some setbacks, Rhind said most visitors and locals backed the rāhui.
“I would go as far as saying 95 percent of the community totally support this kaupapa. They love the fact that they can come to the beach and go for a dive and see fish. Fish come up to them and are nearly kissing them.”
Rhind said people had started comparing Maitai Bay to Goat Island, a long-standing marine reserve at Leigh, north of Auckland.
“There was nothing here, but as the years progress with the rāhui it’s changing. What’s happening is immense.”
That was confirmed by diver Rhys Spilling, who said he had been coming to Maitai Bay since he was a boy.
Now living at nearby Rangiputa, he had seen big changes since the rāhui came into effect.
“The main thing I’ve noticed is the fish aren’t scared of you at all. They’re fine just swimming next to you, and that’s pretty cool. And there’s also much bigger numbers, much bigger fish as well.”
Diver Sofia Koch, from Mount Maunganui, was bubbling with excitement as she emerged from the bay.
Divers Sofia Koch (Mount Maunganui) and Anna Parke (Mangawhai) fully support the rāhui. RNZ / Peter de Graaf
“We saw lots of really friendly snapper. You could pretty much touch them by hand which is really cute. You can pat them. We saw moray eels, octopus, a little jellyfish, an eagle ray, and some really colourful fish.”
Koch fully supported the no-take rāhui.
“Like all the animals, they sometimes need protecting. We take so much. I think it’s a good thing.”
Samara Nicholas, founder of Mountains to Sea Conservation Trust, started taking school groups snorkelling at Maitai Bay in the early 2000s, as part of the trust’s Experiencing Marine Reserves programme.
There they would see the bay’s near-lifeless kina barrens before heading to Goat Island, so they could compare it with a healthy marine ecosystem.
“So the kids were able to see the difference, and they were completely blown away by all the fish they could see at Goat Island.
And one of the hapū members approached me and said, ‘It’d be great to do something like this, you know, not a marine reserve, but we’d like to make a no-take area under traditional authority”.
Nicholas said the role of the trust since then had been to help the hapū set up their own trust and achieve their aspirations.
Mountains to Sea Conservation Trust also provided training for local rangatahi [youth] so they could help monitor marine life in the bay.
Children enjoy a snorkel day at Maitai Bay organised by Mountains to Sea Conservation Trust. Supplied / Mountains to Sea Conservation Trust
Nicholas said the changes since 2017 meant Far North schoolchildren could now see a thriving underwater environment without having to travel all the way to Goat Island.
“This is really about restoring the balance and restoring our underwater forests by protecting these predators that eat the kina, then the kelp forest can recover. And that makes much more habitat for reef fish that we’re now seeing. The end goal is that there is more fish for the community to harvest in the future as well.”
Nicholas said the Maitai Bay no-take rāhui had been a success because of its simplicity – some marine protection attempts had been overly complicated, with different rules for different species or types of fishing.
Ecologist Vince Kerr, of Whangārei, said he had led monitoring of Maitai Bay, on behalf of the hapū, since 2018.
During the past four years in particular he had observed increasing fish numbers across all age classes.
“That trend is the really important part. It means restoration is underway, and it’s significant. It’s not just a one-off blip in snapper numbers.”
He had been concerned by the absence of crayfish for the first five to six years but they, too, were starting to return.
“Snapper and crayfish are really the keystone predators that control the joint. They dictate what happens, because they’re the ones that control kina as the primary grazer. So their role is super-important.”
His most recent report described 2025 as “a turning point” with snapper biomass now seven times higher than in 2017.
Fish are returning to Maitai Bay’s depleted reefs. Supplied / Mountains to Sea Conservation Trust
Kerr said it was reasonable to expect that trend would continue until the Maitai Bay figures were comparable to, or even higher than, those at Goat Island, due to habitat quality in and around Maitai Bay.
However, Kerr said populations of reef fish such as red moki and butterfish remained low, suggesting the kelp forests would need to regrow before they returned.
Rhind said the rāhui was originally supposed to remain in place only until 2020 but the hapū soon realised that “didn’t even touch the sides”.
It was then extended to 2025, and had since been extended indefinitely.
Rhind said restoration efforts had stepped up in the past year with volunteer divers now culling kina, giving kelp forests a chance to regenerate.
The trust was also planning to build a matauranga pokapu, or education centre, for use by school groups and researchers. It would include a classroom, lab, museum and kitchen.
Te Rangi-i-Taiāwhiaotia Trust chairwoman Kataraina “Kui” Rhind. RNZ / Peter de Graaf
Rhind said the trust had held initial discussions with a major funding provider and hoped to open the centre in early 2028.
Long-term, she hoped the bay would act as a fish nursery for the surrounding area, repopulating waters right around the Karikari Peninsula.
Her dream was one of abundance, both for marine life and for future generations to be able to take the food they needed.
“If we do well within the bay, that will feed out all around the peninsula. You can’t ask for anything better than that, eh?”
Hapū member and keen diver Whetu Rutene was a key driver of the rāhui in 2017.
At the time he said concerns about declining fish numbers were not new, but the rapid spread of kina barrens gave the rāhui urgency.
He said Maitai Bay was not the only place in Northland with kina barrens but it was ideal for a rāhui because it was sheltered with water depth ranging from 1 metre to almost 100m, and it could be easily monitored.
Reaction to the rāhui had been for the most part ”very respectful”.
Before the rāhui, he saw spearfishers and kayak fishers in the bay almost every day, but within a month there were almost none.
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
