More fish in the sea
THIS MONTH: GUEST COLUMNIST ALEXSTONE
Our daughter Zoë is a field research ecologist. She’s currently doing post-doctoral work, monitoring the fortunes of native birds reintroduced to mainland islands.
New Zealand ecologists are considered world-leaders in this type of terrestrial re-introductions. So why can’t we do something similar to help restore our inshore marine habitat? In the Hauraki Gulf, for instance, and other coastal habitats, once keystone species are fast disappearing. Like hapuka and kōura crayfish.
For the last 30 years the total commercial fishing allowable catch for hapuka, unchanged since the early 1990s, has not been caught. Whether this is a result of fishers priority-targeting other species, hapuka proving too elusive to catch, or because hapuka populations have crashed is unknown, says Professor of Marine Science at the University of Auckland, Andrew Jeffs, but the last is the most likely – “We still have no real data on hapuka population dynamics.”
Hapuka were once a dominant inshore reef predator
