Mawera Karetai

Last week I was invited to speak at Ocean Acidification in a High CO2 World, a conference held in Wellington. I was asked to talk about the pressure our coastal marine species are under because of us. I spoke about what we take from the sea, what we put into it, and how we change the places where life begins. The main focus of my korero was kai, and on one fish in particular - tarakihi.

That evening, at the conference dinner, tarakihi was on the menu.

I looked at the table in front of me and wondered what any of us have learned from species reports. A room full of people who care deeply about the ocean, who had just spent hours on the science of a changing sea, and the kitchen served us the very species that science says is in serious trouble. I do not say this to shame the organisers or the caterers. I say it because it shows how far apart our knowledge and our habits have drifted. When will we learn?

Here is what we know. In July, Fisheries New Zealand released a new stock assessment that put the east coast tarakihi population at about 7.7 percent of its size before commercial fishing began. Ten percent is the line at which a fishery is formally treated as collapsed. This is not a stock that is a bit low. It is a stock that has fallen through the floor.

We have been told for years that things were in hand. The east coast fishery has been under a rebuild plan since 2018, with commercial catch limits cut in 2018, 2019 and 2022. None of it worked. We now know the modelling behind those earlier assessments carried an error from 2017 onwards, which made the stock look healthier than it was. Had that error not been there, the 2022 assessment would have shown about 12 percent instead of 19.

In June, officials put forward options that would have cut the eastern commercial catch by somewhere between 39 and 78 percent. In September the Minister for Oceans and Fisheries chose a 20 percent cut, along with a daily recreational limit of 10 tarakihi per person. On the same day, he increased the commercial limits for snapper and trevally from Hawke's Bay to Wellington, fish taken in the same mixed trawl fishery that catches tarakihi. The Environmental Defence Society has pointed out that Fisheries New Zealand's own analysis showed the stock would keep being overfished under the cut the Minister chose. The next full assessment is not due until 2027.

Fishing is the biggest pressure, but it is not the only one, and this is where my talk began. Our coastal waters are warming and becoming more acidic. Sediment and runoff from the land smother our estuaries. Bottom trawling disturbs the seafloor that young tarakihi depend on, including their nursery grounds. Tarakihi spawn in our own waters here in the Bay of Plenty. Every one of these pressures adds to the others, and a population sitting below eight percent has nothing left in reserve to absorb them.

There is one fact that should change how every one of us thinks about this. Around 95 percent of commercially caught tarakihi is sold and eaten here in Aotearoa. This is not a fish being shipped off to distant markets we have no say over. The demand is us. It is our fish and chip orders, our restaurant menus, our supermarket chillers and, yes, our conference dinners.

That means we do not have to wait for the Minister. Our tūpuna knew what to do when a resource was under strain. They placed a rāhui, not as punishment, but to give the mauri of that place or that species time to recover. Each of us can place a rāhui on our own plate. Ask the person behind the counter what the fish is before you order. Choose something else when it is tarakihi. If you organise events, tell your caterer it is off the menu. If you run a kitchen, take it off.

I am not asking anyone to give up kaimoana forever. I am asking us to stop eating one fish for long enough that our mokopuna might still know what it tastes like.

Because the question in front of us is simple: Do we want to be the generation responsible for eating the last tarakihi?

Dr Mawera Karetai s a lecturer at the University of Otago, a researcher at Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi, and Bay of Plenty Regional Councillor for the Kōhi Māori constituency.