Is the end of commercial scallop dredging in sight?

It’s a step in the right direction when the Government announces it is considering whether underwater breathing apparatus (UBA) should be used to commercially harvest scallops.

However, this progress is muted as there appears no desire to makes more destructive practices, such as scallop dredging and bottom trawling, illegal.

Scallops in rapid decline

Now science confirms what locals have been expressing for years - scallop beds are declining and dredging and trawling causes unsustainable, additional mortality and habitat destruction.
Scallop populations around New Zealand are simply so low which is causing Fisheries NZ to consider closing the last commercial scallop fisheries to all fishing methods, with the possibility of allowing UBA when populations do recover.

Research carried out in 2021 by NIWA found in the Coromandel scallop fishery that there is an estimated scallop biomass (average weight of scallops in an area) of only 249 tonnes left compared with 1088 tonnes in 2012. This is a sad, yet unsurprising decline of 77% in just under a decade.

In response to dredge damage to benthic sea creatures, Hauraki Gulf communities have rallied to prevent further decline of scallops.

Rahui on all scallop harvesting

In January 2022, Ngāti Manuhiri placed a rāhui on all scallop harvesting. The closure area spans from Bream Tail down to Okura River mouth and encompasses Great Barrier Island.
Ngāti Hei was the first Hauraki Gulf Iwi to place a large rāhui on scallops around the Coromandel, and it is a powerful example of mana whenua working alongside local organizations fighting to protect remaining scallop beds.
These initiatives send a strong message that scallop dredging and other mobile bottom-contact fishing methods must give way for harvest methods that have minimal impacts on the seafloor.
Divers know scallop dredging is bad. And in an ideal world we’d love to see a scallop fishery that supports local divers using sustainable methods such as hand-gathering of scallops only. This would encourage the next generation of divers too. Less dredging and more diving can only be a good thing.

Support for hand harvesting conditional

Therefore, in our recent submission, LegaSea, the New Zealand Underwater Association, and the New Zealand Sport Fishing Council have conditionally supported the use of UBA in commercial scallop fisheries, provided that scallop dredging is banned nationwide, and with clear boundaries set between popular recreational and commercial locations.
If we simply added UBA as a harvest method without banning dredging, scallop beds will decline further. But for the moment, scallop fisheries need a break from all harvesting. When the fishery reopens, then we would support all harvesting and commercial SCUBA.

Less productive scallop beds in deeper waters may be inaccessible without scallop dredging, but they act as reliable sources of spat for inshore scallop beds.

We want to see scallop dredging and bottom trawling banned from our inshore waters.

Hauraki Gulf Alliance

Scraping life from off the seafloor is unacceptable. We’ve teamed up with other organisations to create the Hauraki Gulf Alliance, and are campaigning to ban all mobile bottom-contact fishing methods from the Hauraki Gulf Marine Park.  
The Alliance represents one more step towards the much bigger picture of implementing Rescue Fish, which takes a holistic approach to fisheries management nationwide with the banning of inshore trawling and dredging one of the core Rescue Fish principles.

Sign our petition for more fish in the water at Rescuefish.co.nz