The Hauraki Gulf is over-fished, over-polluted and is, basically, stuffed. Its beaches are increasingly polluted, snapper en masse are starving and in more and more are cases are becoming inedible [due to] microplastics, wastewater – not just from the land but from cruise ships – and hulls of container ships and floating debris are bringing in alien fish species and weed is choking the marine life off the west of the Great Barrier. Crayfish are all but gone.
In short, the Hauraki Gulf within decades will resemble the Dead Sea.
And there is a solution. The current marine reserve is a pitiful 0.3 per cent. Leading experts say for the Gulf and marine life to have any hope of survival, marine reserves will have to at the very least cover 30 per cent of it.
Does [Auckland mayor] Wayne Brown, any politician or Aucklanders for that matter care?
I doubt it and that they even tolerate the infinitely futile miniscule 0.3 per cent of the Gulf as a marine reserve is testimony to just that.
Gary Hollis, Mellons Bay
