Four times since it was set up, the Hauraki Gulf Forum has sounded the alarm over the declining health of the gulf’s waters and the species it supports.
With its fifth report, the forum appears to have tired of banging its head against a brick wall.
The 2017 State of the Gulf Report released last Friday doesn’t evade the continuing depressing trends: snapper and crayfish stocks reduced by an estimated 70 to 80 percent in less than a century; a newly discovered scallop bed destroyed by commercial fishers; “serious concerns” about the survival of four seabird species that breed in the gulf; half of monitored swimming sites regularly exceeding safe levels for faecal contamination after rain (including on Waiheke); sediment and nutrient loadings changing ecology in the Firth of Thames; climate change increasing the threat of invasive species … it’s a sea of woe. • Geoff Cummings
Full story in this weeks Gulf News… Out Now!!!
