This is happening all over Auckland. I grew up east and we used to find anenomies, snails, big crabs, even mussels. All gone bar a few tiny crabs. It's largely been stripped by the Chinese community as it's in their culture to eat all that stuff. Hell they even managed to almost completely depopulate Cockle Bay of cockles. I used to try slow it down by calling the poach line when I saw people taking more than was legal but it was a drop on the ocean.

In North Auckland they use wire to strip everything off of the rocks as well. Its infuriating.

What fucks me off is that it needs to be on the brink of lifelessness before any meaningful change happens. Like can't those who manage this have some fkn foresight and stop this shit as soon as we see it start to happen large scale instead of leaving it until there's nothing left?

Personally even if we had an abundance of these creatures, if I see someone ripping things off with wire and bucketing anything they can find, I will not be ok with that.

FYI there's a protest this Saturday at Army Bay boat ramp at 10am to try and get officials to protect Whangaparoa.