One of the most familiar fish in a New Zealand takeaway is in far deeper trouble than most people had realised. New scientific modelling released by Fisheries New Zealand shows the tarakihi stock along the country’s east coast has fallen to about 7.7 percent of the population that existed before commercial fishing began, sitting only just above the 10 percent mark at which a fishery is formally treated as collapsed and at risk of never coming back.
Tarakihi is a staple of the fish and chip shop and one of the country’s most heavily caught inshore species. It is New Zealand’s third most valuable inshore finfish fishery, and almost all of the commercial catch, about 95 percent, is eaten here rather than exported. That makes the latest numbers a domestic problem as much as an environmental one.
The east coast stock, which runs down the coastline from East Cape to the top of the South Island and through the Marlborough Sounds, has been in decline since the 1940s and has been overfished for roughly six decades. The separate western stock, off the west of both main islands, is in better shape at around 29 percent of its original size, but its slide has sharpened since about 2017 and it is now heading in the same direction.
The Environmental Defence Society, which has been pushing for stronger action on inshore fisheries, described the assessment as a failure of the system meant to protect the fish. “The state of our tarakihi stocks is shocking,” the society’s policy director Raewyn Peart told RNZ. “After 40 years of what we’ve repeatedly been told is a world-class fisheries management system, New Zealand’s third most valuable inshore finfish fishery is on the brink.”
In a statement released on 2 July, Peart went further, warning that time was running short. “If these measures aren’t implemented quickly, we will be facing extinction,” she said. The society points to chronic underinvestment in fisheries science and to catch limits that were left largely untouched for years while the stock kept dropping. The last change to the western tarakihi catch limit, it notes, was made back in 1986.
The fish itself does not help its own cause. Tarakihi can be legally taken at 25 centimetres, but they do not reach breeding size until they are between 33 and 37 centimetres. That means many of the fish caught and sold have never had the chance to spawn, a mismatch that makes it harder for a depleted population to rebuild.
Fisheries New Zealand is now consulting on sizeable cuts to how much tarakihi can be taken. The proposals put reductions to the east coast commercial limit at anywhere from 39 to 78 percent, and on the west coast from 55 to as much as 84 percent, alongside possible measures to protect young fish before they reach maturity. Submissions from the public close on 24 July 2026.
The agency has been careful not to lay the blame on fishing alone. Its fisheries management director Emma Taylor said the numbers of young fish coming through had been unusually low, and that the reasons were not fully understood. “This low recruitment has coincided with warmer sea temperatures and scientists are unsure whether this is a short-term issue that may improve as fishing pressure is reduced or part of a long-term decline linked to a changing environment,” she said.
The seafood industry has made a similar argument. Seafood New Zealand’s general manager for inshore, Tiff Bock, put the decline down largely to environmental change and poor recruitment, and noted that tarakihi has already been under a formal rebuilding plan for eight years. Marine heatwaves have become more frequent in New Zealand waters since around 2012, with a severe event in 2017 that lines up with the sharper fall in the western stock.
The Environmental Defence Society does not accept that warming water is the main story. Its case is that the eastern stock was being fished down long before marine heatwaves became a regular feature, and that the management system had six decades to correct course and did not. A peer review of the eastern tarakihi model failed in 2022, which the society says left decision makers working with weaker information than they should have had.
For anyone standing at a fish and chip counter, the practical question is what happens next. Tarakihi is not about to vanish from menus overnight, and the proposed cuts are aimed at pulling the stock back rather than closing the fishery. But the modelling makes clear that the east coast fishery in particular has very little room left, and that the decisions made over the next few months will shape whether one of the country’s most everyday fish recovers or slips into the small group of stocks considered functionally collapsed.
Fisheries New Zealand’s consultation documents and the full stock assessment are available on the Ministry for Primary Industries website, and submissions remain open until 24 July.
What do you think should happen to tarakihi catch limits? Have you noticed the fish getting harder to find or more expensive at your local shop? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job π
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