ACT has released a fisheries policy that would put a nationwide daily limit of 10 on shellfish gathering and permanently end scallop dredging in the North Island fisheries that are currently shut. The policy was published on Sunday, two days before the recreational scallop season opens on 1 September in northern waters.
The party’s conservation spokesperson, Cameron Luxton, set out a six-part plan in a press release titled “Plenty is possible”. The daily limit of 10 would apply to shellfish and other covered species that do not already have their own individual daily limit, which leaves existing limits for species such as pipi and cockles untouched while catching the ones that currently have no cap at all.
“ACT will address overharvesting of shellfish and other marine life, and stripping of rock pools,” the release says. “This allows people who collect modest amounts for themselves to carry on, while preventing a small number of people from stripping an area.”
The rest of the plan is aimed further offshore. ACT would create a distinct fisheries management area with the same boundaries as the Hauraki Gulf Marine Park, on the argument that gulf stocks are currently managed inside much larger areas that can hide local depletion. It would require Fisheries New Zealand to put a number on the economic and environmental cost of high-impact fishing methods and rebalance existing levies so they are proportionate to the damage done, without lifting the total take. It would increase and stagger infringement fees. And it would shift the target for important fisheries away from maximum sustainable yield towards higher stocks and what the release calls “greater abundance”.
“A healthy marine environment is the foundation of a successful fishing industry,” Luxton says in the release. “ACT’s approach is to protect the resource while preserving the freedom to use it. That means rebuilding fisheries where they are depleted, protecting vulnerable habitats from genuine damage, and replacing blunt restrictions with rules focused on actual risks.”
He finishes with a line unlikely to appear in a Fisheries New Zealand discussion document. “We live in a bloody paradise and we need to look after it.”
The scallop element is the sharpest part of the package, because those fisheries have been closed for years. The Northland scallop fishery, known as SCA 1, was shut to scallop fishing in 2022. Most of the Coromandel and Hauraki Gulf fishery, SCA CS, has been closed since a series of decisions beginning in 2021. ACT’s position is that if the beds do recover, dredges should not simply go back over the seafloor. “Scallop dredging is the most destructive harvesting method available in New Zealand,” the release says. “If scallop populations eventually recover, there is no reason to automatically return to dragging dredges across the ocean floor when more selective harvesting methods are available or can be developed.”
That question is live right now. Six days before ACT put out its policy, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones opened a public consultation on whether to reopen part of Whangārei Harbour to recreational scallop gathering after a four-year closure. One of the three options on the table is a limited season this spring or summer, supported by a prohibition on dredging. Submissions close at 5pm on 18 September.
“The new survey information confirms some scallop beds in parts of the harbour have good numbers of scallops that could sustainably support limited recreational harvest, so now is a good time to get the community’s views on next steps,” Jones said.
What makes ACT’s announcement more than a routine policy drop is that Jones and Luxton sit in the same government and have already had a public disagreement about exactly this. In June, Jones shelved his own Fisheries Amendment Bill, asking the select committee to extend its deadline so the legislation would not be progressed until after the election. He told a scrutiny week hearing that the bill could use some more “panel beating”, and that there had not been much harmony about it across Parliament or the industry.
At that same hearing Luxton asked Jones how he engaged with recreational fishers, noting he was one himself. Jones replied that Luxton misrepresented them. “You belong to a property rights party, but you seem to have declared war on property rights,” Jones said. Luxton called that a “discourteous mischaracterisation” of his position.
ACT’s answer, three months on, is a policy that leans hard on property rights language. The Hauraki Gulf management area is framed as a way to rebuild stocks “while preserving existing quota holders’ proportional property rights”, and the levy change is explicitly designed not to increase the amount collected. It is an attempt to argue that abundance and quota rights are the same project rather than opposing ones.
Labour has taken a different line on the shelved bill. Oceans and Fisheries spokesperson Rachel Boyack said in June it should be dropped entirely. “There’s so much opposition to the bill that we think it needs to be completely pulled, and if anything, if there’s to be any reform in this area, it needs to start again from scratch.”
Industry was unhappy with the delay. Seafood New Zealand chief executive Lisa Futschek said she was disappointed, and that the bill was about bringing fisheries management into the modern era. “Some genuinely worthwhile reforms have been lost in the noise,” she said.
The backdrop to all of this is the Hauraki Gulf Tīkapa Moana Marine Protection Act, which came into effect on 25 October 2025 and created 19 new protection areas in the gulf, lifting the protected share from 0.3 per cent to 5.9 per cent. ACT’s proposal is a different instrument. A fisheries management area does not close anything to fishing. It changes the map on which catch limits are set, so a stock that is thin in the gulf can be managed as a gulf stock rather than averaged out across a much bigger area.
Whether any of it happens depends on the result on 7 November and on what a coalition agreement looks like afterwards. Fisheries reform has now been parked once by a minister who wanted it, and revived as an election policy by a partner who did not get what he wanted from it. If you want to see where the parties line up on this and other issues before you vote, our voting tool lets you compare their positions side by side.
Do you gather shellfish or fish recreationally, and would a nationwide limit of 10 change what you bring home? Have your say 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 🙂
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