Jamie Newell, diving off South Taranaki, says large areas of one of New Zealand's most important fisheries could be wiped out by seabed mining. Photo: Supplied
The commodore of the Wanganui-Manawatu Sea Fishing Club is raising the alarm over a seabed mining project he never believed would happen.
"With it being turned down by the Supreme Court and there being a court-ordered environmental hearing, I never, ever thought it would get to this point," Jamie Newell told Local Democracy Reporting.
The Whanganui diver, fisherman and business owner said large areas of one of New Zealand's most important fisheries could be wiped out by an Australian miner's desire to mine minerals off the South Taranaki coast.
Trans Tasman Resources (TTR) wants to extract up to 50 million tonnes a year of seabed material a year. It would recover an estimated 5 million tonnes of vanadium-rich titanomagnetite concentrate and then dump unwanted sediment back into the sea.
TTR withdrew from an environmental hearing to apply for marine consents via the coalition government's new fast-track approvals regime.
Newell, who manages family-run fishing and outdoors business Marine Services Whanganui, said low reefs in the South Taranaki Bight would be smothered by the dumping of 45 million tonnes a year of "dredge tailings" for 20 years.
Recreational fishers and local businesses could be left reeling for decades, he said.
"That's extremely concerning. I'm extremely worried for what that sediment would do to our marine environment and how dramatically it could change recreational fishing off there."
Newell said he feared the impact of silt pollution on precious reef life.
"I was brought up diving the coastline and my father dived it as well. I've done a lot of exploratory diving out to 45m. I've seen personally how clear it is out there - and I'm worried.
"We have some very diverse ecosystems off this coastline - some of the most scenic you could ever hope to see. The reef life is some of the best in the world.
"It's a very unreal place, one of the only places we have like this in the whole of the North Island.
"You can be out there with 60 to 100 kingis swimming around you, being inquisitive. No movie could ever replicate that."
Wanganui-Manawatu Sea Fishing Club commodore Jamie Newell. Photo: Supplied
Over the past six or seven years, Newell has mapped many of the reefs he's dived using new marine electronics.
"The detail we can see now is far beyond what we've been able to see before. You can know every rock and gully and face on those reefs."
Pumping 90% of the extracted materials back into the ocean would result in a huge volume of displaced sediment, he said.
"Niwa and TTR have done research around and inland of that area, but I've yet to see any research on the reefs downcurrent of there - the ones that will be affected.
"Most of the tailings will follow the east to west currents and flow back to Whanganui.
"TTR knows there will be problems in those areas, so they've left that research undone."
TTR proposes mining from waters 20m to 50m deep, between 22km and 36km offshore.
While inner reefs were quite tall, with faces 5m to 15m high, and would not be as affected by the dredging, some deeper reefs were low and flat, lying only about a metre and a half high.
"It won't take much at all to cover them."
Ocean contours dropped off into a hole about 30-40m lower than the dredging zone, he said.
"That's one of our main reef structure areas. The silt's going to settle on that area between the mining zone and the back of Graham Bank, and it will hit all the reefs there."
Jamie Newell and partner Melissa Churchouse. Newell says dredging tailings will wipe out a swathe of the area's reef fisheries. Photo: Supplied
Newell said from a depth of around 30m, wave action did not disturb the seabed.
"Pumping silt back onto it will silt up reefs that don't naturally get silt on them."
Niwa had reported that tailings dumped into water 35-70m deep would move up to 20km from the mining site and Newell feared the sediment would cover a swathe of low-lying reef structure.
"Reef life will lose its habitat. The tailings are going to wipe out a large part of our reef fisheries, the likes of our blue cod, terakihi and hāpuka. It's where 90 percent of our terakihi get caught.
"Our numbers of snapper and crayfish and kingis are recovering and growing faster than ever. We have an exceptional recreational crayfishery here. What's this going to do to them?"
Newell has been with the sea fishing club in Whanganui for more than 10 years.
"At no point has TTR engaged with us. We have more than 250 members, all fishing in that area. We would be the largest recreational user of the fishing grounds east of the seabed mining zone.
"They've never talked to us. As part of a consent process, I would have thought that would have been part of what you'd need to do."
Newell said smothering reef fisheries would affect his and other businesses.
"If people can't go out to catch a feed of fish as easily, they're going to stop trying. We'll lose customers if the habitats are no longer there, and there will be flow-on effects for other businesses.
"We've been a family business for 34 years. We employ 22 staff - that's 22 families that rely on our business."
Newell has raised his concerns with Whanganui MP Carl Bates. He called a fishing club meeting on Thursday to discuss the issue and spoke with Infrastructure Minister Chris Bishop during the Minister's visit to Whanganui on Friday. Bishop is one of the ministers overseeing the Fast-track Approvals regime.
LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air
