Representing Aotearoa at the UN Ocean Conference in France last month, marine scientist Veronica Rotman felt embarrassed by our lack of leadership and our inaction. Our ocean is in an accelerating state of decline, and we must do better.
Representing Aotearoa at the UN Ocean Conference was a highlight of my career as a young marine scientist. But reflecting on my time connecting with scientists and leaders from around the world, I feel a sense of lingering unease.
I have always been tremendously proud to be a Kiwi. I deeply love our culture and celebrate it at every opportunity. But this week I didn’t feel pride in our country. I felt embarrassed.
New Zealand isn’t just failing to act on restoring our ocean – recent decisions further remove protections in place, actively undoing progress made towards it.
Our government has abandoned plans to establish the significant Kermadec Rangitāhua Ocean Sanctuary, introduced legislation to fast track extractive proposals such as seabed mining, and repeatedly blocked international attempts to restrict bottom trawling on vulnerable deep sea ecosystems in the South Pacific.
Meanwhile, developing nations are making big, bold, ambitious commitments to revitalise our ocean and strengthen our collective futures.
During the United Nations Ocean Conference, I was honoured to be in the room when Ralph Regenvanu, Vanuatu’s climate change minister, announced a historical transboundary marine protected area between Solomon Islands and Vanuatu. French Polynesia committed ~1.1 million km² of its ocean to highly or fully protected marine protected areas. Chile pledged to protect over 50% of its exclusive economic zone (EEZ). Ghana declared a full ban of bottom trawling across its entire territorial sea.
With minimal resources, they are still taking the most courageous action. Our Pacific neighbours understand that the health of the ocean is the same as the health of the people, that by caring for our oceans we are caring for ourselves. The ocean is not something we protect from a distance, but something we are inextricably part of.
This is leadership in action – grounded in courage, collaboration and care.
New Zealand, on the other hand… Well, just 0.4% of our EEZ is highly protected – that is, fully no-take. We are still the only country in the South Pacific bottom trawling for orange roughy in international waters, and we use bottom trawling to catch 70% of all commercial fish – including species such as tarakihi, snapper and hoki. This practice was recently highlighted in David Attenborough’s film Ocean, and involves dragging a heavy weighted net across the seafloor – destroying seafloor habitat, releasing carbon, causing bycatch and undermining local food security.
New Zealand still has some of the highest seabird bycatch in the world. We have fish and shellfish stocks that are on the brink of collapse, and our government has proposed to cap Māori customary marine rights from 100% of the coast to 5%, favouring commercial fishing interests and weakening indigenous ocean governance over ancestral marine areas.
We have also not joined the 50 global leaders in ratifying the High Seas Treaty, which would help protect marine life in the high seas outside of any country’s national jurisdiction – an area that currently has no rules or regulations. Essentially the wet wild west.
Finally, in reference to his ambition to reopen oil and gas exploration in Aotearoa, Shane Jones, New Zealand’s minister for oceans and fisheries, last month turned up to a parliamentary scrutiny session wearing a cap that read “Make NZ great again, drill baby drill”. I wish I was kidding.
I was on the world stage, representing my country that I love, but I was embarrassed by our lack of leadership and our inaction. Our ocean is in an accelerating state of decline, and our politicians are shown up (spectacularly) by their peers in the Global South. I am yet to speak to a scientist colleague who is satisfied with the status quo of marine environmental management in Aotearoa.
At the UN Ocean Conference, I witnessed New Zealand get called out twice. Once for the country’s inaction by Peter Thomson, the UN secretary general’s special envoy for the ocean, and secondly by Vanuatu’s Ralph Regenvanu for our bottom-trawling practices.
This is shameful. We have to do better.
As both a marine scientist and spearfisher, I experience the ocean’s vulnerability and resilience firsthand. This is not anti-fishing rhetoric. We all love the ocean, and want it to flourish. But our actions must match our words.
To start, our government must urgently prioritise marine protection by meeting its commitment to reach 30×30 marine protection, ratifying the High Seas Treaty now, restricting bottom trawling and supporting just transitions, upholding te Tiriti o Waitangi principles and honouring indigenous ocean knowledge and leadership, carrying out a commission of inquiry into the QMS and the monopolised quota ownership, and replacing our current regime with a transition to a more holistic ecosystem-based management approach.
In an immunity booster shot of good news, New Zealand did pledge US$52 million to support ocean governance in Pacific Island Countries and contributed to the Global Fund for Coral Reefs. These are welcome commitments, but what we need is bold action in our own country that sets the bar high and dares others to follow.
As I said in one of my speeches at the UN Ocean Conference, “When we allow deep-sea mining, plastic pollution and overfishing, we are robbing future generations of choices, livelihoods, opportunities and food security. We are eroding their resilience and we are burdening our descendants with the cost of our convenience.”
This is unacceptable. Ocean policy should outlast politics. The ocean should be considered in 100-year management plans and guided by intergenerational equity audits that assess the long-term impacts of marine policy and extractive approvals.
I am sick of ocean action rising and falling with political tides. This is not about politics, this is about doing right by those who come after us. This is about their survival.
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