An exploding population of wild kina in some areas of Aotearoa-New Zealand’s kelp forests is turning the seabed barren, creating an imbalance in the ecosystem. But a project led by iwi and scientists aims to tip the balance back and create new economic opportunities.
Ngāti Porou Seafoods Group is working in collaboration with EnviroStrat, and international aquaculture company Urchinomics, on 'Kinanomics' - a project that’s exploring the viability of enhancing malnourished wild kina from impacted areas to produce kina roe for commercial markets.
Ken Houkamau, chief executive of Iwi Collective Partnership, an iwi fisheries group that includes Ngāti Porou Seafoods, said people might find it hard to grasp that an abundance of kina can be a bad thing.
“In any other sense you'd think having heaps of kina is a good thing for our whānau but it becomes destructive.
"It starts out competing with everything else and causing major issues throughout the marine ecosystem, and ultimately... the roe that we love, the tongues that we love don’t exist within the kina, which means our whānau don’t go and target it."
EnviroStrat environmental scientist Johnny Wright said the overpopulation of the herbivorous kina can be linked to fisheries.
“In some areas where we’ve fished the environment relatively heavily, we’ve removed a lot of the top predators that have kina as a prey species, and because of that those kina populations have exploded.”
He said the goal of the project is to address the environmental issue by creating a new aquaculture venture and establishing a new export industry.
“Currently there’s no real incentive to remove barren urchins from the wild. They’re very skinny, there’s no roe there, so there’s no commercial return there for wild-caught fisheries, so they’re largely ignored.
“Through enhancement, there is an incentive now to remove those barren urchins, and that’s really important because without that incentive they’ll stay there and they’ll persist and they’ll maintain those barrens and the bare rock, there’s very little value in that compared to a healthy kelp forest," Wright said.
Kinanomics and iwi expertise
The pilot project looks to harvest malnourished kina from the barren zones by feeding them a specialised kelp-based diet in a land-based aquaculture system before harvesting the roe.
Kina roe is highly sought after in East Asian markets and the delicacy is recognised as a traditional Māori kai.
“Kina has a long history with Māori,” said Wright.
“It’s a taonga species and iwi Māori are incredibly knowledgeable of the species and have been harvesting it for kai for long periods of time.”
That knowledge, or mātauranga Māori, comes in the form of working with iwi and hapū to identify problem areas.
“That’s always the balance right for us as custodians of iwi commercial interests, is getting that balance right between mātauranga Māori and Western science, and they do play hand-in-hand,” Houkamau said.
“You talk to any of our kaitiaki, they’ll tell you what’s going on in the moana before some western indicators, or western science indicators tell you. So... mātauranga is being utilised within that kaupapa, and hopefully, as an outcome, we all benefit, and that’s what we want.”
Ngāti Porou Seafoods’ are experts in the industry, particularly when it comes to managing export supply chains. Wright says leaning into their capability “to get our product into market is really important for us too.
“So ensuring that we have good collaborations with iwi Māori ensures that we can kind of capture their perspective throughout the project and we’re doing it in a way that suits kind of broader New Zealand.”
In his relatively new role as chief executive of the Iwi Collective Partnership, Houkamau's goal is to share the benefits of the project with other iwi.
“This kaupapa certainly has impact across the motu... so I'm hoping, as the outcomes of this project come out, there's opportunities for the Iwi Collective Partnership to be involved because we want to add value, and I certainly think this will.”
By Mariana Whareaitu
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