In the early days growing up as a kid in Otaki it was not uncommon to be able to go to the beach and cast your line out into a hole and regularly catch snapper.
As the years went by the trawlers constantly hammered this coastline to a point where the snapper have not, did not or simply could not return to the inshore waters.
I cannot remember any body catching snapper off a surf caster over the past 25 odd years to my knowledge.
With the advent of a marine reserve and the definite slow down in trawlers this coast line has slowly recovered to a point where snapper can constantly be caught over the summer periods, between 10- 20 meters of water and I am sure if we were to target snapper from the beach again we could lure them on to surf casters.
Having just had our best summer in my memory from the boat it was disappointing to suddenly see one day while out fishing five trawlers making runs up and down this coast line for a solid period of 2 weeks and wouldn�t you know it, when they left the snapper had basically dried up. 
My question is how close to land can these trawlers run, who do you call if this limit is being abused and is there any particular forum for registering complaints should you have one.

I don�t want to sound like a moaner, but I sure as hell don�t want to have to wait another 25 years should this be excessive and allowed to carry on.  I am an open minded bloke so any comment greatly received.

I'm afraid I only have a negative answer to this problem -

On the Kaipara we saw two trawlers enter the heads, turn off all lights, trawl (we could just make out what they were up to) for a while, then light up and scarper. We did the right thing and phoned the MAF number we had with us and were asked to give a triangulation of bearings to pinpoint these boats.

I informed the very helpful person that we were sitting on shore and couldn't have moved to give them x3 different sightings and didn't carry a compass anyway! That was the end of the exercise. No video tape was not enough even showing our position on a handheld GPS.

We haven't called them again!

Ross

So is there any chance of a "name and shame" on these guys?  I'm not sure this would do any good and would they care but maybe if persistent offenders are spotted then MAF would have to act.  Either that or go to the docks and chuck dog sh*t all over the wheel house.  (sorry about that last bit but some fishermen can be the most ignorant bastards and it gives everyone a bad name)

Gordon