Allan Anderson

1. EXPERIENCE IN AOTEAROA/NZ COASTAL ENVIRONMENTS

CRAWFORD: Ok, thanks Allan. Let’s start with your general history, with a focus on experience in and around New Zealand coastal waters. 

ANDERSON: I was born 1963 in Dunedin, and moved to Karitane here when I was four years old, because my father was going fishing. But unfortunately, he had an accident and his fishing career was pretty short. We lost him when I was five. We remained living here. And then I started on the weekends - started going out on the boats as a kid about seven years old. And yeah, pretty much started working full time on boats when I was 14; I left school at 14 and went fishing, mainly at Karitane. Fished out of Karitane for a few years, and the guys I was fishing with told me to ‘piss off’ basically. “Go and do some other things other places.” So, I went and did a nautical studies program in 1979, 1980 in Nelson. When I was there, I got the opportunity to go on lots of different fishing vessels and fished different places all around New Zealand as part of the program. It was a six-month course. So that was quite interesting. Different boats, different fisheries. And then I came back from that, and went fishing for a long bit with the same boat out of Karitane, and then he told me to piss off again and I went and fished out of Bluff. Then I went deep water and fished deep water. And then I came back and fished for him again. Fished another 13 years. And then I bought my own boat after that, and started fishing my own boats. And I’ve been fishing my own boats ever since. So, pretty much the only thing I’ve ever done is fishing. Nothing else. 

CRAWFORD: Let’s go back to you as a young guy. When did you first start spending a significant amount of time on the water? Even if it was before fishing?

ANDERSON: It was the first day I discovered it. I’d been living here in the house - but my mum kept me away, kept us kids away, from the water because we were only about five or six years old. Didn’t even know the water existed there. I’d lived just down the road here, and I watched these kids walk that way, and all we would do is go to the shop and that was it. And then the first time she took us down to the beach and we climbed underneath the wharf, and caught crabs, and all the rest of it - that was it. So, that was pretty young and then I started.

CRAWFORD: Roughly what? Five years old?

ANDERSON: Yeah, I was going to school - five or six. And the very next day, after we’d gone to the water, we took the day off school. Took a big cup down there, and filled it up with crabs, and dragged it down to the school about 2 o’clock in the afternoon. Show and tell, so that was my first day. Really, we just mucked around in it because it was so close.

CRAWFORD: A daily thing almost?

ANDERSON: It was. Well, as we grew up, because we lost dad and that, we were pretty poor. Four kids - so the estuary and the river became our food basket. That’s how we regularly got fish and ate it. We were there all the time, doing that and hanging round the wharf with all the fishing boats coming in - we took rides on the boats up to the mornings and stuff like that, when we were kids. And we started going fishing on them in the weekends. By about the age of seven, I was going pretty much most weekends on the boat, and spent most of my holidays on the boats.

CRAWFORD: Specifically fishing boats?

ANDERSON: Yep. The small fishing boats out of Karitane, here. Catching Crayfish and Blue Cod and setnetting and all sorts of things. 

CRAWFORD: 20 footers?

ANDERSON: Yeah, not big boats. Up to about 25 footers, 30 footers. 

CRAWFORD: That’s an important thing you said - that you depended on what was coming out of the ocean.

ANDERSON: Well yeah, we did. We ate a lot of Pāua and Flounder from out of the river. But it was very easy to get a feed. The local Māori at the time, they’d go on about the Pāuas, but all the Māori I knew that were Pāuaing down here, they only ate the Yellow Foot Pauas. They used to say, “You white boys eat the Black Foot ones.” And there was plenty of them, so there was never a problem. 

CRAWFORD: At what point in time did you start commercially harvesting?

ANDERSON: Personally, me myself? I think in 1977, I’ve got records for having a commercial row-boat. I registered a row-boat. I was 14 or something like that. I was at school. We used to go out paddle crabbing out here in the bay with pots. Catch crab and Yellow-Eye Mullet. We used to catch a lot of Yellow-Eye Mullet. And setnetting for other species like Moki.

CRAWFORD: Crab potting and setnetting?

ANDERSON: Yeah, so we did that at school. And eeling. A lot of eeling. And Pāua diving. This is how we got all the pocket money.

CRAWFORD: Paua diving?

ANDERSON: Just snorkel. 

CRAWFORD: Free-diving?

ANDERSON: Yeah free-diving. 

CRAWFORD: Was that from 18 years old, or so?

ANDERSON: Before that. We’re doing all that before we even had cars and things. 

CRAWFORD: And that was all Karitane?

ANDERSON: Yeah, Karitane and Waikouaiti.

CRAWFORD: When did you start moving out further down the coast or offshore?

ANDERSON: 1979, the start of that year. I went to Nelson in 1979 and took on this fishing cadet course. I was only about 16 or something like that at the time - 15 or 16. And that was the first time I went away from home.

CRAWFORD: Was that for the summer? You went up there?

ANDERSON: Yes. I was up there for just over six months doing this course. And you would spend half the time at sea, and the other half in the classroom. You would have a block where you go away for two weeks, and then you would come back to the classroom for two weeks. And each time you went away on a boat, they would try and make it a different type of fishery - so you were experiencing different types of fisheries. In that particular time, I did everything from over the West Coast here, went trawling for Hoki down here. And on that particular Hoki trip we caught 43 Bluefin Tuna off the back of the night when we were laid up. And that was a pretty big haul at the time. We didn’t know how to handle it, so we didn’t get paid much. 

CRAWFORD: Were you sailing out of Greymouth? 

ANDERSON: No, we came out of Nelson. We were fishing down here for the Hoki. That was all a foreign fishing fleet. Another trip we went purse seining. We went [purse seining] for Kahawai and Mackerel and stuff. All around through this area here Cook Strait area and Castlepoint. And then another trip we did, we went trawling down off Banks Peninsula here for, it was mainly Barracouta and bits and pieces on an old fishing boat called the Boston Sea Fire.  And then I did another trip on the Boston Sea Fire, it was rigged up for Squid fishing. And it was a government project for research, and we fished several nights all the way down here, and we went right down to the Auckland Islands. Fished down there.

CRAWFORD: This was all in one six-month period?

ANDERSON: Yeah, yeah. 

CRAWFORD: I mean, it’s in half of that because you were doing half in class, and then doing all of this fishing for the next three months.

ANDERSON: Yeah, yeah.  And then I went on a boat called the Whitby, Hoki fishing down the West Coast here. It was quite a big boat.

CRAWFORD: When you were purse seining, what were you fishing for?

ANDERSON: Well, the little boat I went on was the Perimai, and that just chased Kahawai and Mackerel, basically. And then the Western Pacific I went on, we never actually had a shot, we never got to shoot the gear at all, but it would chase the Tuna. It was a bigger boat, a lot bigger.

CRAWFORD: So, purse seining for Tuna offshore?

ANDERSON: Yeah, but we never got out of that small area there. It was just a short little trip.

CRAWFORD: After the course, did you go someplace else or did you come back to Karitane?

ANDERSON: Came back to Karitane. 

CRAWFORD: And then you were full-time fishing?

ANDERSON: Yeah. I wasn’t full-time prior to that, because I left school. I’d done a little bit for maybe a year fishing and then the fishing company and the boss of the boat, they sent me away to do the course - paid for it and everything.

CRAWFORD: Just to make sure that you knew something about what you were getting into?

ANDERSON: Yeah, yeah. So, I went away and did that course and came back and I fished on that same boat for … it must have been until 1982 it was. Until the middle of 82. And then I left again and went down to do a relieving trip on a boat. 

CRAWFORD: When you came back to fish out of Karitane, what was the name of the boat that you were on?

ANDERSON: Lady Ann.

CRAWFORD: And what type of fishing were you doing off that boat?

ANDERSON Crayfishing and trawling, setnetting, longlining.

CRAWFORD: The works?

ANDERSON: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: In what region then?

ANDERSON: Oh, just out of Dunedin. Just out off here. Local.

CRAWFORD: Between here and Otago Peninsula?

ANDERSON: Well, more sort of this way North. Yeah. Just Karitane. We never really went any more than sort of 20 nautical miles from port. 

CRAWFORD: And then what?

ANDERSON: I had a friend that was on a boat in Bluff. And they were short of crew so he rings up and I go “Yeah, I’ll come down.” So I went down and did a trip out of Bluff, round the backside of Stewart Island. Trawling.

CRAWFORD: Trawling for what?

ANDERSON: Mainly Stargazer. Or Boofs. The guy I worked with, he was like trawling these big canyons down there, and he was like the first guy ever to get in there and do it. He was a bit of a legend in himself. 

CRAWFORD: Who was that?

ANDERSON: Allan Dunford. On a boat called the Pania. And he was a very, very clever guy, because there was no GPS’s and stuff and it was towing pinnacles.

CRAWFORD: Was this 1984, 1985?

ANDERSON: No, this is 82, 83. So we were fishing down there on that boat the Pania, and then the guy - the owner of the Lady Ann - he says “Oh you know, there’s not much going on here. If there’s a job, stay there and keep doing that for a bit,” you know? So, I stayed there on a vessel, and worked out of Bluff for about six months, eight months out of there, and then the boat left Bluff and it fished up the East Coast of New Zealand here, and then we went right round to the West Coast and we Tuna fished around there. 

CRAWFORD: You stayed on the boat, fishing the whole way?

ANDERSON: Pretty much, yeah. I was living in Dunedin at the time, travelling to Bluff. Doing each trip, we’d go out for five or six days. Come home for a few days, go. But then when we left Bluff, we’d pretty much stay on the boat the whole entire time. Went right round the West coast and fished round there for Tuna. 

CRAWFORD: This is prior to the quotas coming in?

ANDERSON: Yes. 

CRAWFORD: Because quotas obviously make a difference to …

ANDERSON: Well, all the boats are very flexible with what they fish. Basically, if one fish is not performing, you would go and do another fishery. 

CRAWFORD: In terms of moving from one region to the next, quota management, as I understood it, was associated with a particular region too, right?

ANDERSON: As well. 

CRAWFORD: And you guys fished all the way from Southland all the way up right through the Cook Strait, and then over here [West Coast]?

ANDERSON: Yeah, we trawled everywhere. We had 600 case shots of Red Cod off here, off Akaroa. We had shots at Snapper and that in the Tasman Bay here. We did trawl on the West Coast. Yeah, we trawled all the way down here as well. But the main reason we were there was not to trawl, but to catch Tuna. So it was trolling off lures. 

CRAWFORD: Trolling as opposed trawling?

ANDERSON: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Alright. When you were out of Bluff, was it mostly on the West side of Stewart Island, or all around? 

ANDERSON: Mainly the West side. But a little bit off Ruapuke [Island] and around there at times. 

CRAWFORD: Was there anyone living on Ruapuke at the time?

ANDERSON: Yes. I think they were a family of [Waitiri’s]. We actually had one guy, they called him the Screaming Skull.

CRAWFORD: The Screaming Skull?

ANDERSON: Yeah. 

CRAWFORD: That was the name of a boat?

ANDERSON: No, that was the guy. The Screaming Skull. And he came on our boat - he was a Māori fella, and he was a Muttonbirder, and he was local. And he took us on the boat. He came on our boat one time, and we took all the Muttonbirders down to the islands and things. And the boat did that every year. The year I was on it, they took them all down there, and he navigated the boat for us because he knew all the rocks.

CRAWFORD: That’s an important part of your experience too, because even though you’re not fishing, you’re taking other people … your boat’s taking other people to the Titi Islands or the Muttonbird Islands. There are the Titi Islands on the North end and there are the Titi Islands on the South end?

ANDERSON: Yeah, we were on the South. We took them all round the South. The South Cape, Port William.

CRAWFORD: That’s important too, because you’re out there doing something different in different waters, for different reasons.

ANDERSON: Yeah. I was fortunate because of the Muttonbirders, we used to take the mail to them all the time. So, I actually got to go on the some of the islands and that. Row ashore where a lot of supposedly white people weren’t allowed to be - on these islands, you know? 

CRAWFORD: But you were the mailman?

ANDERSON: Yeah. Often took mail and other supplies that we would take, because we were fishing down that way. And also, we got to dive all around Stewart Island. Heaps all round this East Coast.

CRAWFORD: Dive as in Pāua diving?

ANDERSON: No, just pleasure diving. 

CRAWFORD: Scubadiving?

ANDERSON: No, just snorkelling. 

CRAWFORD: Recreational?

ANDERSON: Recreational, yeah. 

CRAWFORD: Was that at the same time, roughly? 

ANDERSON: Well, sometimes we were parked there for a day or so, you know? So, any spare time we got, we jumped in the water. Other times we would be holed in places like Easy Harbour, or anchored in places like that, while there was stuff going on. Any chance I had, I’d put my wetsuit on and dived in the water, you know? 

CRAWFORD: Alright so, that’s when you’re working down south - then what?

ANDERSON: So that was on the Pania. Then we went fishing, Tuna fishing, over on the West Coast here. There were two boats, both of which were owned by Otakau Fisheries. One of the guys on the other boat, which is called the Marlene had to go home. So, it left a boat over there without a registered deckhand, and we had two registered deckhands on our boat. So, I jumped ship onto the Marlene. 

CRAWFORD: Then there’s a skipper and a registered deckhand on both boats?

ANDERSON: Yeah. So, I had to jump ship, move across to the other boat. They said “Well, when you go on it, this job's only available for the next three months, because things were changing.” I said “Yep, that’s all cool. I’ll just do three months here.” So I jumped on it, finished off the Tuna season, and then we worked our way back - trawled all sort of down along here.

CRAWFORD: Southern Fiordland?

ANDERSON: Yeah, Southern Fiordland, Big Bay and all those sorts of places. Trawled all the way down here. And then we trawled all through you know this side of Stewart Island. We trawled all the way through here, and back to Bluff. And then I got off the boat, and that was about the middle of 1983, and I got off the boat there. And then I came back to Port Chalmers, and I jumped on the Otago Buccaneer, which was a deep sea trawler that had just been bought from the UK. There were two of them, to start the deep water fishery in New Zealand, which was just sort of starting, pioneering at the time. It was for Orange Roughy. I jumped on that as a deckhand, because I had my deckhand certificate and stuff. And then we went away, and I worked six months on that boat. We fished for Orange Roughy in the Chathams. We did two trips here, where we caught Orange Roughy. 

CRAWFORD: And this was deepwater trawling?

ANDERSON: Yeah. Really, really deep.

CRAWFORD: Like how deep?

ANDERSON: 1000 metres plus.

CRAWFORD: This was just at the beginning of the deepwater trawling in New Zealand?

ANDERSON: Well, up at the very start. Right at the very start of it. There were plenty of foreigners doing it, but there were no serious Kiwi boats doing it at the time. We were the very first serious deepwater Kiwi boat. And I think they had only done two or three trips here. We were out for three weeks at a time, and we’d fill the boat up, 860 tonnes of processed fish. 

CRAWFORD: Onboard processing?

ANDERSON: Yeah. There was more fish there than you could process. Most of the time you just have one trawl for a couple of minutes, and you would have 30 to 50 tonne of Orange Roughy. And then sit around, process it, and then you’d have another trawl. And then you’d sit around, and process it - that’s how you would do it. The quickest they could fill up was three weeks. They couldn’t fill up any sooner, because they couldn’t process it any quicker. We did two trips to there, and then we ran out of quota. The next trip we went out to the Challenger Plateau, which is way out here somewhere. It’s probably off the map here; it's about 200 nautical miles northwest of here. 

CRAWFORD: Roughly when was this?

ANDERSON: 1983, 84. 

CRAWFORD: You did a lot of fishing, in a lot of different places, in a short period of time. 

ANDERSON: Yeah. We came back from that trip, filled up, went back to Dunedin. And then the next trip was a research trip for MPI [Ministry of Primary Industries]. We went all the way up through here, the Louisville Ridge. Looking for Orange Roughy. 

CRAWFORD: It was exploratory fishing?

ANDERSON: Yeah. We did that, then we went up the Ridge which runs all the way up to Tonga. So we fished pretty much. We didn’t get right up to Tonga, but we were in the Tropics. We were in pretty good weather where we were fishing. But that was a 90-day trip. And that did it. I was over deep-water fishing after 90 days. 

CRAWFORD: That was not for you?

ANDERSON: No. Not when you’re 21 years old, and got a girlfriend at home who’s giving Dear John bloody phone calls. So that was it, I come off.

CRAWFORD: When you came home, that was 1984? 

ANDERSON: Yeah. I come back home, back to the Lady Ann again. And then I stayed on the boat for 13 years.

CRAWFORD: As a deckhand?

ANDERSON: And skipper. 

CRAWFORD: You started out as a deckhand, and then you took over or when you came back - you took over?

ANDERSON: I pretty much took over when I came back. 

CRAWFORD: For how many years?

ANDERSON: 13 years. 

CRAWFORD: During which you fished out of Karitane, on the Lady Ann? 

ANDERSON: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: And what range now were you fishing?

ANDERSON: Oh, we used to go down a bit further south. We used to go down of Taieri Mouth a lot. Fished down there, and even went as far as the Nuggets on that boat - it was only a wee 40-footer. But, we definitely, after my experiences in other places, definitely broadened. Helped me to broaden where we fished. 

CRAWFORD: New places, new things?

ANDERSON: Yeah, we definitely changed things up. Prior to when I was away, the boat was mainly a crayfishing boat, and it would mainly do a bit of Blue Codding and setnetting over the seasons, you know?

CRAWFORD: Crayfishing as in pots?

ANDERSON: Yeah. We never really used to fish that hard in the Summer. When I came on the boat I fished it hard, started fishing it hard, went fishing all through the year, you know? Because there were no quotas, so you could go and catch what you want. Yeah, we started seriously fishing for a lot of other species.

CRAWFORD: South to the Nuggets? How far north?

ANDERSON: Oamaru was as far as we would go occasionally, you know? Trawling, potting for Blue Cod, deepwater potting for Ling, setnetting, longlining and crayfishing. We’d do all of them. 

CRAWFORD: Then what?

ANDERSON: Then I had an accident on the boat, quite a serious accident, and I thought my fishing career was finished. Because I was laid up for, I was in the hospital, for quite a long time. And yeah, it was 18 months before I went back on the boat after the accident.

CRAWFORD: There’s a before and after of the accident, obviously. That's a distinct break.

ANDERSON: It is. That’s when I stopped fishing on the Lady Ann. And then I decided at that stage that I would buy myself a boat. So I did, and I went fishing, but it still wasn’t right. So I went back to hospital and had another operation, and sort of laid up the boat for a while. And then I got back on it, and yeah - started fishing for myself. 

CRAWFORD: When was that - when you started again?

ANDERSON: In the 1990s. 

CRAWFORD: What was the name of the boat? 

ANDERSON: Tania.

CRAWFORD: And what were you were fishing?

ANDERSON: I was trawling, mainly just Karitane. 

CRAWFORD: Because it’s close to home?

ANDERSON: Yeah. 

CRAWFORD: And fishing for what?

ANDERSON: Soles. Gurnard, Tarakihi, Red Cod, Elephant Fish.

CRAWFORD: That was mid to late 90s. Trawling pretty much exclusively at this point?

ANDERSON: No, I was also crayfishing. And Blue Codding. 

CRAWFORD: How do you Crayfish? Traps or ...

ANDERSON: Yeah. 

CRAWFORD: Mid to late 90s - until when?

ANDERSON: Yeah, I can’t really remember. My wife can probably remember. I must have had that boat about six or seven years, I suppose. And then we bought a fish shop as well. So, we had a trawler and then we supplied all of our own fish to our fish shop and fish and chips.

CRAWFORD: Everything up to the point you had been selling to a wholesaler?

ANDERSON: That’s right, yeah. We were getting really poor money for our fish. And the companies ... there was a lot of fish around, and the companies were picky about what they would take.

CRAWFORD: When they would take it? And how much they would take?

ANDERSON: Yeah. It was just pretty tough. We were disappointed with the way it was going, so we started a fresh fish shop, a fish and chip shop. We used that as a vehicle to promote our lesser species, and all the fish that we were getting. So it was a great educational tool for the community - who had never even eaten such fish, and so we really changed people's thoughts about what was a good fish and what was a bad fish. We handled it differently on the boat, we looked after it, and so there was a lot of fish that people would say "No way you would eat that" and all of a sudden that was their favourite fish, you know? We got people away from the traditional Blue Cod and Sole. We still sold a bit, but we sold an awful lot of other fish.

CRAWFORD: Like what, for example? What was one of the new species that really took off?

ANDERSON: Moki. 

CRAWFORD: Nobody had eaten Moki before? 

ANDERSON: No. Didn’t really like it. Didn’t like the look of it.

CRAWFORD: Are we talking about locals - your neighbours, or tourists coming in?

ANDERSON: Tourists don’t eat anything. The locals, the people in the community here, the local fisherman and stuff like that - they would come up there and you know eat this stuff that they’ve never eaten before. And we cooked it, not only fry it, but we grilled it. We did all sorts of other things. At the time we were quite different, we did a lot of things that other shops had never done, and we actually did pretty well. We won the best fish and chip shop in the South Island. And the shop got quite famous, actually. And it’s what ruined it really. Because it went from a nice little small business where I was fishing two, three days a week - up to a mad business where it was, at one stage we had 13 staff working in this fish and chip shop. 

CRAWFORD: And pretty heavy pressure for you to keep the fish coming in?

ANDERSON: That’s right. And one month there, the biggest month we had, we moved 6 tonne of fish through the shop. 

CRAWFORD: Wow.

ANDERSON: A lot of fish. Friday, Saturday night we used ... Friday we would get about 600 kilos of chips delivered - just for the weekend. Yeah, it was a pretty busy place. So, we had that for four years, and run a trawler.

CRAWFORD: Now we’re getting to the 2000's, I think?

ANDERSON: Yeah. Then I decided that we were just working mad hard, you know? I’d had enough of it, and the kids, and things like that. So I sold the shop, sold the Tania, and I went and bought a small boat. I bought a jet-boat called the Sea Slave.

CRAWFORD: Early 2000's?

ANDERSON: Yeah. Sold the Tania, the big trawler, and the shop - and just got myself down to this little simple jet-boat where I went fishing, because it could cross the [Karitane] bar at any time of day. I started crayfishing and Blue Codding and potting - that was mainly what we would do. A little bit of setnetting, not a lot. We did a wee bit. It was mainly a crayfishing boat. So then I fished that for quite a few years and I started paddle-crabbing. 

CRAWFORD: Who were you selling to?

ANDERSON: Back to companies, and we still supplied the shop.

CRAWFORD: The shop you had just sold?

ANDERSON: Yeah. And then we started paddle-crabbing in the summer months ...

CRAWFORD: Paddle-crabbing?

ANDERSON: Yeah potting for Paddle Crabs - we started that up.

CRAWFORD: Was the first time you really got into crabs?

ANDERSON: No, I did it when I was a kid. 

CRAWFORD: No I mean, but hard - like, commercially.

ANDERSON: Yeah, yeah. It’d been tried before, but no one really succeeded in the fishery. And the market wasn’t there - it was hard to sell and all the rest of it. But when we started up, we just sort of did things different and looked at different markets. We started doing it, we could only sell 10 boxes a week. And it was just a few pots - a bit of added income.

CRAWFORD: Just a few pots because…

ANDERSON: That was all the market could take at the time. 

CRAWFORD: Right. There wasn’t a quota on this?

ANDERSON: There were quotas at this stage, yeah. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. It wasn’t a quota constraint. It was simply the market.

ANDERSON: Yeah. Not many people were buying it, you know? Then we shifted where we were selling the fish. Basically, got into the Asian market. And it just grew from there. And now it’s sensational - the demand for the crab now. So now we’re quite busy. We had that boat for quite a number of years, and then about three years ago, four years ago, we built a new boat, the Truby King.

CRAWFORD: That was 2012?

ANDERSON: I think we’re on our fourth season. 

CRAWFORD: You were still running the other boat?

ANDERSON: Yeah, we had two boats for a while. 

CRAWFORD: What was the purpose for the Truby King?

ANDERSON: Just a bigger, faster, vessel. Newer, modern, a bit safer. Wouldn’t break down.

CRAWFORD: Same fishery?

ANDERSON: Same fishery.

CRAWFORD: Same strategy, same region?

ANDERSON: Yeah. But the Truby King would travel - because it’s quite quick. We fished the Truby King as far as the Banks Peninsula for crabs. We only had one trip up there. The reason why we didn’t fish up there any more, was because there’s virtually nowhere where you can fish there. It’s all marine reserves or Mataitai.

CRAWFORD: Sorry?

ANDERSON: It’s all yeah, there’s nowhere we can ...

CRAWFORD: I mean the crabs are there, the fish are there?

ANDERSON: We’re just not allowed to fish it. 

CRAWFORD: Closed fishery management zones or ...

ANDERSON: Yeah, well they just overlap. The whole thing's just a no zone. But we also fished a lot down here. We’d go right down as far as Waikawa, and fish crab down there.

CRAWFORD: Ok. That’s important, but once again it’s still based out of Karitane?

ANDERSON: Yeah. But we fished out of Port Chalmers and Taieri Mouth a lot. We fished those ports. 

CRAWFORD: Right. And does that bring us up to date?

ANDERSON: Pretty much, yeah. We sold the Sea Slave and bought another boat, one from Australia, one from Tasmania, called the Naturalist. And we steamed it back from Australia, and now we’re back to two boats again. And it’s a lot bigger boat. It’s a 48 ft boat. It’s not fishing as of yet, it’s still getting re-fitted, but it will fish the East Coast of New Zealand. 

CRAWFORD: A bigger boat, but with that same type of expanded range?

ANDERSON: Yeah. But even more expanded range.

CRAWFORD: When do you figure you’re going to have that vessel sorted?

ANDERSON: Oh, hopefully next week.

2. EXPOSURE TO MĀORI/LOCAL/SCIENCE KNOWLEDGE SYSTEMS

CRAWFORD: When it comes to education, you said you did one course in marine studies?

ANDERSON: In the nautical studies program. 

CRAWFORD: Nautical studies. Was there any type of oceanology or biology that they taught in that?

ANDERSON: Yeah, yeah, yeah. There was. 

CRAWFORD: There’s some science that was coming in from that course. And that was a six-month or a one-year course?

ANDERSON: A six-month course. 

CRAWFORD: Did you take any other courses, or any other type of certification along the way?

ANDERSON: Yeah there was certification - we did everything from a nautical studies program, marine biology, engineering. Did net-mending and making, we did first-aid. Yeah there was quite a number of things.

CRAWFORD: Any other programs after that?

ANDERSON: Just my skipper’s tickets and things. I did a deckhand certificate, and then I did a shore skipper’s ticket and then I did a coastal master’s certificate.

CRAWFORD: Did you ever work any science research projects, or was there was somebody from university that was working off your boat or whatever?

ANDERSON: We worked a lot with the Ministry of Fisheries. We had these guys regularly on our vessels, and a couple of these guys taught me to dive you know? And I did probably 50, 60 tank dives with these guys, research divers.

CRAWFORD: When you spent time with guys like that you learn a lot - they learn, you learn - and that’s the kind of overlap that I’m interested in. 

ANDERSON: Well, that brings me now to a point that I should make - that if you want to talk to someone knowledgeable, you should talk to this guy called Bob Street. He’s about 75 years old. He’s counted Sharks in the water, White Pointers. He’s famous. He’s a fisheries scientist. 

CRAWFORD: Is he retired now?

ANDERSON: Yeah. He’s about 75. I think he was still diving up to the age of about 70. He’s done thousands and thousands of dives, but I remember one time that he dived on Groper, a big Groper patch up in Oamaru, and he had to get out of the water because there was a White Pointer.

CRAWFORD: So he’s worked directly on White Pointers as well?

ANDERSON: No, no.

CRAWFORD: But he’s had interactions like that.

ANDERSON: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Great, I’ll look him up. But that’s what I mean. You spend time with people and you learn about their knowledge - from their perspective, right? Have you worked in any other way with other people that would be in science? Like anything to do with students, anything else?

ANDERSON: I sit on a Taiapure [Māori for ‘coastal patch’] management. It’s like a coastal fisheries management program. It’s a Taiapure which is customary based. Runs out of here [Karitane]. So, we have a committee with six people. It’s made up of Iwi, fishery scientists, university people from the marine department there, locals and fishers. So I represent the fisher sort of guys. 

CRAWFORD: From the local Marae - that would be Brendan [Flack, Chair]?

ANDERSON: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: And Chris Hepburn [University of Otago, Department of Marine Science]?

ANDERSON: That's right. Yeah, so I work with those guys. Yeah, a wee bit of science stuff, but I usually just sit and listen. 

CRAWFORD: That’s a good segue, because everybody's got local connections. Then there’s the science knowledge system, and then there’s the Māori culture and knowledge. I was going to ask you the same question about connections to Māori knowledge, and you’ve already answered it in part - because if you sit on that committee, then you get exposed to Māori perspectives and Maori culture and Maori knowledge. Is there any other type of overlap with Māori knowledge? It could be with friends, relations or mates that you’ve worked with. Other than the work that you’ve done on that Taiapure committee, have you spent any considerable amount of time with Māori people, or connected with Māori culture, Māori knowledge? 

ANDERSON: Oh yeah, when I grew up here, there were Māori around here, of course. There was an old guy that took me Pāuaing and showed me how to catch Pāuas, and taught me all about Pāuaing and all the rest of it. Motu Allison. And yeah, so I mean Motu is like a grandfather to me. sort of thing, you know? Old Māori fella. And he just lived off the land around here. So, I’ve had plenty to do with Māori. But Māori weren’t Māori at the time, you know? There were just … they never called themselves Māori. They were just other people in the district, you know? But they’ve sort of changed a bit now, sort of. 

CRAWFORD: Well sometimes there’s no fine line between Local and Indigenous culture. It sounds like in reality here, Indigenous people are your next-door neighbours, yes? 

ANDERSON: Here, every Friday night the local Marae was the hall. It was the local hall here. Everyone went up there, and it was much more of a community. Now some of the Māoris have kind of separated themselves a little bit. “Because we’re Māori and we’re Tangata Whenua [Māori ‘people of the land’], and you’re not.” And this is the way it’s kind of gone now. They’ve actually separated themselves from us.

CRAWFORD: And that was roughly when?

ANDERSON: It started about the 90’s I think. In the David Lange government, I think it was. I don’t know why ...

3. WHITE POINTER DISTRIBUTION AND ABUNDANCE

CRAWFORD: With so few observations over time, was there anything the old-timers said about either White Pointer migrations or particular places that they said were maybe a reproduction area or a pupping area?

ANDERSON: No, no. 

CRAWFORD: Not within your knowledge, not around Karitane or Otago, nothing further south?

ANDERSON: No, I don’t remember anyone talking about pupping, or even small, real small White Pointers. That one I caught in the setnet would be the smallest White Pointer I’ve seen. 

CRAWFORD: And that was six feet, seven feet long? 

ANDERSON: Yeah something like that. That’s the smallest. 

CRAWFORD: In terms of general fish migrations, most of the fish that you’ve seen seasonally, have they been in the summer?

ANDERSON: That’s it. Definitely the summer. Yeah. And around Christmas time. 

CRAWFORD: Well, which is the height of summer here?

ANDERSON: Yeah. And that was Christmas time there. This was January, February, the ones here. That was Christmas time there. 

CRAWFORD: What are the top three regions in the broader context of New Zealand North Island, South Island coastal waters, when you think White Pointers, you think where?

ANDERSON: Stewart Island. Chatham Islands. 

CRAWFORD: Right, and we said we were going to come back to what you were going to say about the Chatham Islands again. First of all, do you know people, old-timers who have lifetime experiences over at the Chatham Islands?

ANDERSON: I met a guy called Tony Anderson. At this fishing cadetship course that I did in 1980. And he was doing the same course, and he talked a lot about White Pointers and how common they were, and the divers and how often they would see them, and all the rest of it. 

CRAWFORD: Do you know whether he’s still around fishing or ...

ANDERSON: I don’t know. Like I say, that was 1980 I saw him last you know. No - actually, I heard of him about 10 years ago, and he was still fishing. 

CRAWFORD: Likely he went into commercial fishing like you did?

ANDERSON: Yeah. I remember him talking about White Pointers, he was the only Chatham Islands guy I knew. But I’ve seen on the television where they’ve gone out looking for White Pointers to catch them, and they’ve caught them there.

CRAWFORD: Catch them recreational fishing?

ANDERSON: Yeah Matt Watson. On that program. 

CRAWFORD: What program?

ANDERSON: ITM fishing show. They did one on White Pointers, and they had several gos, well they caught multiple fish, I think. 

CRAWFORD: That’s huge, thank you. That show’s based out of Auckland? 

ANDERSON: I’m not sure where they are ... I think so, I think so.

CRAWFORD: I’ll find out.

ANDERSON: But that’s how common they are over there, like "Hey, let's go do a show on catching a White Pointer" and they go and catch one. So, very ‘sharky’ place. And you know the divers and that - they all talk about them. 

CRAWFORD: The divers, as in recreational divers?

ANDERSON: Abalone.

CRAWFORD: Pāua?

ANDERSON: Yeah, the commercial guys. Also, the guys that dive for Crayfish commercially. The only place in New Zealand that they’re allowed to do it.

CRAWFORD: These Paua and Crayfish divers, do you know any of them?

ANDERSON: Yeah. Lee Cloth I think his name is. Track him down through the federation of commercial fisherman. Because he was a representative on that. And he was a Pāua diver, Crayfish diver at the Chathams for years.

CRAWFORD: Is he still there?

ANDERSON: No, I think he could be in Christchurch or something. 

CRAWFORD: Ok, that’s good. In terms of White Pointers - you think Stewart Island, you think Chatham Islands. Do you think of any place else around the South Island?

ANDERSON: Yeah, I think they’ve had a bit of activity up in the Foveaux Strait area, you know? 

CRAWFORD: You hear from commercial guys? Or you hear it from whom?

ANDERSON: Yeah, I think I’ve seen pictures of up there as well. Pictures and stuff of boats that have caught them while they’ve been longlining for Groper and stuff like that as well. See the thing about the Sharks is, the big White Pointers, you tend to find them in places where there’s a lot of food. Either around Seal colonies, or these big Groper patches. Because Groper are big fish. I think the White Pointers sort of ... we find big patches of fish and the White Pointers are living there eating them regularly as well.

CRAWFORD: From the White Pointer’s perspective, what do you think is the split between them feeding on fish versus them feeding on Seals, Sea Lions.

ANDERSON: I think there’s well documented about them eating [Seals and Sea Lions].

CRAWFORD: Which means specifically the haul-outs and the rookeries where they’re having their pups?

ANDERSON: Yeah. I was always told, like I dived all the time, and they said, "Don’t dive around the Seal colonies," you know? 

CRAWFORD: Right. 

ANDERSON: Always told that. Don’t. Stay away from high concentrations of Seals.

CRAWFORD: And not because of the Seals?

ANDERSON: No. Because of the Sharks living there and eating the Seals. 

CRAWFORD: Let's get back to Foveaux Strait. Do you know anybody from that region, long-time fisherman? Is there a lead or somebody who you know who would know? 

ANDERSON: Yeah, another Anderson. Graham Anderson. 

CRAWFORD: No relation.

ANDERSON: No. He’s down there, and his father was a fisherman. And they used to fish around the backside of Stewart Island and stuff like that. 

CRAWFORD: Is he a Bluffy?

ANDERSON: Yeah. And his dad lives in Wakouati up here. Five minutes away. And he’s like an old-time fisherman in fact. He’s, you know you talk to him about Seal colonies and things like that. He’s got to know something for sure. Because years ago, they used to club the Seals and use them for bait in the crayfish pots you know? This is probably 60, 70 years ago. 

CRAWFORD: And Graham - is he a long-liner?

ANDERSON: No. Mainly Crayfish. And I suppose for cray fisherman, they don’t have that many interactions with White Pointers.

CRAWFORD: Not as much as codpotters and setnetters and longliners? Has longlining reduced over time?

ANDERSON: Nah. Well, all those big fish have sort of you know, we’ve caught them all to be honest. A lot of these fish. I used to catch Bass out here, Bass Groper. And at the time when we were catching them, I thought they’d never run out, you know? Because we’d get, we’d catch two tonne a day - and big fish. And then we didn’t. One day we just caught the last one, and that was it. They could be 50 years old, some of those fish. 

CRAWFORD: Yes. And if they come back ...

ANDERSON: They’ll never come back. 

CRAWFORD: Cook Strait, you said before it was ‘sharky’, in some ways. What do you figure might be happening up there?

ANDERSON: Food. A lot of food. A lot of water. 

CRAWFORD: The New Zealand Government has protected White Pointers. What do you think about that, is that necessary? 

ANDERSON: I think so. Because otherwise the trophy fishermen of the world will go and catch them and hang them up. 

CRAWFORD: That’s an important point. You think the Government targeted the Shark recreational fishery as a clear and present danger to the White Pointer population?

ANDERSON: Oh absolutely. If they’re taken off of the endangered list, well then people would want them as trophies.  You know there are trophy hunters all around the world? You saw Cecil the lion or whatever get killed, and there’s plenty of those people out there. I’ve taken Shark fisherman out, you know? I have a charter vessel and we used to catch, had a lot of guys in and if they’re allowed to take a White Pointer, they would take one. 

CRAWFORD: And you never had anybody tie on a White Pointer?

ANDERSON: No I think we might have saw one once, but I’m not 100 percent sure.

CRAWFORD: What other priority threats do you think would be up there in terms of …

ANDERSON: Habitat. Loss of habitat.

CRAWFORD: What do you mean by ‘habitat’?

ANDERSON: Well, the water. The water they swim in and where they swim in. Most of these places that we do see them is nice clear, clean water. Like Foveaux here, Cook Strait, quite clean and clear. But Canterbury Bight and places, it’s not very clear at all. There’s a lot of sedimentation in the water and stuff, run-off from land and that. They like the nice blue water, as far as I know. They don’t like to be in that murky horrible water, so as more things happen on land here and more sediment and stuff is going into the ocean and getting suspended in the ocean, it’s changing the habitat. We’re losing habitat really quickly.

CRAWFORD: You’re the first person I’ve spoken to that’s brought up habitat. Let’s go back to a comment you made about the kind of raw offal from the freezer works into coastal water. That’s one thing, but you’re talking about other land-based activities getting dumped out into the ocean?

ANDERSON: Yeah, sedimentation. It’s something that I’ve been watching for a long time here. Because I used to be a diver, and you could dive in certain places, and the water was nice and clean, and then it sort of started getting dusty. The bottom started getting dustier and dustier and dustier. And then it’s got to the stage where you can’t really dive there anymore, because it’s never clean, you know? Every time it blows, or a bit of swell comes, this dust is re-suspended in the water column all the time and it’s dirty. And the stuff on the bottom, it’s not growing anymore, and it’s a dead zone. It’s a dusty dead zone. And that's happening really quickly. Places like Stewart Island and that, there’s not a lot happening there yet. So, all the soils and that are retained, and all the bits and pieces - because of the native bush, I suppose. But anyway, like here [Karitane], where all up this coast here, the water is getting dirty and dirty. You fly and you can see it all coming out the rivers, and see all the sedimentation, and it’s smothering habitat really, really quickly. And it’s just more land-use all through here. There’s deforestation.

CRAWFORD: Do you get the same type of land-use, negative effects on coastal waters up in the Cook Strait?

ANDERSON: There’s so much water that comes through here you see?

CRAWFORD: A flushing effect?

ANDERSON: Yeah. Round this area there’s quite a lot of sedimentation in this part of it here. And then of course all the way down here, it’s really bad. There are massive pieces of ocean that are becoming dead zones. Through sedimentation.

4. WHITE POINTER ENCOUNTERS - DIRECT EXPERIENCES

CRAWFORD: Was there a time that you remember when you first heard about, or saw a White Pointer? Something that made a first impression on you? 

ANDERSON: I think the very first sighting of a White Pointer was right on the Karitane Bar here. Right as we’re going out, over the bar here. And that was actually with Peter Scott and Cyril - they were both on the boat. And it was foggy, and it was just like a scene from Jaws.

CRAWFORD: When was this roughly?

ANDERSON: New Year's Day. 

CRAWFORD: New Year's Day - roughly what year?

ANDERSON: Early 80s, very early 80s. 

CRAWFORD: Early 80s, and you’re out fishing with Peter and Cyril?

ANDERSON: Yep Cyril. Just as we’re going out of the channel.

CRAWFORD: You weren’t actually fishing yet?

ANDERSON: No, we were leaving the port. To go pick up our nets. And as we’re crossing over the bar there, we saw a big fella and he was just cruising along like that. And then we went out, and pulled our nets. 

CRAWFORD: Fin out of the water, or you saw him below the surface?

ANDERSON: No. Fin out of the water. Just like cruising, really slow like that. Just cruising.

CRAWFORD/ANDERSON: [Discussion about Project classification Level 1-4 human encounters with White Pointers]

CRAWFORD: Of those 4 general categories, you Pete and Cyril going over the bar, you saw the fish - it was cruising?

ANDERSON: Just disappeared like that.

CRAWFORD: And it didn't even react to you?

ANDERSON: No.

CRAWFORD: That seems like Level 1 observation. No interaction. No seeming interest from the fish. You said ‘big fella’ - could it have been a female?

ANDERSON: Well yeah, it could have been a female. That particular fish, I saw it myself again one other time. About the same period, so we had multiple sightings. 

CRAWFORD: Within like days?

ANDERSON: A week. 

CRAWFORD: It’s possible it was the same fish. It could have been a different fish. But the fact that you saw it, you rarely see them, and then you see another in roughly the same place ...

ANDERSON: That’s right. The same place.

CRAWFORD: And roughly the same size?

ANDERSON: Yeah. It was a bit further away the second time I saw it. And we were in a small boat, and we just left the area you know? 

CRAWFORD: Small boat as in what - 12 foot?

ANDERSON: 12 foot aluminum dinghy. So it’s a little outboard.

CRAWFORD: Was it the same type of thing? You saw the fin?

ANDERSON: Just sort of slowly cruising.

CRAWFORD: Orientated to that boat? 

ANDERSON: Nah. 

CRAWFORD: It was just doing its thing?

ANDERSON: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: You then decided, based on the observation, that you would skedaddle?

ANDERSON: Yeah that’s right. Because it was quite a big fish. And that fish was sighted by other fisherman, as well. There was one guy there, Mac Chaplin, it had actually swum underneath his boat. He was cleaning fish, because at the time they were all setnetting, catching Rigs and Sharks.

CRAWFORD: Rigs?

ANDERSON: Like School Sharks. 

CRAWFORD: Greyboys?

ANDERSON: Yeah, Greyboys and Rigs - which are kind of like a toothless Shark. So there’s quite a lot of gutting, cleaning. Chop their big heads and that. The boats would stop at the bar here and clean the fish.

CRAWFORD: Just on the outside of the bar, and they would clean their fish. Would they anchor there?

ANDERSON: Yeah. 

CRAWFORD: And they would clean their fish right there.

ANDERSON: Yeah. A lot of offal. Lots of offal there. Presumably that’s what was bringing this Shark in. Because one of the guys that was cleaning there, it swam right underneath his boat. He commented that he could see, as he stood on the deck, I forget how wide his boat is, but he could see tail and head, basically at the same time. That’s how big the fish was. 

CRAWFORD: Across the beam [width] of the vessel?

ANDERSON: Yeah. 

CRAWFORD: Roughly how long would that be?

ANDERSON: From here to the windows. Three metres or something like that, you know? 

CRAWFORD: Ok, and that’s a Level 2, because the animal's already orientated towards the boat?

ANDERSON: It was feeding off him. 

CRAWFORD: He saw it feeding?

ANDERSON: Yeah. It was feeding, eating.

CRAWFORD: He was throwing offal overboard, and that White Pointer was eating what he was throwing over.

ANDERSON: Yeah. 

CRAWFORD: Eating it passively?

ANDERSON: I don’t know, don’t know. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. This was off the bar? Did this White Pointer ever come inside the bar?

ANDERSON: [Not that Shark, as far as I knew.]

CRAWFORD: Lets go back to that one fish - you saw it twice?

ANDERSON: Yeah. 

CRAWFORD: And when you add other people's sightings, how many times do you figure that White Pointer was seen?

ANDERSON: It must have been sighted 20 times or more. Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Over the course of how long?

ANDERSON: A week or two. And then the same - exactly the same time the next season - there was one that turned up there as well.

CRAWFORD: Really? What time of year was this?

ANDERSON: Christmas time. Right at Christmas because the community here was like "Don’t go diving and stuff like that because there’s a White Pointer around, you know?" That was one year, and then the very next year we had another one here again.

CRAWFORD: You figure it was the same Shark or a different one?

ANDERSON: Well, we sort of thought that it was the same one coming back. A bit of a pattern. And that was on the bar. We never found it out at sea or anything like that, it was only right on the bar, or in the bay there. 

CRAWFORD: Not out at sea, but you never saw it down the coastline either?

ANDERSON: No, no. 

CRAWFORD: That Christmas time, was there anything different in terms of the nature of the fishery, was that a factor?

ANDERSON: We were catching a lot of fish at the time. There were a lot of fish around. 

CRAWFORD: More than usual? Was it peak harvest? That time of year?

ANDERSON: Yeah, because we’d fished through those Christmas seasons, because that was when the Rigs run the best. We can’t stay home. That wouldn’t allow us to fish through the holiday period. So, water was probably getting up to its warmest temperature, and there were plenty of school fish around. 

CRAWFORD: Lots of things going on?

ANDERSON: Lots of food here. Like the whole place was jam packed with school fish.

CRAWFORD: Ok. In the early 1980s, during that one or two weeks when the Shark was around the bar, and then again the next year - roughly how many boats were cleaning their fish around the bar?

ANDERSON: It would have been 10. 

CRAWFORD: Variety of sizes.

ANDERSON: Quite a lot of setnetting fishery. The Rig Shark was booming at that stage, where everybody was doing it. Catches were, you know, catches were up to a 1000 kilos of fish a day. 

CRAWFORD: Per boat?

ANDERSON: Yeah. You would get back to the bar here, and you would only have a quarter of your fish cleaned. So then you’d sit at the bar and clean the rest. 

CRAWFORD: But, as far as you know, no indication that that this White Pointer, let's presume for right now that it was the same individual, no indication that individual was coming over the bar and following the boats to port.

ANDERSON: No. We only ever saw it on the outside of the bar in the kelp.

CRAWFORD: Ok. That was the first time you saw a White Pointer.

ANDERSON: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: And you were confident it was a White Pointer.

ANDERSON: Well, there was no doubt what it was from the size and the colour and everything. It was something we hadn’t seen before. And the girth of them you know? How fat they are. 

CRAWFORD: And the colour?

ANDERSON: Yeah, striking grey really. 

CRAWFORD: A striking grey? People don’t normally pick grey as striking.

ANDERSON: We used to see Blue Sharks and a lot of Makos, which are very blue and very shiny - this was kind of dull. 

CRAWFORD: Makos are thinner?

ANDERSON: A lot thinner yeah.

CRAWFORD: Let's talk about Basking Sharks. That was something that I wanted to get to, that you had mentioned very briefly before. How many times have you seen Basking Sharks around here? Or anywhere for that matter?

ANDERSON: Saw a lot of them in here, the Foveaux Strait. Heaps of them there back at the time. We’d see, I reckon for a month or so, we were seeing them virtually most days. And we saw up to 30 of them. 

CRAWFORD: 30 individual sightings, or they were aggregated?

ANDERSON: No, 30 fish. They were aggregated. 

CRAWFORD: Were they schooling?

ANDERSON: All swimming exactly the same way. 

CRAWFORD: They were schooling? Ok. And roughly closer to ...

ANDERSON: It was more the other side of Centre Island, it was more in this sort of area here.

CRAWFORD: The middle of the Strait?

ANDERSON: Yeah, the middle of the Straits. Yeah. Just all gliding along like that together, all going in the same direction. And lots of them. Lots of them.

CRAWFORD: Ok. You’ve seen Basking Sharks several times, at least on one occasion schooled up, and they’re big fish and they cruise along. In terms of what they look like, how are Basking Sharks different from White Pointers?

ANDERSON: Just that big nose on them, the big wide mouth. That girth in the throat when they’ve got their mouth open. And even their fins are shaped differently.

CRAWFORD: If they've got their mouth open?

ANDERSON: They still have the big sort of pointy noise, you know? And they swim really, really slow. Like they’re hardly moving at all. They’re just sort of ... their tail's just sort of going like that. They’re quite sloth-like. Once you’ve seen a Basking Shark, they’re pretty easy to pick.

CRAWFORD: What about the fin?

ANDERSON: The fin, yeah - it’s really big.

CRAWFORD: Similar or different from White Pointers?

ANDERSON: They’re sort of fatter and sort of rougher. Really sort of textured differently. It’s not as smooth.

CRAWFORD: From a distance ...

ANDERSON: Yeah you could tell from a distance, easy.

CRAWFORD: How many other times did you see a White Pointer?

ANDERSON: The next one was in 1990 or very late 80s. I was skippering the Lady Ann, and we were long-lining for Groper and Ling. 

CRAWFORD: Generally, what was your long-lining operation like?

ANDERSON: A thousand hooks. 

CRAWFORD: How long was the line?

ANDERSON: A mile or so. 

CRAWFORD: With a thousand hooks distributed?

ANDERSON: Yeah, and floats and bait.

CRAWFORD: What were you baiting with?

ANDERSON: Squid and fish like Moki. And it sinks down to the bottom, sits on the bottom. And it’s in about 200 fathoms [approx. 360 metres] of water, so it’s quite deep. And then we would just wind the line back up, and the line comes back.

CRAWFORD: Did you go back to the beginning, where you set it - go to that end?

ANDERSON: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: And then pick it up the same way that you laid it?

ANDERSON: Yeah. We were fishing on a seamount that’s populated by a lot of big fish. Like Groper, they were big fish so it’s a huge lot of fish.

CRAWFORD: What do you think makes these seamounts so productive?

ANDERSON: Currents, upwellings, I don’t know. There’s obviously a lot of food there, because these fish grow big. 

CRAWFORD: It’s a feeding ground for several species of big fish, as opposed to being primarily a migration ground or a spawning ground?

ANDERSON: Yeah, definitely these fish live there.

CRAWFORD: Where is this, roughly?

ANDERSON: It’s right here, this little canyon. As you see it comes up.

CRAWFORD: The Continental Shelf comes in very close. But you’re less than 2 nautical miles and you’re already over the abyss. 

ANDERSON: We used to get a lot of Sharks. And when we were hauling the line up, you’d have Groper that were up to 40 kilos, sort of thing. Each fish. So, we had a lot of Sharks that would predate on the fish caught on the line. It was actually a problem at times, they could really eat at times ...

CRAWFORD: Faster than you could bring in?

ANDERSON: Well, they could eat 40 percent of your catch you know? You could lose half a tonne of fish.

CRAWFORD: Really? What amount of time - how long does it take to lay the line?

ANDERSON: Three quarters of an hour. 

CRAWFORD: And how long does it take to haul the line, with a typical catch?

ANDERSON: Four hours.

CRAWFORD: So, we’re talking five hours in total?

ANDERSON: Oh no, you’d be out there for a whole day. You shoot the line away, just in the dark before daylight. You’re shooting away at, say 4 o'clock in the morning. You pick it up at about 8 o’clock, 9 o'clock in the morning. And then you’re back at the port here later that day. It’s a full day thing, really. 

CRAWFORD: Ok, but what I’m trying to get to is that the line was fishing for approximately 3 or 4 hours?

ANDERSON: A couple of hours, maybe three hours. The Sharks can be predating on the bottom, and most of the time as you haul the Groper up - and when you get the Groper up to the surface, they inflate, the air bladder expands - and they float. And then the lines sort of along the surface, dotted like this on the surface. And then you actually see the Sharks all swimming around the line, and eating them.

CRAWFORD: What kind of Sharks were taking bites?

ANDERSON: Mainly Makos. Lots of Makos. Sometimes the Blues, but the Blues wouldn’t ... they would sort of maul the fish rather than eat it. But the Makos would just perfectly cut - you just end up with heads. So neat, like you had cut it with a knife. 

CRAWFORD: And you know they were Makos because it was at the surface?

ANDERSON: We caught a lot of them.

CRAWFORD: Makos in turn would get hooked? 

ANDERSON: Nah. We’d put a Shark line out, and actually catch them. 

CRAWFORD: In order to prevent them from taking your catch?

ANDERSON: Yeah. They were obviously living there. Like every day you could be hounded for weeks and weeks by these Sharks.

CRAWFORD: How do you fish a Shark line, in that case?

ANDERSON: You put chum out, you know? Chuck another big hunk of stuff out and float it. And you just have it out all the time while you’re fishing.

CRAWFORD: So it’s a diversion? In that case, a Mako that came over would get hooked?

ANDERSON: Yeah. Hook on our Shark line.

CRAWFORD: Ok, so it’s not just a behavioural distraction, it actually removes the animal?

ANDERSON: And sometimes you would only need to catch them and sort of like you could release them and they would go away. And then other times, we killed a few. Not many, but we did kill a few. Sometimes we even sold the meat. Sold the meat on quite a few occasions. 

CRAWFORD: It was no surprise, it was nothing unusual to see Sharks taking bites at your longline catch?

ANDERSON: Nah.

CRAWFORD: And this was ... Groper was the target in this case?

ANDERSON: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: And you were getting Groper, and maybe some other fish species too?

ANDERSON: Yeah, yeah.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Did you have Makos at the same time as this observation of a White Pointer?

ANDERSON: No. I don’t remember Makos at the same time. Well, I suppose it was a ‘sharky’ year. Some years there's a lot more Sharks around than others. 

CRAWFORD: All species of Sharks?

ANDERSON: Yeah. We mainly caught Makos and Porbeagles. And just only those two occasions, we had Whites.

CRAWFORD: Why do you figure some years are ‘sharky’ years?

ANDERSON: I think it’s water temperature. 

CRAWFORD: Were they warmer years? 

ANDERSON: Yeah, I think they were. They were these El Niño years and stuff like that, when it was warmer temperature, and I think there were more Sharks in those years. 

CRAWFORD: Did you see corresponding increase in other fish, like their prey, as well?

ANDERSON: No. But there was another observation, we saw a Leatherback Turtle one of those years when it was really ‘sharky’. And we also picked up coconuts out of the water you know?

CRAWFORD: Coconuts??

ANDERSON: Coconuts, yeah. 

CRAWFORD: Where the hell is the nearest coconut tree? 

ANDERSON: Way out in the Pacific somewhere. But they’ve been bobbing around, floating for a long time. All full of barnacles and stuff like that. Saw the first one and we thought there’s a fishing float and we picked it up and it’s a friggin' coconut you know?

CRAWFORD: And that was in a ‘sharky’ year?

ANDERSON: Yep. We picked up four or five coconuts within a couple of days you know? Just bobbing around. We even drank the milk out of them, and ate the flesh. It was alright. That was the same year as Cyclone Bola. That was that year. [March 1988]

CRAWFORD: It was after the cyclone?

ANDERSON: Yeah. So that was the year we caught all the Sharks. We had a lot of Sharks that year.

CRAWFORD: Roughly how long after the cyclone had gone through? 

ANDERSON: Oh, weeks. No, no, more than that. Six months. Because we figured that these coconuts must have had something to do with Cyclone Bola, you know?

CRAWFORD: The cyclone blew the coconuts off the trees, and it must have been a whole hell of a lot of them, if you were picking up half a dozen here in New Zealand?

ANDERSON: Yeah, the ocean would have been littered with them really.

CRAWFORD: But that cyclone could have also ...

ANDERSON: Altered the currents.

CRAWFORD: Altered the currents. Moved the prey, to move the Sharks as well. And/or moved the water that the Sharks preferred, right? 

ANDERSON: Definitely.

CRAWFORD: Warmer water?

ANDERSON: Yeah. Because we saw that big Leatherback Turtle as well. Huge, big one. So there were a few things happening that year that we thought, "That’s all a bit odd."

CRAWFORD: And that was all in the Karitane region? 

ANDERSON: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Ok. In this particular case, bottom long-lining, you’ve got Gropers floating on the surface. What happened next?

ANDERSON: Well, the first Shark we saw was ... we’d shot the long-line away into the dark, so it wasn’t into the daylight. We started hauling it a couple of hours after dark, so it was pitch black dark - absolutely flat-ass calm, and just a really good night. I was pulling the line up - the line would come from the front of the boat, we had a block at the front of the boat, and then the line would come all the way to the back of the boat and we used to take the hooks off as it all came along. Take the fish off. Anyway, we had a spotlight that to shine down onto the block at the front of the boat, and we’re all lit up with all of our lights and stuff. 

CRAWFORD: Is that so the skipper can see when fish are coming onboard?

ANDERSON: Yeah, yeah. But you couldn’t really see into the water or that, because it was shaded by the equipment and that, sort of looking up there. All of a sudden a big pile of rope, like a big knotted bit of rope, comes up into the block. We often get tangled and that, and it was like that, and then all of a sudden something else comes up and jammed the block, you know? And it was just something big and black like that. And I couldn’t quite see so I went up the front of the boat and instantly realised it was the tail of a fish. A big Shark. Just the tail. And I looked at it and I yelled out to the crew, "Bloody Basking Shark." That was what we said it was you know? Because it was so big. It was about the same Basking Shark size. This fish had been swimming along the line, getting hooked up in all the hooks, and all the ropes and floats ...

CRAWFORD: Hooked up incidentally, or because it was chowing down on the fish?

ANDERSON: We thought it was a Basking Shark that had just got tangled. 

CRAWFORD: Multiple hooks?

ANDERSON: 150, 200 hooks. All tangled all around it, like half a mile of line. Big balls of line like this and floats. It was just a massive entanglement you know?

CRAWFORD: What’s the gauge on the line? 

ANDERSON: 10 mm. 

CRAWFORD: And this is steel?

ANDERSON: No, no. It’s just rope like that out there. So, it’s got that all tangled all around it. Like big balls of it. It had obviously just been swimming around and the odd hook was hooking into its body like this. He had them all around his neck and down on his fins and on his tail; it had a lot of fishing equipment all on it. What we did then was, we got the gaff and we just sort of - from the tail, we started gaffing little bits of rope around him, and pulling that bit up, and as much as we could we were tying it off on the rail. So we had the tail of the fish at the front of the boat, and then he went into the water like this, and we had down towards the last quarter of the boat, he was tied at that end. So we had him tied right along the whole side of the boat. There's the boat, and the fish is laying on his side like this, from the front of the boat to about there. 

CRAWFORD: Which boat was this?

ANDERSON: The Lady Ann - it’s a 40 foot boat. 

CRAWFORD: 40 foot boat, and this Shark is 20 feet plus?

ANDERSON: Yeah, yeah. This is big as. And no bullshit it was about as round as a mini. It was massively round. 

CRAWFORD: As round as a mini?

ANDERSON: Like a car, like a car. It was round like that, you know? And that's what made me think that it was a Basking Shark. So anyway, we were trying to get our fishing gear.

CRAWFORD: And this was at night?

ANDERSON: Pitch black dark. We had this poor bugger on the boat that had never been to sea before, and it was tripping him out, we got this Shark. Anyway, we’re trying to get all our ropes, all our fishing equipment off him, because there’s basically thousands of dollars of fishing equipment tangled on this fish. I actually at one stage stepped on the fish. So, I’m actually hanging on to the rail like this, standing on the fish.

CRAWFORD: On the fish, and the fish is in the water?

ANDERSON: Yeah. And I’m leaning across and chopping and getting floats and things off this fish. We had it tied up along the rail in probably like 20 places with little half hitches of rope that had all come off it. Anyway, the fish is kind of just, very slowly - a little bit of movement. But I thought it was pretty much dead, you know? And we’re getting all these hooks and things off, and we worked along until we got its head up, and then its head was up - and I’m sort of looking at its head like this. And then all of a sudden, it just opens its mouth. And then it goes like that, and all of a sudden, all these teeth just sort of pop out like that at me! And I just jumped back on the boat and go "Shit, it’s a bloody White Pointer." And to be honest, at the time we sort of had visions of "We’ll make some money out of this and you know, we’ll be on the television" sorts of things. So right, we’re going to try and tie it, we’ll drag it back to port. But we got to tidy it up a bit. You know, we got to try and get as much of this, because it looked pretty ugly with all the fish hooks, it didn’t look very good. So we put a strop around its tail, and then brought it back to the midship of the boat, and started hauling it on the block and tackle that we use for hauling our trawl nets in. So we hauled him up, but we could only basically get him up to his asshole out of the water. That’s how heavy he was, our lifting equipment wouldn’t lift him.

CRAWFORD: How is the block and tackle tied onto the fish?

ANDERSON: A big strop, round its tail. 

CRAWFORD: You’re lifting tail first? 

ANDERSON: Yeah, we let it all go from on the rail, where we had it tied up sideways like this.

CRAWFORD: Now it’s no longer tied to the boat?

ANDERSON: Yeah, so now it’s like this [tail up]. So we try and haul it up.

CRAWFORD: And you can’t get it on the deck?

ANDERSON: We can only get it up to the asshole. And it’s about all we can get out of the water. It’s got a lot more line and stuff on it. And this all took quite a while. And when we lifted it up like that, it actually lifted the boat over! Lifted it over quite a long way. And so we’re still chopping all of this line off, and he was just kind of like basically moving along the rail, he was just sort of moving along the rail like this. And I’m still working away at this, and then all of a sudden it just arced up, big time! Like a sort of death roll kind of thing. Just started shaking, violently shaking. And now it was pulling the boat over sideways like this, and it shook hard. We had all the lights on the mast, on the top of the mast - it shook all of them out. So, all of a sudden, the whole boat's plunged into darkness! This thing's thrashing like mad. The new guy that’s on the boat is traumatized - he’s squealing like "Mummy." And at that stage, I came across with the knife and cut the whole thing free. Lost all the fishing gear, and yeah. So we came back home, and the owner of the boat was really upset with me - he bloody yelled and screamed at me because of all the loss of fishing gear and all the rest of it. Probably didn’t believe that it was a Shark. Probably thought that I had hooked up on the bottom or something, and lost all the gear. So anyway, that was it. 

CRAWFORD: Wow. Ok. What about the third White Pointer you've seen?

ANDERSON: We didn’t go long-lining for a few days, because we lost a lot of gear. So. we put setnets back on the boat. And pretty much the next day or the day after it, we were in the same place but we were using nets. And we caught another one. 

CRAWFORD: A different Shark?

ANDERSON: Yeah, different. This one was only small. This one was only about 8 feet. But it was definitely a White Pointer, you know?

CRAWFORD: And it was tangled up in your setnet?

ANDERSON: No it wasn’t really tangled. It was just lying in the mesh, so the mesh is sort of like that and it’s just lying there. Basically, I leant over the front of the boat with the gaff, and put the gaff in it and it woke him up and he just swum through the net, and just went boom - like that, you know? So, he wasn’t really entangled. He must have been at some stage, but he was just kind of lying there. And when I woke him up with the gaff he just went straight through all the mesh.

CRAWFORD: And that’s the third time you’ve seen a White Pointer?

ANDERSON: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: A couple of days later, but the same place as the big Sharks that was tangled in you long-line gear?

ANDERSON: In exactly the same place. 

CRAWFORD: On the seamount?

ANDERSON: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Rough depth?

ANDERSON: 120 fathoms. 

CRAWFORD: And they were bottom set lines, but the gropers were floating?

ANDERSON: Yeah. So that was the second one…

CRAWFORD: Were you getting any other types of Sharks, any other species in the setnet as well?

ANDERSON: Yeah. You get Makos and Grey Sharks, Porbeagles. 

CRAWFORD: At that same time as well?

ANDERSON: Yeah, that year was a Sharky year. There was a lot of them around. 

CRAWFORD: Any other White Pointers that you've seen? 

ANDERSON: The next observation was, we had a yacht and we sailed it down to Stewart Island one Christmas.

CRAWFORD: Sailed it from?

ANDERSON: Port Chalmers. 

CRAWFORD: Down to Stewart Island for Christmas?

ANDERSON: Yeah. And we were in Paterson Inlet and we had heard stories about these White Pointers that have been coming into Oban. Swimming around Oban every day.

CRAWFORD: Halfmoon Bay?

ANDERSON: Yeah. And people were saying the Sharks come in about 11 o’clock every day. And we thought "No shit" so we parked in at Oban, and walked over the hill one morning to the wharf there. And we were waiting and waiting. And then just like clockwork, there was probably like 50 people on the wharf, and like clockwork these Sharks, they didn’t come really close to us, but we saw enough to know that it was 2 small ones and one large one. And they were just swimming all together. And they just came in and did a quick bit of a loop around, and the weird thing about it was, there was a guy with a jet-ski, jet-skiing there, right off the beach. And he had a shelagh on the back who fell off a couple of times. And here are these Sharks, and this guy with a jet-ski, and everybody knew that these Sharks were there. 

CRAWFORD: Except for him?

ANDERSON: No, he knew, he knew. Just wasn’t bothered. So, he was jet-skiing around. 

CRAWFORD: They’re cruising together, these three fish? They’re clearly together - two smaller ones and one bigger one?

ANDERSON: Yeah. And it was just a drive-by. And they just went. And then the next day ...

CRAWFORD: How far off the wharf, roughly?

ANDERSON: 150 feet. 

CRAWFORD: And then a bit of a loop? 

ANDERSON: Yeah, they just did a loop, they kind of disappeared.

CRAWFORD: Did they come in amongst the boats that were moored?

ANDERSON: Yeah, so they came from this side, there’s the wharf there if you know the wharf, so they came from this shoreline here and then they cruised here like this, and all the boats were parked over here, and then we sort of lost them amongst the boats.

CRAWFORD: So they did go among the boats?

ANDERSON: Yeah. They went across that way, and that’s probably where we lost them. But I think at times, they had actually swum around the wharf and done a lot more.

CRAWFORD: Ok, but this was your personal observation, you and 50 other people or whatever. They had all come down. Did you see those Sharks again? 

ANDERSON: No.

CRAWFORD: How many times do you hear of these fish previously swimming through the harbour like that?

ANDERSON: I think they’d had four or five sightings before.

CRAWFORD: Because I’ll be talking to the Stewart Islanders and for sure this is going to come up. But this was a pattern, right?

ANDERSON: Yeah. 

CRAWFORD: There were always three Sharks? It could have been more, it could have been less? Do you remember?

ANDERSON: It was three when I saw them. 

CRAWFORD: But had you heard anything about ...

ANDERSON: No, I think we had heard three before. I think they were getting round together, these animals. And it was the next day or the day after, we were back at Paterson's - and we heard the story that Joe Cave, he was over in Wanaka or Queenstown having his Christmas holiday, and the locals had rung him up, and he’d flown back or got back to Stewart Island and he’d set a net.

CRAWFORD: One net?

ANDERSON: One net. In front of them or something like that. But then he caught 2 of them. 

CRAWFORD: In Halfmoon Bay?

ANDERSON: Yeah. 

CRAWFORD: So, it would have been on their route some place?

ANDERSON: Yeah. Basically, he stuck it where they’d been travelling, the day before or whatever. I didn’t see him do it, but I heard and I just thought to myself "That’s bloody terrible, why would you do that?" As far as I was concerned they were a great attraction, you know? So I was horrified he’d come back and got these, and pulled them up on the wharf and took photos of them, and took them to the local dump or whatever they did with them. Because they weren’t aggressive, they weren’t causing any problems, they were just swimming, they weren’t swimming crazy. They were just like drive-by, real slow.

CRAWFORD: In those categories we discussed before, there’s Level 1 which is just an observation, Level 2 is a swim-by you, Level 3 and Level 4 are with something extra. This was level 1?

ANDERSON:  Yeah. 

CRAWFORD: There was no indication that they were showing any interest in people?

ANDERSON: No. Nothing at all. 

CRAWFORD: That you heard of?

ANDERSON: No. I hadn’t heard that they’d been swimming around boats or charter boats or fishing boats, or anything like that. All they were doing, I just heard that they cruised the bay. 

CRAWFORD: What, if anything, did you hear about the fish that were actually netted?

ANDERSON: Apparently, it wasn’t the big one. They only caught two small ones.

CRAWFORD: The two little ones of the three got caught?

ANDERSON: Yeah, that’s what I heard. 

CRAWFORD: I’ll find out more of the details but, little is what 10 feet, 12 feet?

ANDERSON: Yeah, something like that. But there was one that was actually larger than the other two you know? Like a third size larger. A lot larger. 

CRAWFORD: Right. And what happened then? What did other people say? Was it split, or did everyone say "Yeah, that’s good"?

ANDERSON: No, no it was definitely split. Definitely split. 

CRAWFORD: Was there anybody else that had set nets for these Sharks? 

ANDERSON: Well, there could have been - I don’t really know, you know? 

CRAWFORD: But there were other people who, like you, thought that this is was not such a great thing?

ANDERSON: I didn’t like it at all. I thought it was terrible, you know? I just thought it was ... it was standing room only on the wharf, you know? It was great to see. 

CRAWFORD: It was an attraction when they were swimming past?

ANDERSON: Yeah. 

CRAWFORD: I'm guessing people took pictures?

ANDERSON: Hold them up and take pictures, I suppose. I don’t know.

CRAWFORD: Cut their stomachs open?

ANDERSON: Yeah, I don’t know. I wasn’t there for that.

CRAWFORD: You were in Paterson Inlet. At that point, you were getting everything on the radio? 

ANDERSON: Oh, no. People were coming from over on boats that had been there that day, and we were moored in the same sort of bays and having beers with each other.

CRAWFORD: And what did you hear happened after that? Did the big one ever come back again?

ANDERSON: Never heard anything more, that’s all I know. Yeah so that was that sighting.

CRAWFORD: Any other White Pointers?

ANDERSON: After that, that time I was working on the Pania, so there were more sightings I had prior to that because I was on the Pania which was a 1982. So 1982…

CRAWFORD: So, this is prior to the Stewart Island Sharks swimming together?

ANDERSON: Yeah, yeah, yeah. When we used to travel from Bluff and go to fish Te Waewae Bay and stuff like that round here, when we came through the Straits, Ocean Beach freezing works was operating here.

CRAWFORD: Here being?

ANDERSON: Oh, Ocean Beach - that’s Bluff. So, the freezing works discharged offal straight into the ocean.

CRAWFORD: This is a freezing works for lamb?

ANDERSON: Yeah, sheep and that. And it discharged like whole stomachs and that, because you could see these stomachs like with the bladders and that, just bobbing in the water. And the water was red. And every time we used to go past there, we used to get up the front like that and scan for them, look for them. You know look for the White Pointers, because the skipper and everyone said there’s always White Pointers there, and keep a keen eye and that. And I don’t remember how many sightings we had, maybe two or three. But I definitely saw Sharks there you know? But big Sharks. Seemed like White Pointers. Just on the surface, just cruising around. So that was obviously a real hot-spot for them.

CRAWFORD: And this was when? 

ANDERSON: 1982. 

CRAWFORD: Was that a one-time event, that you happened to be going through?

ANDERSON: No, no. We’d gone past there 20 times, 30 times. But you had to get good weather to see them. It had to be calm, you know? Like glassy. Because if it’s not glassy you won’t see them. So obviously when it’s glassy and calm, they’ll come up and just sort of cruise on the surface you know? 

CRAWFORD: So, sea conditions are an important part of observations for White Pointers?

ANDERSON: Yeah, yeah.

CRAWFORD: For an experienced guy - a guy who spent his life on the water - when it’s calm, how far away can you see these fins? I mean is it 100 metres? 

ANDERSON: Yeah. We never got any closer than that to any of them. We never got right on top of them, or anything. We’d just sort of look off, and you could see fins. 

CRAWFORD: And it wasn’t any kind of feeding frenzy?

ANDERSON: No, no. Just going like this. And a couple of times, the guys reckoned they saw the guts go down you know? Yeah. So that was a really good hot spot for Sharks. 

CRAWFORD: And was this known, like I mean when I talk to the commercial guys out of Bluff and I make reference to this, they’ll know what I’m talking about. 

ANDERSON: They should do yeah, yeah. Especially the Paua guys yeah. It was definitely a very Shark area. 

CRAWFORD: Do you have any idea of how long that freezer works ran?

ANDERSON: Oh, no I don’t. Ocean Beach must have closed down. Ocean Beach Freezing Works. And then you know, they could have changed what they were allowed to do to the discharge and that. But at the time it was just like, you know, pretty much everything went straight out the big pipe.  

CRAWFORD: Ok. Anymore White Pointer encounters?

ANDERSON: Yeah. And this wasn’t a confirmed sighting, but we were anchored in behind Codfish Island here [northwest coast of Stewart Island], and we used to anchor in there after trawling, clean the fish and all the rest of it. And the crew talked about the White Pointers there in that bay, you know? They were saying that there’s White Pointers here. So, the next trip we went down, I bought myself a big Shark hook and a chain and a bit of rope and I was going to catch a White Pointer, you know? So first night we anchored in there, I chucked on a big fish and threw it over the side of the boat and I tied a tin bucket, you know tied a bucket to the rope. And then I tied the rope from there to a winch handle on our trawl winch, you know? And the middle of the night the bucket went Bang, Bang, Bang. And we all ran out and there was nothing there, it had broken free, it had broken the line. I can’t remember what it did, I think it might have taken the hook, broke the chain or broke the rope or something. But then we thought "Oh shit," and we all went back to bed, and then we get up in the morning and steamed out an hour and a half, and went to shoot the trawl gear away, and when the skipper went to undo the brakes on the winch, the brake handle had all got bent because it was just like a stainless steel shaft with a turning handle on it. And it had all got bent sideways like this, and he couldn’t turn it. So, he wasn’t very happy with me about that. And there was a bit of a yelling at me, and then he got his big hammer out and straightened this thing out, and we managed to carry on fishing. But that was the end, we weren’t allowed to play around with trying to catch Sharks after that.

CRAWFORD: But you reckon that was a decent sized fish?

ANDERSON: Big fish, yeah.

CRAWFORD: And there are only a handful of fish that could get that big?

ANDERSON: Yeah there’s really only one. Like, we’ve caught heaps of Makos and a Mako wouldn’t part your line like that. 

CRAWFORD: You had said that your mates onboard had said there were White Pointers in this bay off Codfish Island?

ANDERSON: Yeah, yeah. 

CRAWFORD: Was that a bay where it was common that people would clean their fish?

ANDERSON: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Once again, cause and effect. Are the Sharks there, and then people come and clean their fish? Or that’s a cleaning place, and it attracts the Sharks?

ANDERSON: They’re definitely feeding off of the boats there. 

CRAWFORD: For the fishing boats, they’re looking for an island they can get in behind. On the lee side right?

ANDERSON: That's right, yeah.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Any other sightings? From you?

ANDERSON: We come across a big Sea Lion one day - a male Sea Lion.

CRAWFORD: Where and when?

ANDERSON: About six miles straight out here [Karitane]. It might not even be that, maybe four miles. 

CRAWFORD: Ok, but it’s offshore, by a ways.

ANDERSON: Yeah and we come across this because we’re looking for Dolphins, the charter boat that we do. We've got a swim with Dolphins permit, so we take people swimming with Dolphins. And we’re steaming out there and we’re scanning like that. Nice day, looking real hard. And then saw something over there you know? Drive over there ...

CRAWFORD: Saw something moving or just saw something?

ANDERSON: Something. And we thought, "What's that?" I’m actually the front of the boat cruise, driving the boat, up the rail. And we got to about probably 50 feet away from it, and then I recognized it was a Sea Lion. And it was dead. And it's pretty much whole throat was like, there was a perfect bite you know? Like the perfect round bite, there was no mistaking. It wasn’t nibbled away by a thousand fish, or anything, it was one big bite. And it had taken a bite that would probably be about, you know 20, 30 kilos sort of bite. You know, like a big bite like this. Chunk of flesh. A real big chunk of flesh. And I just looked at it like that and then, the guy's yelling, "What is it? What is it?" you know? And I’m going "Nothing, Nothing."

CRAWFORD: These are your tourists you were going to be putting in the water to swim with the Dolphins?

ANDERSON: Yeah, so we didn’t swim anyone that day. 

CRAWFORD: Where and when was that again?

ANDERSON: Not that long ago, probably about five or six years ago. 

CRAWFORD: But I mean - you’re out there all the time. 

ANDERSON: Yeah, like the amount of time we’re out there and we don’t see them. 

CRAWFORD: You don’t see Sharks or Shark incidences?

ANDERSON: We don’t see White Pointers.

CRAWFORD: That’s what I mean. You don’t see White Pointers or evidence of White Pointers very frequently?

ANDERSON: No, no.

CRAWFORD: Any other sightings, indirect or direct.

ANDERSON: Well there was a sighting only last year when we sailed the yacht up to Oamaru and just off Hampden, only two or three miles off Hampden we saw a big fish on the surface, and he was definitely feeding. And he was like turning and turning ...

CRAWFORD: He was busy?

ANDERSON: Yeah. He was busy and I got my camera out and told the crew to drive towards it. But he wasn't very good at driving the boat, and he actually went too fast and pulled the boat out of gear and sort of basically drove right over the top of it, and spooked it - whatever it was doing. So, we never got a picture.

CRAWFORD: But did see any other signs? Did you see blood in the water or anything else?

ANDERSON: Nah, no. Saw nothing at all. And it was really, like I was quite amazed at how quick it turned, and how sharp and you know ... like there was a lot of water splashing off its tail. 

CRAWFORD: When you lost sight of it, had it scooted? Like could you tell that it had scooted?

ANDERSON: Yeah. 

CRAWFORD: Or just no longer there?

ANDERSON: No, no it scooted. We spooked it. And it was just… gone.

CRAWFORD: You saw the tail turn or something? 

ANDERSON: Yeah, yeah. And then it just went away like that. We got within probably 60 feet, 80 feet of it before it took off. 

CRAWFORD: Oh really? So it took off when you were 60 feet ...

ANDERSON: As soon as he realized we were there. Normally we were seeing animals and that, we would just kind of coast up to them or keep some distance so we don’t actually get photos or whatever. 

CRAWFORD: But the fact that it would get spooked off whatever it was doing ... Because you said that animal was busy doing something.

ANDERSON: Yeah. 

CRAWFORD: And you felt it was your closing the distance that caused that animal to flee?

ANDERSON: Yeah. We definitely spooked him, and then he took off. So I didn’t get a good confirmed sighting of that one, but the fin definitely looked White Pointery to me. 

CRAWFORD: You’ve seen them before ...

ANDERSON: Yeah, it was quite a big fin. And you know there was approximately 6 to 8 feet between the fins. 

CRAWFORD: And how far offshore?

ANDERSON: About two miles, I suppose. 

CRAWFORD: Depth?

ANDERSON: 20 fathoms.

CRAWFORD: Alright, anything else?

ANDERSON: Nah that’s it.

CRAWFORD: So, in your 50 years on the water, you have seen White Pointers on roughly 5 different occasions, right?

ANDERSON: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: That’s about once a decade. For somebody who’s out there a lot. 

ANDERSON: Yeah. It’s not much. It’s not very much at all.

CRAWFORD: Throughout the whole period, were there times
when there seemed to be more of them?

ANDERSON: Oh, I think there was more. There was more evidence of them earlier than there is now, I think. 

CRAWFORD: Like the first 25 years, compared to the last 25 years? 

ANDERSON: Yeah. 

5. WHITE POINTER ENCOUNTERS - EXPERIENCES OF OTHERS

CRAWFORD: What have you heard from other people about their experiences with White Pointers? 

ANDERSON: No, we don’t really talk about White Pointers that much. Oh, you know, there was talk about them at St. Clair beach because of the surfies got bitten there, you know. That guy that lost his life. So we knew St. Clair beach was ... it was a bit of a hotspot for White Pointers. A few have been caught in the nets and things there, and things like that. Lots of sightings.

CRAWFORD: And when you say ‘we heard’, that’s basically as a kid or ...

ANDERSON: As a kid.

CRAWFORD: You heard about that, it was in the news? 

ANDERSON: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: But it wasn’t something that was like - right off here?

ANDERSON: No. But we sort of knew that it was a bit of a spot. I did hear stories of a White Pointer swimming right up the Karitane River. It went right up half a kilometre up the river or something, and then came back out. But yeah, that was when I was really, really small. And I don’t really remember much about it. But I remember people talking about it, yeah. And it was debatable whether it was a Basking Shark or a White Pointer, but it was a big Shark. 

CRAWFORD: Roughly when was that?

ANDERSON: That would have to be in the 60’s. 

CRAWFORD: When you were a young kid?

ANDERSON: I only heard stories after it happened, you know? That was old-timers telling me about it.

CRAWFORD: Ok. I see what you mean. That was the old-timers from their generation, telling you about that Shark.

ANDERSON: Yeah, yeah. 

CRAWFORD: Once you were in the fishery, and the old-timers telling their stories and that type of thing, did they have any other stories about White Pointers?

ANDERSON: No. I probably got told stories, but I don’t really recall them, you know? 

CRAWFORD: Ok. Getting back to Basking Sharks in the Foveaux Strait ...

ANDERSON: And also right in here. We used to get them a lot here. Right in Warrington Bay. And that brings me to the story of where KZ-7 was supposedly swimming around the place. And at that time, sightings had been of KZ-7 along these beaches. But I also saw Basking Sharks at that same time of the sightings. I kind of thought to myself, because the Basking Sharks would feed right along the beaches, go along the beaches. 

CRAWFORD: Parallel to the beach?

ANDERSON: Yeah. 

CRAWFORD: What kind of depth are we talking?

ANDERSON: Only metres. Sometimes you know only three or four metres of water. Really shallow. 

CRAWFORD: Swimming water?

ANDERSON: Yeah. 

CRAWFORD: KZ-7. When was this roughly?

ANDERSON: I was on the Lady Ann at the time, so it was maybe 1986 or something like that.

CRAWFORD: And from the first time that you heard about KZ-7, until the last time you knew people were saying there’s a White Pointer KZ-7. Was that one season, one year, multiple years? What?

ANDERSON: I think it could have been multiple years. I just can’t recall now. I don’t know whether it was multiple years. But I know at the time I knew people that had spotted it. 

CRAWFORD: You knew people who had spotted a Basking Shark or people who had spotted something that was called KZ-7?

ANDERSON: Yeah, they saw something that they called KZ-7, so there was a guy called Warren Lewis ...

CRAWFORD: A commercial fisherman?

ANDERSON: No, he’s an amateur, he’s done a lot of fishing. And, he used to hunt. He liked to catch Sharks. 

CRAWFORD: A recreational Shark fisherman. 

ANDERSON: Yeah. And he caught a lot of Sharks. He’s a member of the Tautuku Fishing Club and all the rest of it. He might have been president, he’s one of these guys that you know, still to date he’s catching Sharks and hanging them up and taking pictures of them, you know? 

CRAWFORD: Ok. Warren Lewis, a big Shark recreational fisherman. Big like he went after larger Makos? 

ANDERSON: He could catch White Pointers, and he would catch them you know? Also loved Makos. 

CRAWFORD: Where did he have his boat?

ANDERSON: Port Chalmers. Fished around Taiaroa Head.

CRAWFORD: Still does or doesn’t?

ANDERSON: Yeah, no. He still does he was out only months ago trying to catch big Sharks. And caught a Shark, tried to, brought it home, a big Mako. Brought it home, then he had to take it to the dump to get rid of it, things like this you know? And I’m pretty sure he had sightings, personal sightings of KZ-7. 

CRAWFORD: And that kind of sighting happened at the same time ...

ANDERSON: That the Basking Sharks were here.

CRAWFORD: That you saw Basking Sharks - plural?

ANDERSON: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: And those Basking Sharks that you saw, were clearly Basking Sharks, because you saw the head, the mouth, the fin. 

ANDERSON: I got a really good look at them, yeah. 

CRAWFORD: As in a couple of metres away or something?

ANDERSON: A couple of metres, yeah. We stopped the boat in front of them, and they came straight for us, and then just sort of ducked under the boat and then came back up the other side. 

CRAWFORD: Do you have any indication whatsoever, that Basking Sharks show any interest in boats or Humans? 

ANDERSON: No, no. 

CRAWFORD: They’re just doing their thing?

ANDERSON: Yeah. It’s Humans that will go over to get closer to them. This time, we just got where they were, you could see by the two fins, exactly which way they were going. We just got in front of them, and as they saw the boat they quietly went down like that and then up the other side, came back up, and carried on their way. I think we might have put ourselves in that position two or three times, and that happened every time. 

CRAWFORD: And for Basking Sharks, is it a mix - sometimes you’ll see them by themselves, and sometimes you’ll see them in groups?

ANDERSON: I’ve seen them more in groups than I have by themselves. I don’t think I can ever remember seeing one by itself ...

CRAWFORD: That’s an important observation, because if people were seeing the same kinds of Basking Sharks in the same kinds of circumstances as you, then they would see multiple Sharks. More than one individual.

ANDERSON: Could have done, yeah. There was quite a few Basking Sharks caught around that time as well. 

CRAWFORD: Caught by setnetters?

ANDERSON: Yeah. 

CRAWFORD: Not targeted, they just got tangled? 

ANDERSON: Yeah. And when I told you that I was fishing over on the West Coast here, on a boat called the Whitby, we actually caught two of them in our trawls. One on one trawl, and then one on another trawl.

CRAWFORD: You would figure they would know that this big thing's coming and avoid it?

ANDERSON: Yeah. They only just fit in it, in the cod end of the trawl. When you get them on the deck, they’re so heavy and big it’s a real problem to get them off.

CRAWFORD: What are we talking like?

ANDERSON: 25 feet, 30 feet. The first one we got was like, we pulled it right up the ramp onto the boat, and once we had it on the boat we had problems getting it off because we only had a little wire and that.

CRAWFORD: Was it dead or alive?

ANDERSON: Dead. And the second one we caught we knew what to do. We didn't bring it up the ramp. We left it down the ramp, and pulled the string and let it go, you know? But there was also a lot of Basking Sharks getting caught by trawlers in this area here, the Canterbury Bight. And I actually had a relative who was fishing up there, and they actually had an electric chainsaw on the boat - because at times they had to chop these things up to get them off the boat. They couldn’t handle them.

CRAWFORD: These were trawlers?

ANDERSON: Yeah. They would take the fins off the carcass because you could sell the fins. And the liver. They used to take the liver as well. The liver was worth, a thousand dollars for the liver alone. They were worth a couple of thousand.

CRAWFORD: Screwed up the trawl, but you had something to sell for the…

ANDERSON: Yeah, yeah. And they had these big electric chainsaws so they could chop them up into pieces big enough to handle. 

CRAWFORD: Was that prior to the quota management system? 

ANDERSON: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: When the quota management system came in, were there provisions for the Basking Sharks?

ANDERSON: I’m not sure. But they kind of disappeared, they don’t come back anymore. You know they were here in the 80s and that. And I haven’t seen a Basking Shark for 20 odd years you know?

CRAWFORD: Do you think that there was some cause and effect in there? That it was related to the harvest? 

ANDERSON: Don’t know. There was a bit of accidental by-catch, but I don’t think ... unless they were being targeted in other countries or something. But they stopped, like boom, stopped. So never saw another one. Whereas we would get lots of sightings, we would see regular sightings every year. I'd get 10 sightings a year. 

CRAWFORD: Up to the middle 80s?

ANDERSON: Yeah, and then it all kind of just stopped. 

CRAWFORD: Let's get back to KZ-7. Where was this fish being seen?

ANDERSON: It was all around Otago [Taiaroa] Head. Round this area here. 

CRAWFORD: Both sides?

ANDERSON: Yeah. 

CRAWFORD: And it was surfers and recreational fisherman?

ANDERSON: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Were there any commercial guys that saw this fish?

ANDERSON: Not that I know of. Not that I know of. It was mainly talked from Port Chalmers. 

CRAWFORD: Do you know anybody personally, who saw KZ-7?

ANDERSON: I think that guy Warren Lewis saw it. The Shark guy. 

CRAWFORD: Would Warren Lewis know the difference between a Basking Shark and a White Pointer?

ANDERSON: Yes.

CRAWFORD: Alright so, potentially he would be a very good lead to call up on that one.

ANDERSON: Yeah, he’ll be able to put you onto people who saw it and had encounters with it.

CRAWFORD: Have you seen, or have you heard about White Pointers in other waters around the South or North Island?

ANDERSON: The only place I’ve really heard much about White Pointers is this place, the Chatham Islands. Lots of sightings there from guys I know, fished there and stuff. 

CRAWFORD: You spent time up north?

ANDERSON: Yeah, I never saw a Shark up there or on the West Coast…

CRAWFORD: Or never heard of one?

ANDERSON: No. 

CRAWFORD: Other than the Cook Strait or Marlborough Sound area? 

ANDERSON: I know they’re up there, but I don't know much about that.

CRAWFORD: How do you know that they’re up there?

ANDERSON: I think I’ve seen pictures of the fisherman on the beaches that have caught them in their nets, and things like that. Old sort of stuff.

CRAWFORD: With regards to other people, especially the old-time fisherman. The guys that were fishing and perhaps were retired by about the time you were coming up through the system. Had they said anything about places and times, patterns that they had recognized for White Pointers? Do you remember anything like that? 

ANDERSON: No. 

CRAWFORD: When you think about other commercial operators, guys who were out there a lot like you, were they telling generally the same kinds of stories in the same kinds of places? 

ANDERSON: Yeah, there was another setnet boat that worked out the canyons here, and I’m pretty sure they caught White Pointers, one or two, as well. Fishing that canyon. But there was also, I remember seeing pictures and documentation of ones that were caught inside the Otago Harbour. 

CRAWFORD: Ok - just before we go on, who was that other setnetter?

ANDERSON: Mac Chaplin. He had a boat called the Lethal Weapon at the time. I’m pretty sure they’ve caught some.

CRAWFORD: Another longliner gets angled up with a White Pointer? 

ANDERSON: Yeah. 

CRAWFORD: Was that out of Port Chalmers?

ANDERSON: No out of here, Karitane still.

CRAWFORD: Ok, what about those Port Chalmers guys?

ANDERSON: Well, they were old. There are black and white photos I’ve seen somewhere, and they’ve got big skiff rowboats and sails and stuff like that. And they’ve got pictures of big White Pointers, you know? 

CRAWFORD: When you think of those guys, these old-timers in Port Chalmers, what names come to mind?

ANDERSON: Probably guys like Ate Heineman.

CRAWFORD: Yeah, I’m working with him. 

ANDERSON: And the other guy I told you was Bob Street. He’s a fisheries scientist, but he’s done a lot of diving. 

CRAWFORD: And where was he out of?

ANDERSON: Dunedin. He’s Dunedin. 

CRAWFORD: But he was an oceanographer or something?

ANDERSON: Yeah. And he’s done a lot of dives. Lots and lots of dives. And I’m pretty sure he was telling me a story, he was diving off Oamaru on a Groper patch, you know? Which is a big patch of fish. A big schooling, a regular place where this fish was schooling. And he told me got in the water one time, the second time he’d dived on the patch and he had to get out of the water because there was a White Pointer.

CRAWFORD: Was it just an observation, or that animal had showed some kind of interest?

ANDERSON: I can’t really remember, but I think he said it swam round him a couple of times. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. Let's talk specifically about Otago Harbour. Why do you think the White Pointers were there?

ANDERSON: Oh, I don’t know really. Food.  I always think they’re constantly looking for food but, you know, the water might have been a little bit warmer there…

CRAWFORD: Maybe feeding on fish in Otago Harbour?

ANDERSON: There’s a lot of fish in the Otago Harbour. There can be yeah. Summertime there can be a lot of fish in there. Like Barracouta and Mackerel and Kahawai.

CRAWFORD: So, even in terms of fish as prey, there could be plenty of reasons for those Sharks to come in? In terms of observations, do you know people who see White Sharks without necessarily having them entangled in nets or caught on a hook? 

ANDERSON: No. Not really.

CRAWFORD: It’s not like there are a lot of fin sightings.

ANDERSON: I think they’re shy animals. That’s my opinion. I think they’re there but you just don’t see them you know?

CRAWFORD: And when you do see them, it’s only because you are at the surface and they happen to come up to the surface for some reason?

ANDERSON: Yeah. I think they’re there, and I think you know, they could be there more often than we realise. That’s my opinion. 

CRAWFORD: And in that case, it’s quite possible that those animals are still going up the harbour, back and forth. Do you know anybody who has had any observations of White Pointers in Otago Harbour?

ANDERSON: Nah. I think I’ve only seen pictures, and I don’t know whether I saw them at the Early Settlers' Museum [Dunedin] or somewhere.

CRAWFORD: But nobody in your knowledge network, there were no stories that other people shared with you?

ANDERSON: I can’t remember names or anything, but I do remember seeing pictures. And I’m not 100% sure where I saw those pictures. 

CRAWFORD: That's fine. I'll track them down. Last question about Otago Harbour, so in terms of the two fishing boats ...

ANDERSON: Otakou.

CRAWFORD: Where is Otakou?

ANDERSON: Otakou is south of Wellers Rock. So you’ve come to Otakau wharf. The Monarch is there, the tourist launch.

CRAWFORD: Do you know the skipper of the Monarch is?

ANDERSON: No I don’t. But they’re quite new skippers. 

CRAWFORD: Has the Monarch only being doing charters for a short while?

ANDERSON: No, it’s being doing this for a long time. 

CRAWFORD: Do you know the boats that dock at Otakau?

ANDERSON: Yeah. So, the Triton docks there. And that is Neil McDonald. And the other one is Teone Taiaroa, and the name of his boat is the Vanguard. Both those guys have been fishing a long time. 

CRAWFORD: Have you ever seen or heard of Sharks in general, White Pointers in particular following fishing boats?

ANDERSON: Yeah there was a guy who fished with ... a local guy who fished with Joe Cave’s son at Stewart Island. 

CRAWFORD: Stu Cave.

ANDERSON: Yeah Stu. He mentioned about one Shark there. I think they called it Rosy or something like that, or they called it some name because it had a number of hooks and things around his face. It had lots of something to do with hooks, and it was like Jaws. I can’t remember the story exactly, but that fish, he saw it lots of times. It followed his boat, but I have had Sharks following me on numerous occasions.

CRAWFORD: You have had?

ANDERSON: Yeah. 

CRAWFORD: Makos?

ANDERSON: Yeah. Definitely following the boat because what we’ll be doing, charter fishing. Taking people out for fishing. And this has happened in years when they were ‘sharky’ years, you know - when there was a lot around. And you’d fish on a rock and next minute, a big Shark would turn up and they’d just sort of start cutting a wee fish off and stuff like that, so we’d move. And we’d move the boat a mile or so, and then you’d fish there for another half an hour and all of a sudden the Sharks got you again. 

CRAWFORD: And you don’t know what kind of Shark at this point?

ANDERSON: No I keep thinking it’s the same Shark. You know because we’d move and then another 20 minutes later ... its sort of a pattern like that. And that’s happened quite a few occasions on me. And then the guys like Warren Lewis that used to Shark fish, he used to look for us when we were out on the canyons.

CRAWFORD: And he would deliberately fish around you?

ANDERSON: Yeah. One time I saw him, we hadn’t even seen a Shark all day, and he just put a rod down like that and boom just like that straight away. Shark you know? So the Sharks were obviously, we had them sort of like semi-trained. 

CRAWFORD: Right. The Sharks were responding.

ANDERSON: They knew that we were a source of food. And they followed the boat, and they recognized the boat. 

CRAWFORD: Training usually brings in the issue of memory. Like the idea that the next time they don't even necessarily have to smell the food or see the food, they associate the place or the boat or whatever, right?

ANDERSON: Yeah, yeah. 

CRAWFORD: Ok, so when you’re a commercial guy operating your boat. Sorry, I should have asked you, do you clean on station or do you clean while you're underway?

ANDERSON: Both.

CRAWFORD: Both? So, when you clean on station, you see the fish come to where you’re dumping?

ANDERSON: Yeah, yeah. 

CRAWFORD: And have you heard of any White Pointers doing that? 

ANDERSON: I can’t recall people saying they’ve had White Pointers come around the boat, while they’re cleaning. I haven’t really heard.

CRAWFORD: If you had a follower underway, you wouldn’t necessarily see? With the wake and once again it’s got to be relatively calm right?

ANDERSON: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: And you’re busy doing other things. 

ANDERSON: Yeah, well the Ministry of Fisheries, one time they were trawling and that, and we were hauling in our net, and they did a fly-by with a chopper, you know? And they were looking down on the boat and they could actually see a big something really big behind our trawl. 

CRAWFORD: And they radioed to you?

ANDERSON: I think he actually took a picture of it, and told me about it some other time. 

CRAWFORD: When was this and who was it?

ANDERSON: He still works for the Ministry of Fisheries at the moment.

CRAWFORD: MPI?

ANDERSON: Yeah. Trevor Bills. 

CRAWFORD: Where would his office be?

ANDERSON: Dunedin. So, it was him and another guy, two of them on board. And he said to me, "As you lifted the net up, we saw something really big behind it, a big fish, did you see it?" And we were going, "No, we didn’t see anything."

CRAWFORD: This was an MPI chopper?

ANDERSON: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: And what maybe 100, 200 feet up?

ANDERSON: Yeah, they took pictures of us.

CRAWFORD: Roughly when was this?

ANDERSON: It was when I had the Tania. So it was, you know, quite a long time ago. 

CRAWFORD: Late 80s?

ANDERSON: Yeah. Early 90s. 

CRAWFORD: And Trevor is still with MPI now?

ANDERSON: Yeah, he’s still there - so he may recall that story. We still don’t know whether it was a Shark, or what it was.

CRAWFORD: It doesn’t matter. It was something big. There are only a few things that get that big. And if they had a picture, they probably know pretty well how big it was.

ANDERSON: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: What do you know about White Pointer attacks that have taken place? Where have they taken place? That you know of. 

ANDERSON: I only really know of one of them, and that was at St. Clair beach where the surfer was bitten. That’s all I know of I think.

CRAWFORD: In terms of attacks where it wasn’t fatal, have you heard about them? 

ANDERSON: No not so much. 

CRAWFORD: You’ve mentioned about KZ-7, but did you hear anything about KZ-7 being described as a Level 4 Shark?

ANDERSON: No. I haven’t heard of anyone. I don’t know of anything. Although, this is a bit of a weird story I was in Tasmania a couple of months ago and I was out on this crayfishing boat, and we’re driving past this island called Slipper Island or something, I can’t remember the name of it. And the guy on the boat, he goes “Oh, you can smell the Seals” you know? And I go “Yeah, yeah.” Well, I couldn’t actually smell them. But he was going on about how reeky they were. And I said “Do you get White Pointers around here?” And he says “No, we don’t.” The very next day, a diver was taken and eaten, killed by a White Pointer. The very next day, just there. 

CRAWFORD: This is Tasmania. 

ANDERSON: This is Tasmania, about 2 months ago. They were diving for Scallops on hookah. You know like the breathing apparatus? It has a compressor on the beam of the boat, and so him and his daughter are diving for Scallops and…

CRAWFORD: I read that. Yes, his daughter was there.

ANDERSON: That’s right, this was the very next day after I was there. And what happened was they’re going back up. She went up and got on the boat and thought “He was following me, why hasn’t he come back up?” So, she put her hookah on and he was pinned on the bottom by this White Pointer. And when she got in the water and started swimming down to him, he saw her and decided to come up. And as he came up the White Pointer got him and she witnessed the whole thing. 

CRAWFORD: How did you hear that story? 

ANDERSON: Well first of all, I heard it on the news. 

CRAWFORD: You were still in the country there?

ANDERSON: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Tasmania?

ANDERSON: Yeah. And then I rung up the guy on the boat that was with it, and asked him what happened. And he told me everything. Because he was pretty much in the zone and heard it all on the radio.

CRAWFORD: The victim was trying to get back up to the surface, or was he trying to warn her?

ANDERSON: Trying to get her. Yeah they reckon that was the problem. So he was on the bottom, pinned there waiting for the Shark to leave. 

CRAWFORD: Did they ever recover him?

ANDERSON: Yeah, they did, after it happened - quite a while. 

CRAWFORD: It wasn’t a consumption again? 

ANDERSON: No, it consumed some of him. So I think he was … lost a leg I think. And bled out.

CRAWFORD: You said that you dove extensively for Pāua, back in the day?

ANDERSON: Yeah since I was a kid, we used to Pāua dive. Done a lot of diving. We were big divers. Like that was what we did all the time you know? Anytime we weren’t fishing, we were away Pāua diving somewhere. And I’ve dived commercially and casually for Pāuas at Stewart Island. I’ve done a lot of diving around there. Like I said I’ve never seen a Shark down there other than the ones in Oban. But I don’t hear of more Shark stories from boats down there. I don’t hear crayfisherman saying, “There’s Sharks swimming up to my boat all the time.” I don’t hear them, I only hear of the Shark cage diving happening pretty much at that same place, there’s some encounters there.

CRAWFORD: Where they’re putting the bait in the water and they're chumming there at that site?

ANDERSON: Yeah, I’ve heard of people that can go to that site and pull up and the Sharks come. 

CRAWFORD: Regardless of whether the cages are there or not?

ANDERSON: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Alright that’s an important observation. Did you hear that from boaties or from fisherman or …

ANDERSON: No, no - from a commercial fisherman. He’s friends with my son, and them went on a barbecue out of Bluff one day, and he pulled up to that spot where they Shark dive, and he says “We’ll show you the White Pointers.” They’re inquisitive and they come to the boat. I said “Have you chummed for them or anything?” And he goes “No, apparently you just drive up there, and stop the boat or leave the motor running, and if they’re there, they’ll come and have a look at you.” That day they waited there for 10 odd minutes, 15 minutes, and none turned up - so they left. But he’s obviously done that other times. Pulled up and showed them… and then they got in the water and dived. 

CRAWFORD: For Pāua?

ANDERSON: Yeah, for Pāua and Flounder and other things.

CRAWFORD: In the same place?

ANDERSON: No, no. 

CRAWFORD: Elsewhere?

ANDERSON: Yeah, so he wasn’t worried about the White Pointers away from there.

CRAWFORD: I think that’s an important observation. When a local person says, “C’mon, let’s go and see the White Pointers.” And they didn’t take any berley, they don’t take any chum. They just go to the place?

ANDERSON: That’s right. 

CRAWFORD: I wonder if that would have been a place that you would have taken people to 20 years ago, prior to the cage diving?

ANDERSON: It wouldn’t be. You wouldn’t have even known it. I’ve even dived all those islands, you know? And Bench Island and all round there. Went down there on several dive trips on Deckstar, was the name of the boat, with Ate [Heineman] on those trips. We dived all round there, all round those islands for Crayfish and Pāua. Never any, didn’t even hear anyone discuss the word ‘Shark.’

CRAWFORD: That was then, what about now?

ANDERSON: To me it seems like the Sharks aren’t all over the Island, but they’re there in specific places. And you know, it’s sometimes like [the Shark cage dive operations], it’s a conservation measure, it’s awareness and they’re gathering information you know? From a scientific point of view, what they’re possibly learning or what could be learnt from their activities is probably quite beneficial you know? And they’re only doing it in one spot. And so to me it’s like there’s plenty of coastline, then go dive somewhere else. 

CRAWFORD: The question was whether or not the activity at that location, especially if these animals are moving around, whether this changes the animals’ behaviour, when say it goes into Otago Harbour. Maybe now it’s no longer so shy. You know? Now there’s somebody who’s just doing some spearfishing or whatever, right? 

ANDERSON: Well, that's I think the question that needs to be answered by talking to lots of fisherman by saying, “Are you seeing?” I think Stewart Island people are saying that they are seeing more encounters now. They’re having more encounters. 

CRAWFORD: Right so it’s the frequency. Partly it’s the frequency, but partly it’s the possibility of change in level of intensity for those interactions.

ANDERSON: Well, there seems to be a lot of Sharks down there [Stewart Island]. But we’re not seeing them here [Karitane-Otago Peninsula]. We’re not seeing them. We’re out on the water all the time. We’re in the harbours, we’re out here. We’re not seeing any change, we’re not seeing anything different at all. In fact, we’re seeing less. So, whether they swim past here or not. And no one I know up and down this coast is seeing more.

CRAWFORD: Or any different behaviour?

ANDERSON: Or different behaviour. We’re not seeing anything. The only place that there’s even been a change is at that island.

Copyright © 2017 Allan Anderson and Steve Crawford