Where are the Greens while our rockpools are raped by hordes of Chinese harvesters?
As the sun rises over Auckland’s battered coastlines, another low tide reveals the scars of environmental rape. Rockpools stripped bare, ecosystems decimated, and marine life vanishing faster than a politician’s promises.
In Whangaparaoa, particularly around Army Bay, hordes of Chinese families and groups descend like invading armies, armed with buckets, piano wire, and an insatiable greed that leaves nothing alive in their wake. They’ve already wiped out the shores closer to the Auckland CBD and North Shore, forcing them to travel further north to rape and ravage what’s left.
Mark Lenton, the tireless Army Bay resident and founder of Protect Whangaparaoa Rockpools (PWR), has documented it all. Tiny kina the size of Kinder Surprise eggs yanked out, cockles no bigger than thumbnails harvested en masse, even seaweed and starfish hauled away in industrial quantities.
But where, oh where, is the Green Party in all this?
Once the self-proclaimed guardians of New Zealand’s environment, they’ve gone eerily silent on this homegrown catastrophe. Remember the days of co-leaders like the late Jeanette Fitzsimons? She was a fierce advocate for our natural world, championing biodiversity and sustainability with a passion that could move mountains, or at least protect rockpools. If Fitzsimons were still with us, she’d be thundering from the rooftops about busloads of Chinese harvesters turning up at low tide to savage our coastlines, demanding immediate action to halt the pillage.
Instead, today’s Greens seem more interested in virtue-signalling on distant shores than saving the ones lapping at our feet.
Why the selective outrage? It’s simple. They prefer screaming about overseas causes they know they can’t truly influence, like freeing Palestine or meddling in Venezuela’s affairs, because it lets them play the hero without the messy accountability of fixing problems at home.
Meanwhile, our intertidal zones are being raped raw, with irreparable damage to habitats for seabirds, fish, and the very foundation of our marine ecosystems. Ngāti Manuhiri’s Nicola MacDonald has called it out as extensive devastation, yet the Greens have whūk all to say about it.
Perhaps they’re too busy pushing gender ideology, advocating for men dressed as women to invade women’s spaces, to notice the actual invasion happening on our beaches.
And let’s not ignore the elephant, or should I say, the dragon, in the room. Green MP Lawrence Xu-Nan. As the party’s first Chinese-origin MP, born in Tianjin and a migrant himself, is it any wonder the Greens tiptoe around this issue?
Criticising the predominantly Chinese groups responsible for this coastal carnage might ruffle feathers within their own ranks. Xu-Nan has been vocal on education and ethnic communities, but on protecting Auckland’s coasts from over-harvesting? Not a peep.
It’s hypocrisy at its finest. Preaching environmental stewardship while possibly ignoring the rape of our rockpools because it might offend a key demographic or their own colleague.
This weekend, real action is brewing where the Greens fear to tread. The Protect Whangaparaoa Rockpools (PWR) group is holding a peaceful protest on Saturday, 17 January 2026, at the Army Bay boat ramp, kicking off at 10am and running until 2pm.
This well-supported gathering focuses on demanding protection for our rockpools and intertidal zones through urgent law changes. A section 186A two-year gathering ban, enforcement of the Ngāti Manuhiri rāhui, an end to the intensive harvesting of all marine plant and animal life, and education to foster conservation and respect for our ecosystems.
If you’re in Auckland and crave a protest with tangible impact, far more meaningful than chanting about far-flung conflicts, join the protestors at Shakespeare Regional Park. This is about reclaiming our shores from the hordes who treat them like disposable buffets.
Greens, it’s time to rediscover your roots. Ditch the international posturing and face the rape happening in your backyard. Or admit you’re no longer the party of the environment, just another bunch of ideologues more concerned with global optics than local realities.
Our rockpools can’t wait for your awakening. They’re being decimated now.
Protect Whangaparaoa Rockpools founder and Army Bay resident Mark Lenton featured on More FM on Tuesday, speaking about the ongoing destruction of the coastline around Whangaparaoa and the urgent need for action. Lenton discussed the scale of over-harvesting in local rockpools and used the interview to raise awareness about the upcoming protest aimed at protecting the area for future generations.
A personal note for paid subscribers
This is a cause I genuinely believe is worth standing up for.
Some of my earliest memories are of walking across the rocks with my old man. I would have been about two years old. He would crouch down, dip his hand into a rockpool, pull out a kina and crack it open on the rocks for me to eat right there. Sometimes it was an oyster. Sometimes it was just showing me what lived in the pools. That was my introduction to the coast, to food, and to respect for where it comes from…
