Teach a girl to fish 

What is Nan eating out of that ashtray Dad?  

My daughter, Maia, was engrossed watching her Nan shucking the pāua from its shell.   My mum always ate them raw, with a bit of lemon.  

It was Maia’s first time in Marlborough.  She was only 5.  I had moved to the city long before she was born. I wanted a modern job. Far from the small-town life, small town mindsets.  But that meant that Maia had grown up more accustomed to McDonalds than being a hunter-gatherer, like we had been as kids. 

Maia walked over to her Nan and took the shell into her tiny hands.  She traced her fingers over the blue, green, and silver lining.  

Do you want to go diving Maia?  I took Maia in my arms and my mum shot me a big grin.  Me and Mum used to have free-diving competitions back in the day.  Chuck on a wetsuit, take a big deep breath and before you know it the cold water is hitting your face.  We’d come back with our arms full of kai moana, and our hearts full from the experience.  Coming back and having mates around, we’d always put on a big BBQ in the backyard, watching the hazy sunset over the Richmond Ranges.      

When the water hit my face and chest, I felt the same rush I used to.  A slow exhale was key to making your way down to the sea floor.  Man, it felt like meditation.  Coming back up, seeing the soft waves ripple above the surface before breaking through.   

I could see the changes since I had left.  There wasn’t much around. And that was here, in Waiharakeke.  I could only imagine how bad things were in Kaikōura, where the sea-floor had lifted the pāua beds into the air.  My friends had told me how at Marfells beach the smell of salty sea lettuce now choked through their tents on hot summer nights.  You’d drag long laces of the stuff behind you trying to get through the shallows. 

I came out with what I could.  Maia and Mum were walking along the beach, tracing love hearts into the soft sand with a stick.  

Mum blamed the commercial fishers.  Sometimes she said she would find their fishing nets and plastic disappearing into the ocean.  She was sick of being told not to use plastic bags and plastic straws, when everyone knew how much rubbish these commercial fishers dragged behind them.  She showed Maia photos of the North Pacific Gyre, of the rubbish choking the waters there. 

It’s the disconnection, Mum told me.  Those who are nurtured by the land, will nurture it in return.  

I knew she was right.  To really live, to care for Maia, we had to live connected.  Maia had to feel the cold water on her skin, see and feel the ocean and smell the salty air. So, we came home to the wither hills.  And I taught my girl how to fish.