August 2011 Article

Max Hartley’s boat Marlborough snapped in 1950, alongside West Quay, Ahuriri, Napier.

In last month's interview with Wairarapa fisher David Paton, he paid tribute to the fishers that lent a hand when he was starting out in the 70s. One of the names he mentioned in particular was Len Hartley, the longstanding, but now retired, Napier fisherman. Derek Johnson gets his side of the story.

Len Hartley might be enjoying his retirement, having hung up his lobster pots in his late 50s just around the millennium, but he still recalls the decades spent crayfishing off the east coast of the North Island with a certain satisfaction. "It was a good lifestyle."

Starting out as a carpenter, Len first went crayfishing out of Napier with his brother Peter (known locally as Wingnut) in the early 1960s. He's a second generation fisherman, but his Dad Max (aka Pike), after fishing through the war, suffered bankruptcy and bitterness during the 50s; he moved on to driving the pilot boat for the Napier Harbour Board. Hartley senior thus wasn't keen for his boys to go to sea, but they bought a boat together - the 43-foot Australian-built John A Settree - and did it anyway.

Len skippering Loaded Dice, his 35-foot pleasure boat.

The Hartleys' first boat - which at various times had sported a cutter or ketch rig (one or two masts) in addition to her diesel engine - had a varied career of her own, on both sides of the Tasman. She arrived in Port Chalmers in the early 50s, made her way to Napier, and back south in the 60s. She fished Stewart Island for some years before wrecking off the Island in about 1999 (the skipper made it ashore). The boat was heavily modified during her life (a freezer was added, and the wheelhouse moved around over the years) but is remembered fondly by all who sailed her.

In those early days, the brothers fished as far south as Uruti, in the Wairarapa. "We used to freeze the crayfish in those days, because we weren't allowed to tail at sea. We'd be away for 10 days or so but always come home with five or six tonne. We'd stay out there as long as the weather would let us and it was pretty good fishing."

After a couple of years, the brothers sold the boat and Len returned to carpentry for a spell. Then: "I bought a 30-foot boat called the Shar-Lei (named after two of Len's daughters), tidied her up and went crayfishing on my own." And Len literally was on his own. "I fished without crew for a few years until I got myself established." Wingnut eventually left fishing for good, having worked for others, most notably during the Chatham Island crayfish boom.

Len's next boat was the 36-foot Georgina, and her size enabled him to take on a couple of crew and work farther south. "With the smaller boat, I could only go as far as Broken Hills or Pourerere. Georgina let me work to the south of Cape Turnagain, as far as Herbertville. It had a little bit more speed and we could go away for three days and come home with a reasonable catch. That's when I started to really make some money."

Crayfish formed Len's staple catch during his time at sea, though he also long-lined for snapper and did a little set netting. In these prequota days, his catch went to a number of companies - Hawke's Bay Sea Products (previously Napier Fisheries), Selena Fisheries, and Jensen's Deep Sea Fisheries, among others.

Shar-Lei, named after two of Len’s daughters.

Len's long career encompassed the introduction of New Zealand's 200 mile limit - and, in 1986, the Quota Management System (QMS). Ultimately, the QMS contributed to Len retiring from the industry in 1998 - "I'd had a gutsful, with the way it was going with the bureaucracy and paperwork that went with the actual pleasure and challenge of fishing, and I'd just had enough" - but he has some sympathies with the goals of the QMS itself. "I do I agree with the QMS. I think it's done the crayfishing industry, in particular, a lot of good."

He may have had a "gutsful" of the paperwork, but Len was one of the lucky ones: despite the goal post moving, he did end up with crayfish quota of his own. "I came out of it quite well. They kept shifting the years fishing that was used to calculate our entitlement, but in the end I had nine tonnes of crayfish and was quite happy with that. When I retired, I sold the quota, sold the boat, sold the pots, sold the lot! The QMS was good to me in that respect, so I'm quite happy about it."

In some ways, Len sees similarities between commercial fishing now and back when his father was at sea. "It was like that when my Dad was fishing. In those days, you had to buy a boat to get the license, you couldn't just get a license. It feels the same now: you could have the flashest boat in the world but if you've got no quota, or access to quota, you're not going to fish."

Len accepts that the QMS can work and he has the insight of a few decades experience of the stock he fished. "I think nature has also had a lot to do with the crayfish stock's rejuvenation. In my experience, there's a cycle of about seven years. The stock'll hit a peak, then drop back a bit and in seven years hit another peak." But the size of catches is also related to the gear used in more recent years. "In the early days, we might go out with 60 pots but towards the end we were working 120 and 130 pots. Everybody was doing it, and I don't think it does the stock any good."

Len also remembers the coming of a ‘six-inch' rule - crays with tails under six inches long were put back in the water - that he reckons didn't do the crayfishing industry much good.

"Fishermen in those days wanted a carapace measurement, the same as they were using in Australia, but we got the tail measurement. Making the measurement could damage the fish: my interpretation of the ‘reasonable amount of pressure' allowed by the rules could be totally different between another fisherman's reasonable amount. But the current tail measurement system (a straight line between the tips of the two primary spines on the second tail segment) is a lot better than before, and doesn't harm the fish."

Georgina, Len's favourite: "I had a lot of pleasure out of this boat".

While reminiscing about his Dad's fishing boat, Len observed that people are often surprised by the size of some boats they see in old pictures. "Some were in the 45 to 60 foot range, but the horsepower of the boats in those days probably only about 150hp max. And I think this has an effect on the fishery: today if you don't have 450hp, you just can't compete."

Len also recalls the growth in beach-launched boats. "When we first started, there were very few beach boats from Napier down as far as Flat Point. There were quite a few beach boats at Flat Point so we never went there because you just can't compete with them. We slowly started to move north up into Castle Point and then into Porongahau, then Pourerere. We could compete with the bigger boats because there weren't so many of them. But now, fishing out of Napier, you can't go any further south than Bare Island or Kairakau, because you just can't compete with those guys. And beach boats used to be 20-odd foot and now they're 35 feet. I think in the little areas like Pourerere, Flat Point, Castle Point and even Napier, it's probably up to the fishermen to police themselves as regards gear, gear restrictions and all that sort of thing if you want to fish in those areas. You obey your own rules and that's as simple as it is, I think."

Len maintains contact with fishing off Napier, though he has some observations to make. "I wander around the wharf every now and again just to make sure they're doing it right! But the whole thing's changed... you don't see so many people socially now as you used to. Even up to the 80s and 90s, you would have a pub full of fishermen, especially during the 1980s orange roughy boom when everybody had a pocket full of money. It was quite good socially. But now you'd only get probably get half a dozen fishermen together and that would be it, because I think they're all working for nothing. They haven't got the same money."

In his time, Len has helped out a few younger fishers - Dave Paton was one, as you will have read last month. And Len learned from the generation before. "I remember an old fisherman taught me the rules, that you tell them a little bit but you get a bit off them and you only tell them what you want them to know (laughs)! But I suppose I could be regarded as putting them in the right direction, yeah."

Both Dave Paton and Len fished the same waters, so it's not surprising they sold fish to some of the same companies. Another career move they share is that their wives both worked as crew. Len's wife Kensie and his son-in-law successfully fished for a few seasons. Len and Kensie initially fished with Jetlag, a jet boat. "One of my later boats was the 45-foot Silver Spur (picked up from Australia in 1993), and there were the three of us on that boat. Kensie loved it - she used to measure the fish and cook the tea. I was pretty lucky there."

Len had three daughters with his first wife, but that marriage broke up. "That's part of fishing. It didn't last; I was never home. To be a wife to a fisherman, she had a pretty hard life." The flip side is five grandchildren: "My kids have gone fishing and the grandkids now go out on the dory."

When he retired, Len went for a year or so without a boat, but the lure of the sea was too strong. "I had to have a boat, so I got myself a 35-foot Bertram pleasure boat (Loaded Dice). We go out and catch a few crays to get a feed every now and again, without the paperwork! They closed the area just up north from where I live, about a half hour away. There's no commercial fishing allowed there, but we can get a recreational catch. As far as I can see, the fishery seems to be in pretty good shape.

"My wife and I go out for a few days, land our entitlement if we can, and get a feed. We enjoy ourselves out there. Life is good."

And that sounds like the perfect retirement for this fisherman!