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Whangārei Mayor Ken Couper visits the damages areas around Ōakura. Supplied / Whangārei District Council

Whangārei Mayor Ken Couper says the storm damage he witnessed on Tuesday was as severe as any he’s seen in Northland.

A precautionary state of emergency is already declared for the Whangārei District as large areas of the country brace for more bad weather.

Northland and Coromandel Peninsula are under an orange heavy rain until Thursday, with MetService saying there’s a high chance of upgrading to red.

There are also heavy rain warnings for Bay of Plenty and Gisborne, and MetService has issued strong wind watches for Auckland and Waikato from 8am .

Couper visited the areas worst hit by Sunday’s deluge, including the seaside settlement of Ōakura, northeast of Whangārei, to see the effects for himself.

“It was as bad as you see in the north, in terms of the damage to property, the hillsides coming down behind houses, the damage to the wastewater infrastructure, things like that. It is quite localised, thank goodness, but where it’s bad, it’s bad.”

However, Couper said the people he spoke to were unbowed.

“They’re a resilient bunch. They’re used to living remotely.

“They look after themselves. They acknowledge they’ve had a hit, but they’re very pro-active about getting on with life.”

Whangārei Mayor Ken Couper speaking to residents. Supplied / Whangārei District Council

Residents in Ōakura in particular were “extremely upset” about damage to the community hall they had worked so hard to renovate little more than a year ago.

“It’s been taken out by the slip behind it, so they’re very sad about that, but people aren’t down in the dumps. They’re just frustrated with the fact that they have now a big clean-up job.”

Couper said the damage already caused and the prospect of more extreme weather in coming days had persuaded him to declare a state of emergency, which came into force at 4pm Tuesday and would last an initial seven days..

Ōakura Community Hall was badly impacted by the flooding. RNZ/Peter de Graaf

“With a further weather event coming, we felt that it was wise to declare a state of emergency, which allows certain powers to be released, if required. We didn’t want to wait until it’s proved that it is required – we wanted to get ahead of the game.”

Couper said those extra powers included the right for police to order evacuations or close roads, if they believed lives were in danger.

The council’s emergency operations centre was already up and running, and Northland Civil Defence was engaged in a full regional response.

“They are ready to respond, and are in place should this weather event come along and cause us more trouble.”

Emergency Management Minister Mark Mitchell visited Whangarei on Tuesday and supported the council’s decision to declare an emergency early.

“We certainly didn’t take that decision lightly and there was a full discussion with all the emergency services before the decision was made.

“Our hillsides and roading network are already saturated, we have 47 slips, there are cracks above those slips and any more rain will potentially cause more problems. Part of our community is significantly affected already and we have people in emergency shelters.”

Couper said Northlanders looked out for each other when the going was tough and he expected that would happen again, if there was more extreme weather in coming days.

“I think now is a time for us to demonstrate how resilient and how connected we can be as a community, and of course, we will. We always do up here in the north.

“It’s just a case of being prepared, as much as we can.”

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

LiveNews: https://livenews.co.nz/2026/01/21/whangarei-mayor-ken-couper-says-some-storm-damage-as-bad-as-you-see-in-north-2/

January 22, 2026

Racist threats made to Asian communities accused of stripping rockpools

Source: Radio New Zealand

People harvesting sea life at Army Bay. Protect Whangaparoa Rockpools

Calls for Asians to be deported and threats of physical violence are among some of the latest social media comments aimed at people accused of stripping rockpools and breaching fishing rules.

On Saturday, at least a hundred people demonstrated at Army Bay in Auckland’s Whangaparāoa for the protection of local rock pools, and residents earlier told RNZ that rockpools were being stripped bare of sea life – including shellfish, or any animal life that lives in the pools.

The term “bucket people” has been widely used on social media to refer to those accused of over-harvesting, and many have anecdotally pointed to tourism buses and visitors, blaming them for the depletion of the rockpools.

The Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) said Whangaparāoa has a recreational fishing compliance rate of 93 percent between November 1, 2025, and January 5, with 14 non-compliance incidents across 189 inspections conducted in the period – four involved excessive taking of shellfish (cockles), seven were for undersized snapper, two involved illegal netsetting, and non involved tour buses.

Over the past week, more posts on the controversy have appeared on Facebook pages, targeting the Asian community – including one person who wrote they were prepared to give a few “knuckle burgers and black eye rings” to those breaking the rules; there have also been several posts calling for the gatherers to be deported.

Meanwhile, there have also been posts by rockpools protection advocates calling out the racist comments and urging people to focus on the environmental cause.

On Monday, fisheries minister Shane Jones pointed to what he called “unfettered immigration” when interviewed on the topic, and said he’s seeking urgent advice from fisheries on the issues.

Asian New Zealanders nervous about racial tensions arising from rockpools issues

A Chinese New Zealander living near Whangaparāoa said he doesn’t personally collect shellfish, but is worried about the rising tensions over the issue.

The man, who did not want to be named, said he’s now nervous about taking his kids to the beach.

“Eventually we’ll get targeted, like if we go to the beach, even if we don’t bring the bucket, and we just relax on the beach, and people may come up and say something hurtful to me,

“My kids are going to grow up here in New Zealand, they’re going to contribute to society, what are they going to feel like? They’re going to be like ‘I’m surrounded by people who hate us only because of our looks’”, he said.

The man said he’s seen videos posted to social media by people filming the contents of people’s buckets, and urging people to throw things back into the ocean.

He said he feels it violates people’s private space and that the residents doing the patrolling shouldn’t be behaving like law enforcement.

He said Asian communities are left with the blame when the government has failed to revise the limits on gathering shellfish.

A Wellington woman, who posted a photo of her Chinese husband holding a bucket of mussels on Facebook earlier this month, was shocked to see dozens of racist comments under the post.

The woman said the photo came from a family outing to the beach with her in-laws and kids, and the mussels collected came under the limit for seven people.

She said the post explained their awareness of gathering limits, but that didn’t stop the abuse.

“It’s just like, ‘These Chinese people bring their family and hoard everything from New Zealand, they don’t know the rules, they should be deported’, those kinds of things,” she said, noting that about one of five of the over 260 comments were hurtful.

The woman said her family hasn’t been to the beach since the online abuse.

Rockpools protection advocate: no place for racism

Rockpools protection advocate Mark Lenton, who leads the “Protect Whangaparāoa Rockpools” group, said racism is not helpful to the cause and will not be tolerated on their Facebook page.

“There’s no place for this uneducated bigotry, which only amplifies a lack of intelligence, and it’s not a good look for the author,

“So look, we do not encourage it in any way, and any comments raised and deleted, and the author is banned,” he said.

Lenton said such comments are the quickest thing that will undermine their credibility as a group.

He said he’s been talking to gatherers at Army Bay and makes the point that even when people gather within the limits, the sheer volume of gatherers is causing problems for the marine ecology.

“We’re really focused on an attitude change here, we’re really trying to amplify conservation,” he added.

Lenton said he estimates that on any given day at low tide during the weekends, there may be 100 to 300 gatherers on the beach.

Researcher of Asians in Aotearoa: “bucket people” trope dehumanizing

Auckland based writer and researcher of Asian diasporas, Tze Ming Mok, said she’s concerned that certain ministers in government may be more interested in whipping up division against a small minority than they are in constructively addressing the issue.

Mok said the term “bucket people” is creepy and is yet another racial slur being created, which dehumanises communities.

“The stereotype of the rapacious Asian stripping the coastlines is a trope and a stereotype that has been wielded against us since at least the early 90s, and the thing is that we have approached this issue in good faith, constructive ways before,

“By building relationships between new migrants, government, iwi and local communities so we can all learn and educate each other, and protect our ecosystems together,” she said.

Meanwhile, Lenton said he didn’t think the term “bucket people” was discriminatory.

“The term bucket people does not discriminate by age, by gender, nor by race,

“It is simply a collective term that accurately describes people who rape and pillage rock pools and coastal sea life to fill their buckets,” he said.

Auckland-based university student of Chinese descent One Wang, who has an interest in researching the relationship between tauiwi and Te Tiriti o Waitangi, said the labelling and online bullying around the rockpools issues have diverted attention away from the environmental issue itself.

“At this point our focus should be on the whenua, on papatūānuku, and on moana, what people could help with is make information and education accessible to all people who interact with marine life, so they can do that responsibly,” said Wang.

Wang said it’s been devastating to see the environmental impacts on moana, but equally devastating to see how quickly blame has been directed at an entire ethnic group.

Ngati Manuhiri, whose rohe extends from Mangawhai to the Okura river mouth south of Whangaparāoa, has applied for a two-year-ban on harvesting shellfish from the city’s Eastern Coastline.

The minister is expected to make a decision next month.

Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

LiveNews: https://livenews.co.nz/2026/01/21/racist-threats-made-to-asian-communities-accused-of-stripping-rockpools-2/

January 22, 2026

Racist threats made to Asian communities accused of stripping Whangaparāoa rockpools