A father passes over the wheel to his son for one last big voyage — sailing from Auckland to Dusky Sound and wintering on Stewart Island in search of the crayfish he once pulled from the Hauraki Gulf in abundance, and which are now functionally extinct there.
Dad grew up building boats — it was his absolute passion, and one I inherited growing up on family holidays. The plan was to sail right around New Zealand. Shifting weather windows took us instead from Auckland down the east coast to Dusky Sound, before we wintered the boat on Stewart Island. We set off in 2023 and brought her back into port in 2025.
The real motivation was bigger than the route: passing the skipper's skills from father to son, ticking Dusky Sound off Dad's bucket list, and confronting what's happened to the crayfish he used to haul up by the dozen in the Hauraki Gulf — a fishery now so depleted it's functionally extinct there. The trip became a search for what's still abundant further south, and a reckoning with what's been lost at home.
The long-form documentary and its follow-up, charting the voyage from Auckland to Dusky Sound and the crayfish that disappeared along the way.
Crayfish that were once abundant in the Hauraki Gulf are now functionally extinct — a direct consequence of the same predator collapse driving kina barrens and kelp loss
Further south, healthier reefs showed what the Gulf used to look like — a living before-and-after of New Zealand's marine ecosystems
A father-son voyage became a first-hand record of ecosystem decline, told through the lens of a family passing on a skill and a story
This trip is the origin story — the same kina barrens and predator loss this film documents are what Kelp Helpers exists to reverse
Storytelling builds the public connection that restoration funding needs — most people will never dive a kina barren, but they'll watch a film
Future episodes will follow restoration progress at the same sites this voyage visited — turning the film into a long-term record of recovery