The Waitaki Marine Reserve and four others along the Otago coast are a "really good start", a marine scientist who helped shape the protected areas says.
A Westport man fed up with dumped rubbish piling up near a local beach has gone on a clean-up mission, clearing more than eight tonnes of steel in a couple of months.
There was an elephant in the room at the final day of the one-day hearings, although it was an animal nowhere near the size of the world’s largest land mammal.