The proposed changes to the snapper allocation pits recreational fishermen against commercial operations. In 1999, Darryl O'Keefe was made an offer he couldn't refuse. His father-in-law, Roy Andrews, who'd spent years working on the mussel barges dotted among the offshore islands between Coromandel and Colville, had seen the potential for a fishing charter out of Coromandel town. The mussel farms - and the barges that harvest them - attract scores of snapper. The mussels and shells that drop off the buoyed longlines and are crushed during processing are a ready food source for the scavengers. Andrews would work the barges during the week, then take people fishing at the...
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