Kia ora, Rawiri Henare here, and this is Slack Tide. No wharf this time. I am sitting on a back porch in Maketu with a cup of tea and Tom Ngatai, who fished commercially out of this bay for more than forty years, from 1978 until he came ashore in 2019. Everyone around here calls him Uncle Tom and after an hour you will understand why. We are going to talk about his first boat and his first storm, what the snapper were like in the 1980s, what has changed under the water since, and the one rule about taking only what your family needs that he has taught every grandchild and would like to teach every weekend angler. At the end Tom gives me a filleting lesson at the porch table and I waste far less fish than usual. You are listening on Witspeak Podcasts.