Ordinary Women, Extraordinary Lives in the Fishing Industry

Description

Title: Ordinary Women, Extraordinary Lives in the Fishing Industry
Author: Heather Heberley
Publisher: Cape Catley Ltd, 2005
Format: Paperback
Condition: Very Good

Out of print. Signed by the author

Description:

They call themselves “just ordinary.” They fish for crayfish and groper in Cook Strait swells, dive for pāua, manage quota systems, run compliance operations, conduct fisheries research, and police NZ’s waters. They raise families in remote bays accessible only by boat. When disaster strikes at sea, they are the ones who know what to do.

Heather Heberley has spent decades documenting the people of the Marlborough Sounds and Cook Strait — the maritime communities that most New Zealanders only pass through on the ferry. This is her fifth book, and it turns its attention to the women of the NZ fishing industry: the scientists, the skippers, the administrators, the divers, and the shore-side families who keep the whole operation afloat. The stories range from the hands-on to the institutional — from the woman hauling nets in a Southland winter to the researcher mapping stock decline; from the compliance officer enforcing the Quota Management Scheme to the wife waiting for a husband who hasn’t come back yet.

New Zealand was the first country in the world to introduce a comprehensive quota management scheme for fisheries, in 1986. This book documents the women who worked within and around that system — many of whom have never been written about before, and some of whom will not be again.

Heberley writes from deep inside the world she describes. She came as a young bride to Arapawa Island, Tory Channel, in 1963, and has been a mother, mechanic, plumber, nurse, woolclasser, licensed skipper, and farmer ever since. All four of her previous books were bestsellers. A 2025 peer-reviewed paper on women in NZ fisheries cites this one as a primary source.

Why We Stock It:

This is the kind of book the Gravy was made for: the women who kept the industry going, documented by someone who lived the life herself. Out of print, not easily found, and doing the work of preserving a history that would otherwise be invisible.