From here, for here & for generations to come
ABOUT US
Kia ora
We’re Troy and Claire, co-owners and fishers of Tora Collective. We have to admit, we’re pretty lucky Kiwis growing up in coastal Aotearoa.
The ocean has always been a big part of our lives. We grew up around it, fishing it, swimming in it, eating from it and learning to respect it.
For us, Tora is home. It’s a pretty special place, on the wild and windswept South Wairarapa coast, where the mountains meet the sea and the kaimoana is darn fresh, with nutrient rich waters flowing up from the Arctic straight to us.
We’ve always known just how good fresh seafood is. What we couldn’t understand was why so much of it was leaving the country, while the leftovers sitting in tanks were what Kiwis were left to enjoy.
It seemed a little crazy to us, being an island nation after all.
Keeping the good stuff for Kiwis
We started Tora Collective with a pretty simple dream: to supply Kiwis with the best and freshest Crays, Pāua and Kina in Aotearoa.
For years, our crayfish have been shipped offshore to be enjoyed in other hemispheres, while Kiwis were left with the rejected and damaged crays. Our native blackfoot pāua was being bleached and canned, destined for shelves overseas. The leftovers frozen or minced and pottled. Kina was being packed into little plastic pottles.
We thought, hang on a minute. How is it that the best seafood in the world is coming out of our own backyard, yet it’s so darn hard to get your hands on the fresh stuff here at home? We couldn’t sell our fish to kiwis, and kiwis couldn’t buy fish directly from the people who catch it.
We reckon Kiwis should get to experience our kaimoana just as our ancestors had it, and how Mother Nature intended it. Fresh, wild and straight from the ocean.
So we decided to do something about it.
From coast to plate
That’s when Tora Collective was born.
We combined our experience in fishing, our knowledge of the industry and our love for this coast to create a way of getting kaimoana from our ocean directly to you. In a way, going old school, the way things used to be done.
We harvest fish seasonally and to order. So your seafood isn’t sitting around in a holding tank waiting for someone to buy it. It’s not frozen or minced. It’s as salty as it gets. We go out and catch it, pack it and get it to you the next day. Caught one day and on your table the next.
And that’s how we reckon NZ seafood should be enjoyed.
Fishing for tomorrow
Of course, keeping great kaimoana here in Aotearoa is only half the story. We need to make sure there’s plenty of it left in the ocean too.
We’ve always believed that just because you can take something, doesn’t mean you should. So, we fish with the seasons, giving species time to breed and lay their eggs, even when the law doesn’t require us to. We harvest small amounts from different areas rather than putting too much pressure on one spot, and because we harvest to order, we only take what we know is already wanted.We’ve set our own pāua minimum at 128mm, giving the smaller ones more time to grow and reproduce.
And when it comes to crayfish, the ladies go back in the water. Every female crayfish we catch goes straight back into the ocean. Those girls can produce hundreds of thousands of eggs each year, so we reckon they’re far more useful out there doing their thing. It’s not rocket science. Take what is needed and look after the place that looks after you.
This coast is home
Tora isn’t just somewhere we go fishing. It’s our home.
Troy has spent his life on these waters, and our crew’s connection to this coast goes back generations. We live here, raise our kids here and plan to for a very long time. Bailey, our deckhand and diver, has deep roots in Tora. His grandad was one of the first crayfishers to work these waters.
We know this coast. We know its moods, its weather and its tides. We know when the ocean is worth heading out into, and when it needs to be left untouched. And when you rely on a place for your livelihood, you have a pretty strong reason to look after it.
Straight from the ocean
When the weather and tides play ball, we launch Tākitimu from Tora Beach and head out along the 15km stretch of coast right on our doorstep. We pot for crayfish and, when the conditions are right, we dive for pāua and kina, hand gathering what’s been ordered.
Then we bring it home and get to work. We pack your seafood ourselves, the same day it comes out of the ocean, and send it overnight. No holding tanks. No freezers. No unnecessary middlemen. No mucking around.
Just really fresh kaimoana, from our coast to your table.
Proudly Kiwi
We started Tora Collective because we reckon New Zealanders deserve better access to the incredible seafood that comes from our own waters.
The good stuff. Wild, seasonal kaimoana, caught by people who know the coast, handled with care and delivered while it’s still properly fresh. Aka, alive.
When you buy from us, you’re supporting a small family business, our crew, our community and a way of fishing that we hope will still be here for generations to come.
This is our coast, our country, and we reckon the best kaimoana belongs here.