While on the West Coast, Allan met the district's three mayors, and the chairs of the West Coast Regional Council, Te Rūnanga o Ngāti Waewae and the West Coast Whitebaiters’ Association. Joanne Naish/Stuff Conservation Minister Kiri Allan turns the first sod for a new walkway in Punakaiki. DOC has been reviewing New Zealand's whitebait fishery since 2018 because it classified four of the six whitebait species as “at risk” or “threatened”. Allan said she was a whitebaiter from the North Island's East Coast. “Everybody believes that regulation in some way shape or form is the right thing to do. There is work that could be done ... so we can get some facts and figures about what is the nature of the stock here,” she said.