Matt Watson tells the marine biosecurity story

Kiwi fishing personality Matt Watson is sharing the marine biosecurity “protect our paradise” message with his viewers this autumn.

Matt is one of those people who was just born to fish, and he has managed to develop a good business sharing his fishing adventures, initially on television and now via online channels.

Northland-based, Matt has long been up-front about his desire to care for the ocean that brings him so much pleasure, which makes him a good person to front for marine biosecurity.

Biosecurity New Zealand was pleased that Matt accepted a commission to generate and share content for the caulerpa programme over the summer of 2022-23. His posts quickly got high levels of engagement. 

Now Biosecurity New Zealand’s Protect Our Paradise campaign has commissioned a couple of short videos to help get the message to recreational boaties. One is about why boaties should undertake good biosecurity practices and the other details those practices. The first of these has gone live on Facebook and Instagram this week.

As Matt says, the biosecurity practices that boaties need to undertake “are not that hard” and our boating paradise is “just too precious to risk losing it”.