My other passion: Freediving with Haysley MacDonald of te Pā Wines

For Haysley MacDonald, founder and owner of te Pā Wines in Marlborough, New Zealand, relaxing after the harvest doesn’t mean a glass of wine in the vineyard.

It means donning his flippers and heading into the ocean to grab some kina (sea urchins).

‘I’ve been freediving and collecting kaimoana [seafood] my whole life, but sea urchin has always been my favourite. I swim over everything else to get that,’ he says.

‘You eat it straight out of the shell,’ he continues. ‘I stick a knife through the centre then use a spoon to scoop out the orange roe, and just slurp it back. Kina is one of the most nutritious foods out there, with heaps of vitamins and minerals.’

If there are no urchins around, he’ll settle for abalone, red rock lobster, scallops and oysters – as well as spearing fish. ‘You name it, we’ll get it,’ he says.

Keeping culture alive

MacDonald’s vineyard is probably the closest one to the ocean in Marlborough – just 100 or so metres away – so it’s no surprise he spends almost as much time in the water as out of it.

Some of his earliest memories are of learning to freedive with his father. ‘We never had proper gear back then,’ he recalls. ‘Dad would just give us each a screwdriver and we’d use them to prise the abalone off the rocks. Nowadays people have fancy dive knives.’

Freediving and gathering kaimoana is a central part of Māori culture, MacDonald explains. He’s a descendent of some of the earliest Māori arrivals to New Zealand – some 800 years ago – and the skills involved have reached him via many generations.

Now he’s teaching his five children those same skills. ‘I like it even more these days because they’re catching the food for me,’ he jokes. ‘The joy on someone’s face when they grab their first lobster is cool. Those are special moments.’

Of course, freediving isn’t without risk. Just last year, Frédéric Panaïotis, chef de cave at Ruinart, died in a freediving accident.

MacDonald’s scariest moment in the water was realising a dark shadow was a big shark swimming towards him. ‘Luckily a cousin, who was in a boat, got between us,’ he says. ‘I managed to get out pretty quickly… That was definitely a nervous moment.’

But, he adds: ‘I’m too hungry diving to worry about the risks normally. We’ve done it our whole lives. We just instinctively know what to do. But yes, if you don’t respect the ocean, you’re going to get in trouble. You’ve got to adapt to the conditions you’re in – know the tides, know the weather.’

Dwindling resource

While the skills required are the same as those his ancestors would have needed, freediving for seafood is very different today due to overfishing.

‘We’ve got to go further and deeper to get the same seafood they would have gone just ankle-deep to get,’ MacDonald says. ‘I’ve been diving for nearly 40 years and I’ve seen massive changes. It’s a big worry.’

His greatest frustration is with commercial fishing: ‘It’s painful to watch. People don’t seem to care what they’re depleting.’ MacDonald sits on the board of his iwi (local tribe) and has been leading its work calling for downsizing the local fishery to preserve ocean life for generations to come.

While winemaking and freediving may seem like separate worlds, there is some overlap. ‘With both, you must work with the elements and adapt,’ he says.

And luckily MacDonald’s wines just happen to go superbly with freshly caught seafood. ‘If we’re cooking food on the boat trip back, we’ll often have a glass of wine,’ he says.

‘Fresh, raw sea urchin is quite an intense, salty flavour so it needs a richer style. It goes really well with our barrel-fermented Sauvignon Blanc or Chardonnay.’