THE BATTLEGROUND BELOW
The courtroom felt comically small, like a halogen-lit shoebox, even before people started cramming in. Tucked away on the basement floor of the Wellington High Court, the nondescript space seemed unceremonious, like where you’d go to protest a traffic ticket—not a venue for legal proceedings that could decide the fate of nearly 2,000 square miles of marine habitat. Yet one by one, a small regiment of black-robed lawyers filed into the room to speak for or against a highly-controversial seabed mining proposal. Behind them were dozens of spectators clamoring for the handful of seats in the cramped gallery, with spillovers grabbing chairs from the hall outside and blocking the walkway. The judge frowned at this chaos from the bench and signaled the court officer to clear a path, and, while he was at it, to kick out the riff raff cluttering up the hearing.
“Mate, that’s not exactly courtroom attire,” said the officer, shaking his head and pointing to my denim jacket. “Come with me.”
He escorted me out of the courtroom and into a hallway, where he said I could listen to the proceedings through a pair of tinny speakers if I kept quiet and didn’t bother anyone. “Next time, remember your suit and tie,” he quipped.
I wasn’t the only surfer in the courtroom—just the only surfer who made the mistake of dressing like one. Forty-seven-year-old Phil McCabe can often be found walking barefoot around the parking lot at Raglan’s Manu Bay or the nearby eco-lodge, Solscape, where he hosts traveling surfers on the hunt for perfectly-wrapping lefts. But McCabe had found something resembling business attire and had flown from his laid-back beach enclave to stand with members of the environmental group Kiwis Against Seabed Mining—as well as Greenpeace, local Maori groups and numerous other concerned parties—who have been entrenched in the battle against seabed mining in New Zealand for years.
The High Court was hearing an appeal to a 2017 decision by the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) to grant a permit for mining iron ore just offshore
