“Acres, and acres and acres” of dead fish have been captured on camera off the coast of a popular Auckland surf beach.

The video, posted on Facebook by Kerren Packer, purports to show hundreds of dead gurnard - many described as “prime eating” - in the sea west of Piha, and continuing all the way to Karekare Beach.

On the video, Mr Packer can be heard saying the trail stretched “as far as the eye can see”, and describing it as a “waste”.

“Prime eating gurnard, mixed in with juveniles, never had the chance to breathe,” he said, as he scooped up the dead fish from the sea.

“This is just a complete and utter waste, absolute waste.”

In the video, Mr Packer is on a boat moving through the area of sea pointing out the dead fish which are floating at the surface “by the dozen, everywhere you look”.

He lays the blame firmly on a commercial trawler, alleging the vessel didn’t “have the quota to land these”.

“The quota system is designed to do this New Zealand, this is exactly what it is designed to do,” he said in the video. “It’s not designed to protect the fishery, it’s designed to make money out of it. And this is what’s happening, in the pursuit of big, big dollars.”

In the messages posted under the video on his Facebook page, Mr Packer indicated he had seen a commercial vessel dump the haul, and had reported it to the Ministry for Primary Industries.

Asked to ‘name and shame’ the culprits, Mr Packer replied: “I'd rather not say at the moment - would rather everyone focus on the issue rather than hate on one operator…..but when the time is right.”

He later said: “MPI are in receipt of all the relevant information and [I] would rather not do anything to stop that process.”

MPI chief operations officer Andrew Coleman told TV One’s Breakfast programme that he hadn’t seen the video, but there could be a number of reasons for a large amount of dead fish found in one area.

“One is an environmental issue, a disease issue within the fish, or indeed a fishing vessel having dumped the gurnard,” he said.

The Ministry was “concerned about dumping or any large fish mortality”, and would investigate the find, he said.

Scott Macindoe from LegaSea said the dump was “business as usual for the bulk harvesters”.

“New Zealand is becoming a laughing stock. We keep preaching this world-leading quota management system, but we’re not doing anything really tangible to address the real issue - this ridiculous wastage,” he told the broadcaster.

MPI has been contacted for comment.