The host found shells with flesh on them. Imho I’d say we do know!
HELL NO. If they were Kiwis I would assume they KNOW what the law is. Just tell the fisheries enforcement folks that you just realized that what they did was illegal. I hope that you kept their name and phone number as all good host should…
Did you keep the shells? Is there still dried meat on them? If so, definitely turn them in. Enforcement will want them for evidence. Just make sure that if you do it before the review deadline that they’ll be locked up and can’t review you. 
As you can tell, I have zero tolerance for folks abusing, harassing, or illegally taking wild critters, whether local or visitor. That’s because those critters are what drive our tourism, and I love seeing them.
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I have fished in several US states, Canada, and Scotland. In each case, my first question was “do I need a license, and how much will it cost?”. I would never think to fish anywhere except in the open ocean without a license or permit. Even where locals don’t need them, foreigners often must have them.
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Where I live, the only people who don’t need a fishing licence are children under 12, a pensioner and our indigenous first people.
The catch limits and sizes are strictly enforced and woe betide you if you are caught with anything outside the limits. Massive fines.
If you are taking catch from our marine National Parks, you instantly lose your boat plus fines.
These are nursery areas for fish stocks
I totally get that, but you say “wherever I have fished”. I still don’t understand the assumption that guests, who may be some city slickers who’ve maybe never fished in their lives before, never collected shellfish before, would necessarily know anything about fisheries laws.
There’s oysters and clams all over the beach where I lived in Canada. There are regulations about collecting them. But I wouldn’t expect someone from the prairies to be aware of them.
I think they were probably ignorant of the law. Since you don’t know for sure I think that’s the only reasonable assumption. And what you can do now is to make sure that your future guests are informed. If you had informed these guests about the laws and then you found the meaty shells then you could assume they didn’t care but since you didn’t you can’t. Just get on top of it for future guests.
Personally, it would never occur to me that there was something in a shell on the beach that wasn’t just something in a shell on a beach and I’d hope that you as my host would inform me. Sometimes that is the best things we do for our guests is to inform them of the local customs, laws, etc. One of the first things I tell my guests is that we have a 25 mph speed limit and that there are cameras all over to catch drivers that go faster. I don’t doubt that I’ve saved many guests from tickets.
They may not have even known that it was clogged. I doubt they spent there whole trip with a clogged toilet so it may have been the last trip to the bathroom before leaving. Again, you don’t know for sure so it’s not safe to assume. And unclogging toilets is just a hostly duty. Besides, would it really matter if you knew ahead of time anyway?
I don’t think it’s fair to mention either in their review. After the reviews are done you may want to give them a friendly informative message about the paua so that they are aware.
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We have street cleaning Thu/Fri, and there are plenty of signs . We also mention it to educate guests who stay on those days. If they get a ticket, it has nothing to do with how many stars we give.
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We are hosts, not officials with wildlife or fishing. It is Not Relevant. It seems that the Guests left the stay in good condition. No stains. No damage.
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That is a good guest. If the host is that concerned, they can create educational materials for future guests.
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Hi I’m really sorry to post this as a reply but I am new here and can’t find where to post a new topic. Can anyone advise me please?
Thanks
New members aren’t permitted by the forum software settings to start new threads. This is mostly to discourage spam but also to encourage searching for a topic first and participating a bit.
What is your topic or question in regards to?
Well, it is relevant if one cares about the environment. As hosts, if we have guests who don’t respect local regulations, we are being irresponsible.
It’s like seeing someone abusing a child or an animal and taking the attitude that it’s none of your business.
But I do agree that guests need to be informed of these things, we can’t just assume that they’re aware.
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Which is it?
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202020
You think I was contradicting myself? I wasn’t. I said we can’t assume that guests know these things, we need to tell them.
I completely disagree with your stance that because we’re hosts, not wildlife officials, that it’s irrelevant. Our guests doing damage to the local environment is very much our business.
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I don’t understand. Why would you think that I used “not relevant”, and not referring to Air review guidelines? 
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So the OP should review with “Guest suspected of illegally harvesting undersize conch”?
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Oh please! 
Never said any such thing. If you actually bothered to read anything I’ve written here, I said the guests should not have been expected to know if they weren’t told. I said that several times.
And it wasn’t obvious to me that “not relevant” was you referring to the review, as you said it in conjunction with pointing out that we are hosts, not wildlife officials.
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Ah … well I’ll happily repost my initial post, where I certainly tried to push home that very point. Perhaps you missed it though?
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One can certainly understand how I might somehow use “Not Relevant” as a special term utterly in isolation from a discussion about how to review a guest based on X …
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Oooh, not to get in the muck with y’all, but I read it to mean it didn’t concern OP as a host because of the ticket example that precedes it. I didn’t get that you meant it’d be irrelevant as pertains to Air review policy. That wasn’t clear, not to me at least.
I understand arguing it’s irrelevant to the stay in this case BUT IF the host knew for certain they’d done it w/ the knowledge it was illegal…it’d be a bigger deal than illegal parking to me & would be relevant (IMO) as it pertains to their interaction with the surrounding community. I guess we’d find out if I was wrong if Air removed or censored it.
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Well now, a couple of us have mentioned engaging in illegal activity IS a violation of our House Rules. And breaking HRs is relevant in a review even if you don’t name the specific rule.
I bet that listing in Oregon will be adding that line if it isn’t there already! Hopefully this OP will also. It’s a big deal, what the guest did, whether they were aware or not.
Doing what we can to dissuade criminal activity associated w/ our STRs is important. We’re already a target in some communities as an unwanted presence. This stuff just makes it worse.
Perhaps we should penalize the host for negligence, by shirking their civic responsibility and failing to educate their guests? Naturally, just kidding.
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Hosting is complicated enough without stuff like this.
I haven’t gotten an answer to my question from the OP about what is the understanding of this situation in NZ and were his guests Kiwis or foreigners.
There’s certainly behavior in the US that we wouldn’t think we needed to inform guests about but if we found out they did it we might be as upset as the OP is. For example, what if a host in Big Bear CA saw a guest flip a cigarette out onto the forest floor from his front porch cam. What if your Airbnb guest threw a beer bottle off the deck into the ocean rocks below? What if you had a hunting cabin and found a bald eagle full of lead shot dead on the back of your property after the guest checked out? All of these would be upsetting and possibly worthy of being mentioned in the review. Or maybe not, maybe paua harvesting rules in NZ are arcane information.
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Naturally
All I can say is if I lived near an STR and the guests were doing things to degrade or harm my community, I’d be making some phone calls and make hosting just that much harder for them. I do feel responsible for how my guests impact my neighbors.
I do the same for my LTR. Those neighbors have my number. It’s a lease violation to do anything illegal in my house/property. Yes I’ve been called. And yes I took care of the situation.
Different strokes…we can still be friends 
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