Pāua, black gold of the sea, seen here in abundance on the Southland coastline, and it's going to remain that way.
It's taken a collaborative effort between the Pāua To The People lobby group, iwi, locals and politicians to help reach this outcome.
If the decision had gone ahead, locals say they would've seen their plentiful stocks of pāua, which have taken years to build up, pillaged in weeks.
The original proposal was to open up around 30km of coastline around Otago and Southland that is currently closed to commercial harvesting.