Can Wairarapa save the longfin eel
An opinion piece in the Wairarapa Times Age on Wednesday 22 April 2020
Can Wairarapa save the longfin eel?
By David Famularo
While we are all locked away in our homes, a remarkable event is taking place in the Wairarapa.
Right now, the elders of our local longfin eel population (tuna kuwharuwharu) are making a long and final journey out to sea, somewhere deep in the South Pacific near Tonga, to spawn with whatever members of their species they can find.
This is a major seasonal event for our region.
The hikoi of tuna starts in February when the smallest eels, the shortfin males start to leave, followed by the female shortfins in March.
Longfin males start their journey in April, followed by female longfin females three or four weeks later.
The tuna kuwharuwharu, have been making this journey for millions of years.
One of the largest eels in the world and only found in New Zealand, anyone who has had the pleasure of a close encounter with them will have recognised that they are also highly intelligent.
In the past, local Maori would catch a sustainable portion of the migrating population at different locations, most famously at Lake Onoke.
The Wairarapa was the second largest tuna fishery after Lake Ellesmere but you would not know that today if you were to pop down to the Ruamahanga River to witness the annual migration.
The longfin eel is classified by the Department of Conservation as “at risk, declining.”
This may be an optimistic because of the nature of the life cycle of the species.
Tuna Kuwharuwharu live for up to 80 or more years and only breed once, at the end of their lives.
Unlike birds, you can’t save the last few hundred and try and rebuild the population by putting them in an enclosure and hope they successfully breed each year. Tuna need to spawn in hundreds of thousands, if not more. If there is not a critical mass, the cycle will be broken forever.
How many longfin eels will be making their way down the Wairarapa’s rivers this autumn?
No one knows. Just as no-one has any idea what the total population of long fin eels in the region is.
There piecemeal surveys being done here and there that at this stage don’t give an overall picture.
The Ministry of Primary Industries and NIWA who it uses for research don’t do any surveys in the Wairarapa.
They rely on the monthly catch reports that local commercial fishers who are required to supply .
As long as commercial fishers are catching longfins in large enough numbers, all is ka pai.
But when the day arrives where they aren’t catching their quota, which already happens in many parts of New Zealand, it is too late.
Last spring NIWA carried out surveys of tuna elver arriving in New Zealand at one river near Whakatane and two on the West Coast of the South Island.
Disturbingly, a newspaper article reporting on the surveys, said in the early stages of the survey, the scientists had caught no longfin elver at all.
Whatever the situation actually is, today’s migration is but a faint echo of the past.
All efforts at a national level to give tuna kuwharuwharu more protection have failed, despite petitions, submissions to MPI, pleading from fresh water scientists in the media and so on.
Which has led me to the conclusion that perhaps the only way the longfin eels is going to be saved is by acting at a local level.
Traditionally, the Wairarapa has one of the strongest relationships with tuna kuwharuwharu of any region in New Zealand.
It would be great to see the Wairarapa lead the way in saving this species with our councils, Members of Parliament, iwi and hapu, farmers, community groups and anyone who personally feels strongly making a commitment to do doing everything we can before it is too late.
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