THE TUNA'S USES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 250, 22 October 1935, Page 6

THE TUNA'S USES.

MONEY IN OUR EEL CREEKS.

(By J.C.) Once unconsidered forms of life and vegetation in New Zealand, little thought of because so familiar, may yet prove to be valuable sidelines in our list of marketable products. There is a great field for scientific and commercial research in the forests, apart from the timber uses. Experiments have already proved the medicinal value of some common plants. Even the raupo swamp may be found wprtli while retaining in its natural state. The koromiko, the kumara-liou and several other plants are already of importance in the New Zealand pharmacopoeia. Maori bush lore and seacoast practice are often a guide to food and medicinal values.

2y T ow the teeming tuna is pointed to as a possible item of industrial and commercial profit. The Chief Inspector of Fisheries, in the annual report of the Marine Department, writes of the neglected value of the eel as food. Tinned eel, ho considers, is little if at all inferior to the American tinned salmon we import in such quantities. There is also the use of eel skin for the making of fine leather suitable for the manufacture of gloves. In Europe, this is already an established industry. As New Zealand eels are 60 much larger than those of Europe there should be a demand for the product of this country once it became known. Modern plant would be necessary to carry 011 the work, which would add another minor industry to the Dominion's list.

Certainly there will be no difficulty about the supply of the raw material, once the right methods of treatment and tlie market arc assured. If there is one product of the country that can be said to be inexhaustible it is the tuna. It is cursed by anglers because it naturally regards young trout as its food. It may yet prove as worthy of attention as the trout, and big eel catches will have their solid monetary value. The wasteful ways of the swordfish angler and the trout-catching record breaker will not extend to the eel industry if the proposal to skin and tin proves practicable. Swordfish is used as food in every country where it is caught but New Zealand. liere, too, witli the finest trout waters in the world, nothing is done to make the rainbow trout a daily item of food in the cities, where it should be bought as easily as smoked snapper or cod or tinned salmon.

The Maori well knows the value of the tuna; the pakcha taste for it has yet to be acquired. Or perhaps it is that tlio pakelia of to-day has lost the liking that his predecessors in the land perforce developed because other fish were not to be had. The modern New Zcalander is so well fed that lie has not been compelled to fall back on such despised items as the eel. Wild pork, tuna and bushpigeon were the main items of subsistence, with the potato, in many a pioneer home. It is a very long time since I tasted tuna, and I do not think I could relish it now as a steady item of diet. Nor would I recommend it to any young woman who has set her foolish heart on slimming her figure. But it undoubtedly has its value as a builder-up of weak constitutions. The Maori who lives a natural life in the back country is a living testimonial to the virtues of tuna. I recall my very first taste of the eel cooked native fashion. It was in the camp of two or three Maori families 011 the old farm; the men we're employed at swamp draining, and the camp was in a clump of manuka alongside the big ditch. Newlydug drains in swamp land, unwatering lagoons and pools, are the places for eels. One evening there, with small-boy appetite, I ate the most delicious meal I had ever tasted; there was nothing better in the whole range of my juvenile experience unless it was the great honey peaches in the old mission groves on tlio farm. Peaches, 'milk and tuna! The Maori women—no slimmed anaemic females, there!—at the fires by the big, dark drain were roasting eels rolled round and round in green leaves; some of the tuna were sizzling away, sloped over the fire 011 thin sticks which had been thrust through them from the mouth. There was 110 need for knives and forks when that savoury was ready. Some of the men ,were still throwing out of the creek; and a dame was swotting each wriggler as it landed with a patu-tuna —"eel-killer" —a wooden weapon something like a short sword, with rough hilt and broad blade; I doubt if one can ever be seen now outside a museum. I may not bo able at this time of day to recapture that glorious zest 'for the campcooked tuna. Still, I am ready to try a sample from the State ecl-timiery when it is established.

The New Zealancler of tlie perhaps near future who mentions on his English pilgrimage that lie faiyns an cel-lagoon in New Zealand and runs a skinnery may not sound so convincing as the Australian soldier who told his London sweetheart that ho owned • a large ■bunyip ranch. Breeding tuataras may even carry a greater air of bona fides and profit. Nevertheless, it is worth looking into, that Fisheries Department suggestion. We have the goods, which our Maori people can deliver in any quantity, if sufficient inducement ofi'ers. If any people should know all about the tuna race it is the Maori. Wars liave been fought for such celebrated fisheries as the Waikato lagoons and creeks, the upper Mokau and Waipa, and that great series of lagoons and creeks, the Kawa swamp (now dairy farms) through which the Main Trunk railway runs. As to size,' the unwatering of large swamps often reveals larger eels than those in the rivers; but there was that solid lialfliundredweight of tuna, a foot thick and more than six feet long, caught on a certain historic occasion by a hungry Arawa Constabulary party camped at Ngahinga, on the Rangitaiki River. That eel fed ninety-two men. Skinnery experts will no doubt be able to tell us how many pairs of dainty Parisian gloves its skin would have made.