The Tale Of The Toheroa

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 100, 21 January 1939, Page 7 (Supplement)

The Tale Of The Toheroa

])EAR Boys and Girls, —-

Have you ever been away up in the far north of New Zealand, past the forests of giant kauris, to the long, long stretch of the Ninety-Mile Beach? I wandered along the ripple-marked sand one day when the waves were piling up before a strong breeze and breaking high up the beach. Suddenly I stopped in amazement, for, as a. wave receded, there was a fish, standing on its head! It flipped dozen to the sand as if it had realized too late that the water was gone, and lay there gasping and flapping till the next time a wave gave it access to the sea. Seagulls swooped and wheeled above as the fish lay there stranded, its scales glinting like a beacon in the sun, but I was standing too close for even those daring birds to pounce.

This strange little sea drama made me wonder, as I scrambled' across the sandhills to the paddocks beyond, where an old tumbledown shack leaned toward the sea. Squatting on the coarse, tussocky grass outside was an old Maori woman, a quaint figure in her voluminous black dress and gay plaid shawl, with the battered remains of a man’s felt hat perched upon her head.

“Tanekai,” she greeted me, screwing up her winkled, tattooed face into a smile. 1 remembered that old,Hine Puea was a byword in the district, and wondered if her store of odd knowledge included anything about fish that stood on their heads.

“Oh, yes,” she grinned. “You know te toheroa?” I admitted I knew it was a shellfish peculiar to that part of New Zealand, but what had that to do with it? Hine nodded her head at me, so that her greenstone carrings swung under the felt hat. “You pakehas ,” she said, and told me the talc of the toheroa. Long ago ancient kauri forests covered the whole north, but as a result of their subsidence, today many fresh-water lakes stretch within a few miles of the beach. if 7 hcn autumn rains rise the level of the lakes the extra water percolates through the sand dunes away to the sea. Clear and fresh, the water passes over the toheroa beds,* where the shellfish live, four to eight inches beneath the" beach, below the high-water mark. As it strikes the sea, this water turns brown, and the easterly winds drive the brown foamy liquid out to sea. There it comes in contact with something which makes a greenish water-grass, and, all put together, the westerly winds blow back a dark cream which is carried over the toheroa beds by the tide. Each toheroa has two suckers, which he sends to the surface as the tide advances, to gather this dark cream, his food. But, though he is buried in the sand, the toheroa is not 'safe from birds and fish, for, when he moves his home by sticking out his tongtie and dragging his shell with the tide to new surroundings, he is often exposed to the hungry gulls. And each time he puts up his suckers through the sand to feed, fish which swim in with the bigger waves are there to nip off this dainty meal. The fish must be very quick to get out with the same wave as it recedes, and, if they are not smart enough, or are too greedy, they are caught standing on their heads nipping off the suckers. Old Hine says that some toheroas have tapn that holds a fish till it is stranded —a terrible re- . z venge. Who knows, perhaps she is right! , T 1