THE FATE OF THE FLOUNDER

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1612, 21 January 1903, Page 67 (Supplement)

THE FATE OF THE FLOUNDER

“ Tiie discovery has been made that the kahawai in Hawke’s Bay waters are feeding on the young soles.” This item has been going the rounds of the New Zealand press. It conveys littio information to those unacquainted with an interesting feature of deepsea bailing in the waters surrounding this island. Soles and flounders used to abound in great quantities off the East Coast cf the North Island in particular. Years ago the trawlers in Hawke’s Bay reaped a rich harvest. Their plentiful yields enabled them to send shipments of fish packed in ice to all the static?U3 between Napier and Wellington, and as far as Wanganui and Taranaki, to say nothing of the markets further south, and shipments made to Sydney. Then came a time when the supply of flat fish fell off considerably. The fish trade languished; people who had invested in trawlers were glad to sell them, and where formerly many vessel© were engaged in the business now only a few remain. Old wiseacres shook their heads when questioned about tho decrease in the output. They declared that tho breeding grounds m Hawke’s Bay had been worked out, and that there were no young fish coming on to take the place of the enormous hauls that had previously been made. Some owners of trawlers blamed the.westerly winds and bad weather, and felt confident that in time the fish would return’. But they did not return in anything like the former quantity. Flat fish went up in price and eighteenpenoe the bundle is now asked in Napier for what was once obtainable at ninepence. This brings us to the kahawai and his big mato the kingfish—the chap that King Edward is so fond of catching, so the newspapers say. Of late great hauls of these fish have been made along the stretch of Hawke’s Bay beach from tho Western Spit towards the direction of Petane. That portion of the bay has teemed with big fish, which, when brought ashore in the nets, were seen to be swollen out to quite an inordinate size. The writer remarked to> a wear-ther-beaten old fisherman, who was cleaning about fifty kahawai underneath the Western Spit bridge the other day, “By jeve, those fish are tremendously fat. They seem to thrive well in these waters; what do they feed on ?” “Yes,” he replied—he had been at the game many years—“we get the big fish now when tho weather is favourable, but the big fish has the best of it at tha finish. Look here,” he added, and he proceeded to open a large kahawai that boro the appearance of having been stuffed, so bulged out was he. Fully half a dozen small soles and flounders rolled out on to the beach among the internals of one fish, and the same number—in some instances perhaps more —was found in almost every other kahawai opened up. There was a thirty-five pound kingfish lying close by—a monster that 'would make an amateur angler’s mouth water. This fellow also contained numerous soles, large and small, that had not yet gone through the process of digestion. Then the old salt began to moralise. “These big fish,” he said, “are not so saleable as the soles and flounders. They take well with the Maoris, who eat anything in the fish line from shark to crabs, but flat fish are most in demand in the general market. Soles are not so plentiful now in the hay, because the young fish are eaten up away there outside in the breeding grounds before they get a chance to grow”—and the fifty odd big kahawai that he had cleaned seemed to verify his remarks. The beach was literally strewn with young flat fish, from four to six inches in length, that had been consumed by the larger variety. Fishermen further along the beach confirmed this view. That same afternoon six or eight nets were hauled in; kahawai and kingfish abounded in them. There were also tiny soles in thousands in the nets, hut, strange to say, fewlarge ones. It clearly showed that here in the breeding ground of the .finest of flat fish, the kingfish and kahawai rvere playing great havoc. If these fish are feeding on the young soles and flounders, what are not the still larger fish doing in the way of spoiling the harvest of the fishermen? The matter is an interesting one for further investigation.