PECULIAR FISH

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIII, Issue 20929, 7 January 1938, Page 11

PECULIAR FISH

POND DENIZENS SURVIVE GROWTH OF TOWN In a fresh-water pool no bigger than a bathtub, fed by a limpid spring, in a backyard barely two minutes’ walk from Courtenay Place, Wellington, are to be found still living where their kind have lived for centuries the curious native fish called kokopu. Once that little spring was a hillside rivulet flowing through native bush, and in it the kokopu dwelt. Time and the city’s growth has greatly changed the whole aspect of the locality, but still the kokopu survive there, almost in the heart of the city, while out in the mountain streams their species becomes annually rarer and less known. For 55 years Mr Eli Huristone has lived at 126 Oriental Parade. When he first went there no other house stood between his residence and Courtenay Place, and the next dwelling was near where the Oriental Bay Kiosk is now. Native forest trees clothed the hillside, and from a swamp above a stream of clear water ran down into the sea. That stream was stocked with the shy kokopu. In the course of the years the swamp was drained, the hillside was built over, and the foot of the slope steeply scraped to make room for the houses that stand between the Parade and the hill. The stream was reduced to a mere trickle of water from the rock fc.ie into a narrow pool at the foot. It was wholly artificial, cut off from the sea, its outlet a stormwater pipe, and its entire scope limited to a few feet. Yet still the kokopu bred in it. The miracle of their survival seems almost incredible. At one stage, not long ago, they dwindled until there was only one left, but since they have again increased to three.

Mr Hurlstone’s grandson, Mr H. E. Neal, recently concreted the pool, and protected the fish from marauding cats with a barricade of netting. He realised that they were something of a curiosity, and showed them to the Dominion Museum authorities, who were most interested. He gave the fish little underground sanctuaries where they could lurk secure, and ensured for them a plentiful supply of their favourite delicacy, worms.

In appearance the kokopu closely resemble giant cockabullies, measuring up to about seven inches in length. They are scaleless, beautifully mottled in green and brown, and extremely lively and alert. They have a curious propensity for changing colour when they emerge from their shadowy retreat into sunshine. They are rapacious feeders, and rapidly swallow as many fat worms as are offered to them. Related to Whitebait The fish are actually related to the New Zealand whitebait. Their scientific name is Galaxias, and they are a type of mudfish, able to survive in the caked mud of a dried-up pond until such time as it fills up again. Formerly they were common in the hill streams, and were a staple food supply of the Maori. The cunning native fisherman caught them with “bobs” of worms threaded on a string of flax tied to a stick; or at the dark of the moon the brown wahines secured them with torch and dipnet, by wading up the creekbeds with blazing white-pine torch in one hand and net held shovel-fashion in the other. As soon as the dim shape of a fish was discerned in the water the dipnet was thrust in beside it, and it was started into the net with a quick movement of the foot on the opposite side. The kokopu was cooked by wrapping it in leaves and steaming it in the Maori oven, or it was dried on a rack over the fire, half-smoked, half-baked. It was not a very savoury morsel to the European, being somewhat insipid and full of bones.

Even among sportsmen to-day there are few who are familiar with these fish, one of the few indigenous freshwater fish in our streams. It is therefore all the more remarkable to find them surviving unpreserved in the middle of Wellington; and it is to be hoped that in another 50 years there will still be kokopu swimming the little spring a yard or two from the hurrying traffic of Oriental Parade.