Little Wanganui and the Whitebait

The drive north from Westport along the Tasman Sea was spectacular. Forest-covered mountains spill down to a narrow coastal plain of pasturelands. The forested hills are filled with fern trees; everything is green and wet. Lots of mud; people wear rubber boots here. The road left the coast and climbed a small mountain; another narrow, twisty, wet road that I had to drive with both hands on the wheel. On some of the curves and bridges, we had less than 0.6 m (2 ft) on either side of the caravan. Amazingly, 20-wheel commercial trucks with double trailers navigate the one-lane bridges and one-lane blind curves (with stop lights no less!) carved out of the mountainside.

Karamea Highway along the Tasman Sea south of Little Wanganui

About 4:00 pm we dropped down out of the mountains to the coastal plain and into Little Wanganui, only a couple blocks long and mostly residential. The camper application on the TomTom (GPS navigation system, [link]) that came with the caravan described the Little Wanganui Hotel, bar, restaurant and it as a full service caravan park – electrical hookups, water, showers, kitchen, WiFi, dump station, etc. The caravan park was actually a narrow strip of lawn behind a wind break of trees and shrubs. There were eight or nine spaces with electricity and only one was open, so we took it. The hotel, communal showers and toilets were old and tired. The owners probably wrote the description.

Little Wanganui Hotel

Behind the bar, an old guy with white, shoulder-length hair was the only staff on duty. He didn’t know what to charge and told us to come back later. Rande returned to the bar in a couple hours and he still wasn’t sure what to charge. He settled on $20 NZD and Rande asked about the showers. He said they were in the back of the hotel and “If you have any problems, give me a call.” A woman at the bar asked “Exactly what did you mean by that?”

We drove to the beach before we parked the caravan for the night. The main industry is dairy farming and the village is surrounded by pastures, including the area between the road and the beach. I found a pullout a little ways from town. The sound coming from the Tasman Sea was a continuous roar, not like white noise, but a constant rumble and booming of breaking waves. Up and down the beach, waves were breaking a 50 m (165 ft) from shore and row upon row of whitewater reached halfway up the beach.

Beach at Little Wanganui

It rained most of our first night in Little Wanganui, but quit by morning, and the rest of the day was sunny with few clouds. Our neighbors were gearing up to go fishing with two long-handled dipnets and a fyke or hoop net (round fish trap of netting bags mounted on rigid hoops). I walked over to talk to the husband, a man in this 60s with thinning hair and a hand-rolled cigarette in his mouth. He had a long, dark green coat and black rubber boots. I asked him what he caught with the nets; he said whitebait.

Our caravan (second from left) at the Little Wanganui Hotel

We had seen signs along the road advertising whitebait for sale, but I assumed that it was bait to catch fish, not a fish that you catch to eat. He explained that whitebait live in the rivers along the coast. The adults spawn in the river and the larvae drift downstream to the Tasman Sea and return the following year. The fishermen are targeting the returning juveniles. Whitebait return to the rivers in shoals (schools) and he dip-nets along the shore to capture them. When river visibility is poor (the rivers are blackish-red from tree and shrub tannins), he uses a fyke net staked in the river facing downstream; whitebait swimming up river enter the trap and can’t escape.

Dairy farm on the Little Wanganui River

His wife overheard the conversation and came out of their trailer with a plastic sandwich bag half-full of frozen whitebait. “This is what they look like.” I asked her how long they would keep frozen and she said about a year. Whitebait are small 5-8 cm (2-3 in) and translucent, except for their eyes, gut and spinal cord. She said that the dipnets are “hard work for older people like us, so we also fish the hoop net.” Her husband said that the bag would cost $15 in Little Wanganui and $50 in Auckland; “they’re a delicacy.” He said that if I drove down the road opposite the caravan park to the mouth of the Little Wanganui River, I could see fishermen netting for whitebait.

Fishermen dipnetting for whitebait in the Little Wanganui River

I thanked him and returned to our caravan for breakfast. A few minutes later his wife came over with a sandwich bag of whitebait for us. I didn’t want to accept it because it’s hard work to catch the small fish. “It gives us pleasure to share,” she said. I took the frozen bag of fish and asked her how to fix them – scramble one or two eggs in a frying pan, add in the whitebait and cook until the fish are white. “Not very long; don’t overcook them.” This is the traditional whitebait fritter or patty (link) and it’s often eaten as a sandwich with buttered bread. She said they live on a beautiful island in Mahau Sound, keep a boat in Havelock and manage vacation properties for people who live somewhere else. They come to Little Wanganui for three weeks each year to fish and visit with other campers and the locals. She wished us safe travels.

Fisherman checking his dipnet

We drove to the mouth of the Little Wanganui River; several “utes” (sport utility trucks) were parked on a sand dune. A half-dozen men were dragging dipnets towards the Tasman Sea on each side of the river. I didn’t see any fyke nets. I spoke to several of the fishermen, but they were taciturn. Here’s one conversation:

Me: How’s fishing?

Fisherman: Fine

Me: What do you call them?

Fisherman: Inaka

Me: How do you spell that?

Fisherman: I don’t know.

Me: Do you eat the adults?

Fisherman: No one eats the adults.

Recently-caught whitebait

Most of the men (there were no women) were fishing for themselves, but one fisherman who was staying in a trailer at the Little Wanganui Hotel, was catching whitebait to sell. A couple fishermen had recently-caught whitebait in buckets of river water; the small fish are long and skinny, translucent and swim like eels. One fisherman told me that the adults are about 10 cm (4 in) long. On our way up the coast to Karamea, we saw several fishermen with fyke nets in coastal streams. One guy was sitting in a chair on a sand bar next to his fish trap reading a newspaper and listening to a radio.

Whitebaiter with a fyke net on a coastal stream near Karamea

That evening, Rande made whitebait fritters according to instructions. We ate them without the bread and they were quite good, with a mild flavor similar to salmon. The common galaxias or jollytail is one of five species of migratory galaxiids (in the family Galaxiidae) whose larvae swim down the rivers and out to sea, and migrate back as juveniles to mature in freshwater (link). Inanga or inaka, their Māori names (link), occur in New Zealand, Australia, the Falkland Islands, several Pacific islands, southern Chile and Argentina and South Africa. It is one of the most widely-distributed, native freshwater fishes in the world and its distribution around the Southern Hemisphere is evidence of galaxiid’s Gondwanan ancestry (link, link). Inanga is the smallest of the five migratory species; it lacks scales, lives about a year and is the only one of the five species to return in shoals (schools), which is why they’re targeted by whitebait fishermen (link).

Whitebait fritter

There are 20 species of freshwater fishes in the family Galaxiidae and only five are migrators. Their name comes from the color patterns of their skin, which resemble a galaxy of stars. Three of the five whitebait species only occur in New Zealand  (link, link). Galaxiids are related (first cousins) to osmerids (smelts) and (second cousins) to salmonids (salmons and trouts) (link).

Common galaxias adult from the Rio San Pedro, Chile [photo by J. Schoeffmann (link)] 

Inanga were an important part of Māori culture (customs) and diet during the fish’s migrations (link). The Māori caught them with nets (fixed or on poles), traps and weirs made from rushes and flax. They knew that on their upstream migration, inanga stayed close to the shore where currents are slower, and sought out slack water to set their nets. The also used weirs (fences that directed fish into traps) and hand-excavated channels and trenches to create slack water near shore. The Māori also captured adults during their downstream migration to spawn. Fish were steamed in flax baskets or dried on flax mats in the sun or on racks over a fire (link).

Common galaxias larva [photo by S. McQueen - New Zealand Native Fish, CC BY 4.0 (link)]

Karamea, a village of 650 people on the Karamea River estuary, is described as “remote” and “off the beaten track.” We stayed at the Karamea Memorial Domain Campground – really, just a bit of dirt road and lawn on the edge of a rugby field tucked up against an earthen levee on the river. There were about a dozen sites and all of them were full. It was whitebait season and, as we were to learn, most of the caravan parks on the West Coast, especially those near rivers that empty into the Tasman Sea, were full or near full. The campground caretaker said: “One fella’s away for a few days. You can park next to his trailer to get power.” The community building had a living room with a TV, restrooms, showers and kitchen. Everyone seemed to know each other; most of them where there to fish for whitebait.

Dipnetting for whitebait on the Waimangaroa River

Installing a whitebait stand on the Waimangaroa River

Inanga spawn in the fall on a spring tide (the highest high tides on the new and full moons); females release their eggs on vegetation near the high water mark and the males release milt (sperm) to fertilize the eggs. As the tide recedes, the eggs develop exposed to air in the moist vegetation. The eggs hatch on the next spring tide, about two weeks hence, and the larvae are carried out to sea on the falling tide. The larvae spend the winter at sea feeding on small crustaceans. In the spring, juveniles return to the rivers. Those that make it past the whitebait fishermen and other predators spend the spring and summer in freshwater as adults; in the autumn, they return to the estuary to spawn (link).

Common galaxias eggs [photo by S. McQueen - New Zealand Native Fish, CC BY 4.0 (link)]

A week later, we were 500 km (300 mi) south of Karamea as the Haast Beach Holiday Park on the Okuru River. The place advertised 50 power sites, but most of them were occupied by whitebait fishermen – the regulars come for several months each year. Only two power sites were vacant when we arrived. I asked the woman in the office the time of the incoming tide (when whitebait run into the rivers) and where people netted them. She told us to be at the mouth of the Okuru River at 10:00 AM the next day.

Trailers in the Haast Beach Holiday Park

The following morning, we drove down to the river and parked below an earthen levee. Trucks were parked along the single track on top of the levee near whitebait “stands” on the river; huts large enough for a couple people and a small stove stood on the land side of the levee road. The stands comprised a small pier from which the fishermen (we didn’t see any women fishing) hung there nets and watched for shoals of approaching whitebait. A fishermen waved to me from the end of a pier. I asked him if I could come out and talk; he said yes. When I introduced myself, he said “we have something in common” – his name was Geoff – and shook my hand. He was in his 70s, with a round face, sly smile and bright eyes. He had an old brimmed hat pulled down to shield his eyes from the sun and well-worn clothes. He was from Nelson (on the north end of the South Island) and came to Okuru 2.5 months a year to fish whitebait.

Whitebait stand near the mouth of the Okuru River

I asked him if he fished commercially; he said no, but admitted to selling some of his catch. His pier was 8 m (26 ft) long with an aluminum frame and a walkway of wooden boards. The pier was hinged near the shore so it could be lifted by a cable-and-pulley system when not in use. He uses his ute to raise it. He told me that his “family trust bought the stand 16 years ago from an old fisherman.” It was a fixed pier back then, but floods brought down logs that damaged it several times, so they put in a pier that could be raised.

Geoff's whitebait stand on the Okuru River

He asked me where I was from and said he had been to America several times. He liked Alaska and couldn’t believe the size of salmon. He had also been to Los Angeles. We were leaning on the rail while we talked; his eyes were on the water on the downstream side of the pier looking for the whitebait swimming over several marker or spotter boards – white plastic planks on the river bottom. He saw the translucent, toothpick-sized fish before I did. Sometimes the shoal has a half dozen fish, occasionally there were larger groups. He hoped to catch the large shoals in the fyke net tied to the upstream side of the pier. A continuous series of screens ran the length of the pier on the upstream side. A school of inanga swimming upstream along the shore would encounter the screens, swim out toward deeper water and, at the end of the panels, turn upstream into his net.

Shoal of whitebait crossing marker boards

One shoal crossed his white marker boards, but turned toward the shore. He tossed a small rock into the water behind them trying to turn them toward his net. He said it was illegal to scare them. He had been caught a couple days before with a “swizzle” or “waggle stick” – a long pole with a white rag on the end used to scare whitebait into the net (the Māori used flax leaves on the end of a pole) – so he was being more surreptitious with the rocks. The water on the incoming tide was murky and we couldn’t see if the shoal swam into his net. I remarked on the expense of the pier, including annual maintenance – stands are put in by hand on low tides; no hydraulic equipment is allowed – and time spent living in a caravan away from home. He laughed and nodded his head; “whitebait fishing is an addiction” he said. In the past week, he had catches of 7 kgs (15 lb), 5 kgs (11 lbs) and several days of zero catches. I mentioned I had been given 0.25 lbs of whitebait in Little Wanganui and was told it was worth $15 NZD ($11 USD) locally and $50 NZD ($36 USD) in Auckland. “That’s about right” he said. At those prices, five kilos of whitebait would sell for $660 NZD ($470 USD) locally and $2,200 NZD ($1,600 USD) in Auckland. I asked him what he did with all the fish he caught. He and his wife have whitebait once a week throughout the year, and by the time everyone in his extended family gets their share of fish, there was nothing left.

Geoff's whitebait stand and ute on the levee of the Okuru River

The New Zealand Department of Conservation manages the whitebait fisheries. The season is 2.5 months (Sept 1–Nov 14) and the types, sizes and amount of gear, and hours and areas open to fishing are regulated. The amount of whitebait that a fisherman can take is not regulated (“Keep your catch small and only take what you need”) (link). The regional councils (local governments) authorize the construction and maintenance, and relocation and transfer of whitebait stands. The Western Regional Council oversees more than 600 stands (link).

Map of whitebait stands on the lower Okuru River (link)

I had seen an advertisement for a whitebait stand for sale at the caravan park and asked him about it. “That’s Roule’s stand and it’s on the Waiatoto River” (two rivers west of us). “He’s asking $80,000 NZD ($58,000 USD) for it, but you need a boat to get to it.” He pointed to the green hut upstream of his pier. “That stand sold for $85,000 this year. [These stands] are better investments than real estate."

Geoff's hut

In the evening, the whitebait fishermen gather at a local pub to swap stories over beers. It’s a mix of locals and visitors. Those with stands willingly share their catch information. No one can fish or install a whitebait stand within 40 m (130 ft) of an existing stand, so there’s no reason not to say what they caught. Fishermen without fixed stands rarely share information about their catches because someone could take their spot tomorrow. I said that I had talked to fishermen on several rivers, but most of them answered questions with a couple words and didn’t seem to want to share information. He said that some of the old timers around Okuru were like that – “men of few words.” I thanked him for chatting and sharing information about whitebait. He said that he did the same thing – “chatting up the locals” – when he was in America. “It’s how you learn about the culture.” It was tea time and he was off to have tea and warm up with one of his mates. We said goodbye and he wished me a good trip.

Whitebait stands on the Titiroa Stream

A week later, we crossed the Titiroa Streamon the Tokanui-Gorge Road Highway east of Invercargill near the south end of the South Island. There were at least 25 huts each with its own pier. It looked like half of them had fyke nets in the water. An older woman dressed in black pulled a large fyke net to check for whitebait. She shook the net down, didn’t see any and put it back in the water. A man parked a small car behind us, donned a backpack and walked down to the river; he stopped to chat with the fisherman in the first hut beyond the bridge, then continued on the path to his hut, about 100 m (330 ft) downstream.

Woman checking her fyke net for whitebait on the Titiroa Stream

Whitebaiting is a tradition in New Zealand, but inanga populations across the country have declined as a result of draining wetlands, destruction of spawning habitat, agricultural pollution, predation by trout and pest fishes, flood-protection infrastructure and migration barriers, like weirs and culverts (link)  According to the Department of Conservation’s Whitebaiter’s Guide to Whitebait, “Whitebait are in decline—we are losing more of them each year. Mostly, this is due to a lack of clean, healthy rivers and streams for the adult fish. Barriers, such as dams and overhanging culverts, also block migrating whitebait from reaching what clean streams remain. Introduced fish, such as the pest fish gambusia and sports fish such as trout, compete for habitat and prey on our native species. Introduced plants clog up the places where whitebait live” (link).

Karamea River Estuary

Interestingly, there was no discussion of the impact of recreational or commercial fishing on whitebait populations. Statistics are not collected on this fishery, but there's anecdotal evidence for population declines (link). Without data, one can only speculate (wildly). Geoff caught 12 kg (26 lb) of whitebait in one week. If that were an average catch during an average year, he could take 120 kg (260 lb) in a 10-week season. There are 600 stands in the West Coast District; if every stand was fished for an entire season, and their catches were comparable to Geoff's, then whitebaiters could remove 72,000 kg (158,000 lb) in one season. Using a length-weight relationship here, a 10-cm adult is estimated to weigh 5.1 gm and a 6-cm juvenile is estimated to weigh 1.042 gm; at that weight, there would be 960 juveniles in 1 kg and an estimated 69 million individuals in 72,000 kg landed. And that’s just the whitebaiters with stands in the West Coast District. With habitat quantity and quality declining, and predation by non-native species and barriers to migration increasing, it’s hard to imagine that fishing isn’t adding to the negative impacts on whitebait populations today.