Food shopping riskier than catching it
In the time of COVID-19, why do we have to go to the supermarket for our catch, not the river?
Under lockdown, catching kai to sustain your family was banned. Yet buying food at a crowded supermarket was costly and risky.
It is the privilege of people living in this special region to enjoy its benefits and catch a feed, without townie regulations being imposed.
Wha¯ nganui has a rich history of relying on its rivers and lakes for sustenance. Hundreds of elaborate, latticework pa¯ tuna and pa¯ auroa (weirs) once ran the length of the Wha¯ nganui River to catch the staple food, eels. Banned by European settlers to make way for steamboats in the late 1800s, the only place where traditional methods of catching eel continued for some time longer was in Wha¯ nganui.
In Ma¯ ori, at least 166 words can be used to describe different varieties and conditions of eel. There was more variety than there are cans on the supermarket shelves.
Today, the eel is a powerful symbol of the impact we are having on our environment, as well as the erosion of our traditional values. In 2013 the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment told us that, without more intervention, our longfin eel — the largest freshwater eel in the world — is headed for extinction.
Commercial exploitation endangers our ability to fish freely, forcing a situation where shops become our sole food source. The longfin eel — found only in New Zealand — is fished commercially and exported live to other countries where their own eel stocks have been plundered to near extinction.
Wha¯ nganui tuna expert Ben Potaka best describes the fate of our eel: “success will be measured in 50 years’ time, by whether Wha¯ nganui still has eels left to catch”.