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From: Clinton Duffy
Date: 30-04-08
Time: 21:14
Great images of the hapuku Blair!
I strongly disagree with the assumption that hapuku prefer deep water and that the Chathams are somehow different from mainland NZ in terms of hapuku behaviour. To get an idea of how abundant this species was in coastal waters you should read David Graham's "A Treasury of New Zealand Fishes", AH & AW Reed, 1953. Graham's account of the species seasonal inshore migration has been echoed to me time and time again by retired commercial fishermen and old recreational fishermen throughout the lower North and upper South Islands.
I grew up in the Wairarapa and learned to dive and fish off Glenburn in the 1970s. By that stage the hapuku had already disappeared from the shallows. They didn't disappear to deep reefs as these populations were fished down as suggested by John. Large hapuku used to migrate inshore seasonally in large schools. Many of the old timers believed they followed the crays in as many hapuku were caught packed to the gills with them. As the hakuku moved inshore they disappeared into commercial and "ammateur" fishing boats alike. I say ammateur because back then thats what non-commercial fishermen were called, largely because they often sold their catch. Off Glenburn the inshore grounds like Elephant and Tom's rock were only in 30-40 ft of water. I grew up spearing butterfish and blue moki in these places but never saw or heard of anyone so much a spotting a hapuku in the distance.
At several places around the south Wairarapa coast hapuku could be seasonally seen and caught from the shore - places like Palliser Bay, White Rock, Te Awaite and near Honey Comb Rk. The largest hapuku my father ever saw caught on the coast was a fish over 100lb caught on a handline cast into 15ft of water off the rocks. We used to catch a lot on handlines from the boat when I was a kid (circa 1976) but by then that was in 300 ft and a big hapuku was only 40lb.
As I said the story was the same wherever I was able to find guys old enough to have experienced it - Birdlings Flat (Banks Peninsula), Kaikoura, Marlborough Sounds. A colleague of mine, Theo Stephens, actually did three spearfishing trips to the Three Kings over the period they were fished out there. On his first trip in 1969 he said hapuku between 10-90 lb were common over most reefs from about 3 m down, and would attempt to take smaller fish off your spear. They were all gone by 1973.
As Wade and Roger have already pointed out, hapuku were an abundant inshore species, and must had an important effect on the inshore ecology. For instance the late Rus Broughton, a commercial cray fisher at Glenburn, clamed that spiny dogs were uncommon off the Wairarapa coast before the 1980s. A hapuku fisher from Kaikoura told me hapuku used to eat large numbers of juvenile spiny dogs, and I have seen adults in the guts of hapuku taken in Cook Strait. The timing of these events suggests its possible that spiny dogs have been released from predation pressure.
These days hapuku are ecologically extinct inshore, and possibly in deep water. Hapuku normally occur down to 400m depth, occasionally deeper, but below about 200m they are gradually replaced by bass (at least in northern NZ).
Last changed: 30-Apr-2008