2005: State Jihad on Catfishing
June 18, 2019
By AHNZ
The Brown Bullhead Catfish is one of the many species of fish introduced to New Zealand. They’re only very little, about 30cm, and once popped up in various locations including Lake Taupo, Hokitika, and the Waikato River. The first introduction to New Zealand appears to be c.1877 in into Lake St. John, now the Waiatarua Reserve in Remuera, Auckland. This lake was once considered for use in the metropolitan water supply but somehow or other subverted until 1929 when it was permanently drained outright and erased from history!
Catfish would make good eating, which is rather the point of view The Settler. In our own time of Environmentalism and Leisure Fishing the priority is the vanity project of preserving an undefined fantasy ecology of flora and fauna. This is comprised of both introduced species, like trout, and representations of native species according to what The Department of Conservation thinks they could or would or should be. Tens of millions of dollars are spent vainly battling Mother Nature in trying to, say, make this or that island resemble what DOC think it would have been like in the 1700s rather than the way it has been for 200 years..
Anyhow, DOC is currently under the impression that all catfish are invasive and seek to wipe them out. This may not be true and the 1870s Acclimatisation Society’s advice was that it was quite untrue, the catfish predated upon insects.
“…cat-fish is somewhat defamed by the imputation that he is destructive to other fish. If he has anything “cat”-like in his nature, it is exercised not against fish, but against the larvae of insects upon muddy bottoms, that he is not only a harmless fish, as regards other fish, but a good member of his own family, protecting his young during hatching, and showing them the ways that are right after that process has been completed. He is not a fast swimmer, but somewhat sluggish in this respect, so that he is not dangerous by his powers of locomotion. In fact and in truth, he is a very respectable member of the finny tribe, useful in his own waters as a devourer of noxious larvae, not bail for sport when less exciting fishing is absent, and capital for eating. It is rather hard upon so good a fish that he should have met upon his arrival in a new habitat with people to give him a bad name.”- Ref. NZ Herald, 4 December 1877
Around 2005/6 MAF and DOC went on a catfish jihad and part of the collateral damage was an old Red-tailed Catfish named Garfield.
This lovely fish was confined to a tank at Frame Right Installations, West Auckland. He was probably the full-size 80kg and 1.8m long in a huge tank worthy of the professional glazier. The long-standing company lists among their exploits The Cloud, Auckland, and the very prominent main headquarters for The Warehouse on the North Shore. No amount of glazing prowess could save their mascot however when The State ordered his execution. Such was his esteem, Garfield has his own gravestone off Scenic Drive in the Waitakaries. Someone must have really been sorry to have had to let him go.
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Ref. Catfish, Niwa
Image ref. Flickr: cliff1066
Image ref. Garfield, 2016 and 2018; AHNZ Files
Ref. 1929: Auckland’s Lost Lake, St. John
Ref. Also That Pommy Bastard
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