Originally Posted by
Moa Hunter
As the habitat on the coast is close to pristine, the whitebait are safe. All that needs happen is to make sure that the habitat stays in good shape.
The Coast acts as a spawning reserve for other areas too. A bad season on the Coast often is caused by ocean currents taking the juveniles north and can also often mean a good season on the Motueka River as they come in there. There have been some tremendous seasons in Canterbury in the last few years, seasons which common sense tells us are far beyond what the local breeding population and spawning capacity could produce - seasons where individuals have caught 80 kg in a day - these seasons have coincided with a strong continuous Southerly drift, which suggests that the bait probably hatched from Southland