RURAL VIEWS: Fish Passage Project

JOYCE WYLLIE

The Tasman Fish Passage Project is progressing in Golden Bay, to ensure that fish can pass safely up all waterways in our district.

The project is jointly funded by the government’s Jobs for Nature programme, Tasman District Council, and the Ministry for the Environment, with Kūmānu Environmental contracted for the field work. The goal is to improve fish diversity and abundance and give “Tasman fish a leg up”.

The key focus is assessing any in-stream structures (like culverts) on private land and completing any remediation work required. The project is currently in year two of five, after Jobs for Nature was initiated to create nature-based jobs to “benefit the environment while supporting on-going economic recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic”.

Focus areas for year one was valleys around Tapawera and Motueka, and now teams have been visiting properties around Collingwood. By completion at five years, the project expects to have completed 4,350 assessments. If fish cannot pass, the team tries to fix the problem and restore passage using materials like rubber aprons, mussel spat rope, and baffles. It is expected there will be over 1,500 of these remediations done.

Our farm at Kaihoka has now been done, with the team taking a number of days to walk over the property. Private land is not so private now with Google Maps. Before anyone came on to the property, a map was generated with 57 white dots on it, each dot being a site identified as a “possible in-stream structure”. After the investigation, we now have a colourful map of the farm with different coloured dots on it. Sixteen green dots, that have been checked and “considered not currently a barrier”. Twelve blue dots, “surveyed and considered a natural ford”, so no problem. Sixteen orange or red dots, representing sites that were marked as possible in-stream structures from aerial photography, “but a visual survey determined it was not a possible in-stream structure”. A couple of yellow dots, signifying “no likely aquatic habitat upstream”. And importantly, 11 green dots with a black line, “surveyed and remediated as a structure was found that posed a barrier to fish”.

The report we received also contained the good news that “visual encounter surveys” of sites on our farm “showed fish abundance were relatively high in their experience throughout the property”. Species identified by the team included banded kōkopu, inanga, eels, kōura, and “unidentified bullies”.

With the remediations carried out, there will now be “better connectivity between streams for these fish communities to populate and increase diversity”. We were thanked for allowing access to our property and for “being considerate of our native fish species”. Good to have a positive outcome.

The Fish Passage report will now pass into our Farm Environment Plan paperwork, as evidence of our stewardship of the property. The Fish Passage folk will pass on to more farms to continue their work. And fish will now pass more freely up Kaihoka waterways