Doc spokesman Bryan Williams, who is based in Christchurch, said the country had lost a lot of wetlands which was where juvenile whitebait went to grow into adults and Doc expected catches this year would be significantly down on previous seasons.
University of Canterbury researchers are engaged in an ongoing study they believe will lead to better stocks of the delicacy in streams and rivers.
Funded by $1.1 million from the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology, the researchers last week announced a four-year project to investigate where our most common whitebait (inanga, or Galaxias maculates) lay their eggs and the issues that threaten their spawning habitats.
Foundation business manager Barbara Brown said the research would help New Zealand better manage the resource for future generations.
Timaru-based fishing author and columnist Peter Shutt welcomed the Canterbury University study. He was in little doubt about where the major threats lay.
‘‘Our waterways and wetlands are being denuded of habitat.
‘‘There's no doubt . . . the structure of our waterways has changed remarkably in the last decade or so and it would have been at least a decade ago that officialdom was alerted to this problem.
‘‘It has taken a long time for officialdom to react,'' Mr Shutt said.
‘‘The real worry has always been over the last decade or more that the habitat along the stream banks has been denuded or polluted for any number of reasons and in doing so it has destroyed the egg-laying process that whitebait rely on. They come in on the high tide and deposit their eggs and hope that they can be there long enough for the next high tide to take them back out.''
He supported calls for farmers to make more habitat available in the form of fencedoff wetlands.
‘‘And the silly part about it is that it probably doesn't take a lot of effort to improve conditions [for whitebait],'' he said.
