Hawkes Bay scientists are having to get creative to help guide a population of eels back to their historic home.
A recently formed waterfall, just west of Lake Tutira, means the creatures are now unable to migrate back upstream.
Andy Hicks, a scientist with Hawkes Bay regional council, took Newshub to the recently formed ravine and waterfall.
"This waterfall used to look a lot different… the rock face is continually slipping away, that's made the waterfall steeper and steeper."
It's now impossible for Lake Tutira's eels to complete their migration process. Typically they spawn out at sea, before making their way upstream to freshwater lakes for adult life.
Here though, that's changed, and it's not good news for the lake's future.
"You can imagine a small town without any children, the population ages and ages, and that town is going to disappear eventually because there's no replenishment,” Mr Hicks says.
Lake Tutira used to be an important source of food for local Maori.
Scientists have attempted different methods of helping boost the eels back up the waterfall, including introducing a ‘spat rope’. The thick woven rope, used as an ‘eel ladder’, is a method that has worked successfully elsewhere.
However after two years of being in place the flow of the river has proven too powerful for the eel population to contend with.
"This is probably the most extreme environment that we've tested it in," Mr Hicks acknowledges.
Scientists are now weighing up whether to put tubes around the ropes, to give the eels more shelter.
A lot of human time is being spent on bringing life back to Lake Tutira in the hope it'll serve future generations as it's already done for centuries past.
Newshub.
