Piharau Crescent

Piharua Crescent is a short cul-de-sac in a new subdivision in the New Plymouth suburb of Hurdon and is named after an ancient native fish with no jaw but a mouthful of tiny sharp teeth.

The name was approved in 2020 by the NPDC and Ngāti Te Whiti and the word refers to the common name for the lamprey eel.

While piharau (Geotria australis) are not a species specific to Taranaki, they are of significant cultural value to local iwi. This is because they are closely associated with Puanga (or Matariki) as they enter rivers around this time to migrate up-stream to spawn.

Piharau are considered a taonga species by many Māori and predate dinosaurs - there are fossil records which date the species back 360 million years.

They start life in freshwater but spend their adult life in the sea apart from returning to freshwater to breed. It is thought that they live for anywhere between 10 to 20 years.

Piharu are unusual looking in that they don’t have any bones, and their skeleton is made entirely of cartilage. They are a similar shape to an eel but have a large circular, toothed sucker instead of a jaw. The adult fish use this sucker to attach themselves to other fish or marine mammals in order to suck their blood, flesh and body fluids.

The piharau are an important traditional fishery for Māori communities and considered a delicacy by many – elaborate weirs were constructed to catch them.

Piharau Cresent is next to the Waimea Stream where these fish would have been present in the past.

The Department of Conservation has listed this species as threatened and nationally vulnerable. NIWA lists their threats as habitat loss, barriers in waterways (effecting their ability to head upstream to spawn) contaminants in waterways, predation, parasite and disease and harvesting (including fishing and being caught as a bycatch of the whitebait and tuna fishery).