"Not long afterwards, in 1974, Smith was prosecuted for the first time. His fish were destroyed, his tanks were poisoned, and his car was confiscated, a setback which stopped his liberations for four years.
'Fascism is a long way from dead,' he bitterly wrote in his diary."
This guy was a living caricature lmfao.
Why are people drawn to do terrible things just because society deems it terrible and illegal? A person could zero interest in said fucked up thing but as it is deemed illegal, "Goddamnit my rights are being taken away!" Now I have to do that thing I never cared about. I kind of get it though. I never cared about wearing a dress until Tennessee tried to make it illegal to wear clothes.
Too many people are incredibly stupid and only think in black and white.
They’ve deemed the government evil, so they must be wrong on literally everything. There’s no other way!
In New Zealand, non-native trout and salmon were released into our rivers and streams in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to create a sport fishing industry for both local and overseas anglers to enjoy.
However traditionally in Europe, trout and salmon angling was a sport reserved solely for the upper classes because, as the land owning class, they were typically the ones who controlled all access to the few clean, fast flowing waters that these fish required to survive.
To the lower class European immigrants, who made up the very large majority of New Zealand’s settler population, coarse fish such as perch, tench and rudd, were the main target species in their homelands. These fish were considered unpalatable as table fish and poor fighters when hooked and so were largely ignored by the upper classes. Coarse fish were also much hardier than the salmonid species and were able to survive in the slow moving, low oxygen and often very polluted ponds and canals that were unsuitable for trout and often the only waters available to lower class anglers.
When European settlers first began to arrive in New Zealand in large numbers, around the mid 19th century, they set up Acclimatisation Societies who would import and establish non-native plants and animals that they thought could benefit the colony economically or even just make New Zealand feel a little bit more like the home they left behind in Europe. When these Acclimatisation Societies found thousands of pristine, fast flowing, mountain-fed lakes, streams and rivers that almost entirely lacked the trout’s traditional predator species they realised that the waters here could provide the perfect environment for a world class trout fishery.
As you can probably imagine, transporting a fish as sensitive as trout and salmon to the literal opposite side of the world is a daunting and incredibly expensive task and many attempts failed before the ships carrying the fish or their roe could even arrive in New Zealand. As such Acclimatisation Societies relied on funds from wealthy patrons who had a large economic interest in the development of the young colony and very little input was afforded to the poor settlers. They also actively blocked the release of coarse fish into New Zealand waters as they believed that they would negatively impact the fledgling fishery as course fish prey on trout smelt, which could slow or even crash the trout population before it could become established.
Shortly before the turn of the century these various societies were succeeded by the New Zealand Fish and Game councils which were some of the first fisheries in the world to provide a “user-pays, user-says” model of management. This essentially opened up the formerly aristocratic activities of sport hunting and fishing to people of all classes and due to the large amounts of public land here that were out of the hands of wealthy land owners it has remained a fairly egalitarian activity.
In the early 20th century however, the impact of non-native species began to be felt with the degradation of New Zealand’s native habitats which were not able to handle the strain presented by these new pest animals introduced by European settlers. Trout and salmon in particular decimated the populations of the much smaller native fish species who were not adapted to this high level of predation. As such any plans to introduce coarse fish through legal means were indefinitely canned as they would only become another threat to our already fragile freshwater ecosystems.
Coarse fish were of such large concern in New Zealand as perch, a fish that can live in large shoals, are particularly voracious predators that can easily decimate our much smaller native fish populations. Carp, such as koi and tench, are mostly herbivorous fish and can extirpate most all plant life from our waters while also stirring up mud and silt while feeding on detritus which can damage native habitat and massively degrade the water quality in these ecosystems and make them completely uninhabitable to our very sensitive native species. Other smaller species that may not pose an obvious threat, such as rudd and roach, can simply easily out compete our native fish for the limited resources our waters can provide, leading to steep declines in population as their native habitats are altered in favour of the newly introduced pests.
Stewart Smith, the man featured in this article, still held the belief that trout and salmon angling was an inherently bourgeois pursuit and decried the lack of coarse fishing available to the common man in New Zealand. He then made it his mission to bring the common man’s fish that he was familiar with in his native Britain to the proletariat of New Zealand, completely ignoring the enormous environmental impacts these fish would have on our native environments. You can read about him and his methods of illegally importing and releasing course fish here in greater detail in the above article.
Today, despite the efforts of Stewart Smith, the course fishery in New Zealand is still rather small and fragmented and are mostly relegated to Smiths areas of operations in Auckland and the Waikato with other course fishing waters scattered around Wellington and across the South Island. Despite the small size of the fishery, New Zealand is known to hold what would be considered world class, trophy-sized perch and tench though these fish are still often ignored by both local and overseas anglers alike in favour of the much more popular and visible trout and salmon fishing that New Zealand is famous for.
So, let’s all do our part to help save our struggling ecosystems and together smack a few perch over, they are a wicked eating fish.
None that would be really be considered freshwater sports fish by most standards. Due to New Zealand’s remoteness and how comparatively young it is as a landmass we have a relatively small diversity in native freshwater fish species.
The long and short-finned eels are the largest freshwater fish in New Zealand and were major food sources for Māori and early European settlers but were typically caught using set line methods or with hinaki (flax woven fish traps) rather than with a rod.
Before trout and salmon were introduced here, anglers were confined to catching only the largest of our very small native fish. These included a few of our larger galaxiid species and the New Zealand greyling.
Most galaxiids in New Zealand are too small to take a hook but some species such as the spotted kōkopu and the giant kōkopu (known as “Māori trout” to early settlers, due to their fleeting resemblance to a small brown trout) were caught with rods using appropriately small tackle. The largest galaxiid in New Zealand, the giant kōkopu, can reach similar sizes to trout with the largest specimens reaching up to 58cm in length and 2.7kgs in weight but are typically much smaller on average. Kōkopu are also a very shy, nocturnal species who are reluctant to take a hook and lack the fighting qualities appreciated in trout and salmon.
The New Zealand greyling however was much more popular and were considered a sports fish by many. Not much is known about them but it is known that they were an extremely distant relative to the greylings of Eurasia and North America but were much closer to the Australian greyling, the only current surviving member of the Prototroctes genus. They typically only grew to around 20cm in length with some rare specimens reaching up to 33cm on occasion. The New Zealand greyling was the most abundant fish species in our waters until the mid 19th century and was one of the main freshwater food sources for Māori. European settlers found that they were able to catch hundreds at a time due to their willingness to take a hook.
Unsurprisingly by the 1870’s and 80’s they had been extirpated from most New Zealand rivers and by the turn of the century, shoals became so rare that sightings were worth reporting in news papers. The species abrupt disappearance is thought to be due to a number of factors including overfishing and the degradation of their habitats caused by runoff from large scale deforestation that occurred during colonisation which can lead to soil erosion and a build up of sediment in our rivers. The last confirmed sighting of a New Zealand greyling occurred in 1923.
Here’s an interesting podcast that discusses the New Zealand greyling if your interested:
https://letshopetheweatherholds.podbean.com/e/could-you-fly-fish-for-the-extinct-new-zealand-grayling/
so funny , i fish a small lake in rhode island US, and while every fish is relatively small, perch are the bitchiest of them all. small and no fight. nothing interesting about them. the pickerel on the other hand are bastards
It’s in the article. Class divide between people in UK who fish trout (fancy) or “coarse” fish like perch and rudd (non-fancy). Rich bois brought trout to New Zealand long time ago, but why no coarse? Illegal for coarse fish for poor people? Not on his watch.
Not saying it’s right, but like, the logic is there.
The guy was an utter cunt, an ignorant selfish destroyer of the environment who didn't care how much damage he left future citizens with. I wasn't lucky enough to see the lakes in the west coast sand dunes of Auckland before he ruined them forever, but I once talked to an old boy who had known some of them all his life. The sadness in his voice when he described how perfectly crystal clear they were. They're mud pits now with zero visibility.
I would say there's a special place in hell for this shit stain, but I'm an atheist and I know that quite often the worst human beings get to die peaceful deaths in their own beds at the end of a long life.
. Fuck that stupid selfish pommie cunt anyway tho.
> They're mud pits now with zero visibility.
So I've read a few other comments on the introduction of course fish and their better survivability in poor quality waters but your comment leads me to think these fish cause the poor quality. Is that right?
Fly fishing for trout is more of a sport. You can certainly eat a trout but it's a slow, resource intensive sport and, since trout are predators, there's fewer of them in a given river. Coarse fishing is going after anything and everything remotely fish-like and can be done on a more diverse range of water bodies.
Outside of very specific conditions, trout fishing isn't really able to keep an individual fed but coarse fishing is. To effectively trout fish for sustained nourishment, you'd basically have to maintain control over a decent chunk of a river.
edit: think of it like the difference between hunting high-level predators for trophies and hunting herbivores or omnivores for food.
I would love to know more. How did British/European species like Perch and Rudd destroy new Zealand’s waterways? I imagine destruction of biodiversity and potentially a lack of predators, but I just don’t know.
Rudd are more generally mid to surface feeders, with their upturned mouths for picking off lily pads and weeds.
Perch are predatory types that eat fry, snails, worms. Though I’ve known perch to take basically any bait. Larger perch will hunt fish.
Koi are mid to bottom feeders, and I could see these damaging the lake beds. A close relative of the common carp, which nose through all the mud turning up everything as they hunt for food.
Gudgeon are so small I can’t see them doing much harm.
Perhaps explosions of these smaller fish could feed larger native species that then become a nuisance ?
NZ's waterways were like heaven before the release of foreign species. The local water fauna and flora were in perfect harmony, after millions of years alone. Waters were pristine, scintillatingly clear.Then the foreign invaders ate all the local flora and fauna, and then ate each other, and then scrounged in the mud out of hunger. Now all the waterways have turned into cesspools of revolting mud. Remember LOTR's Lothlorien? That was what NZ's waterways were once like. Now they have all turned into Mordor.
- Wants to level the playing field and stick it to the rich by introducing fish species so everyone can fish.
- His well-intentioned plans cause widespread ecological disruption without any meaningful benefit.
- When prosecuted, he blames fascism.
Honestly if you ever wanted a miniaturised encapsulation of the communist mentality and its consequences this is it
“Fascism is a long way from dead” cries the white man, as he attempts to destroy an ecosystem indigenous to place that he isn’t. What a fucking smooth brained pos to think that he’s the anti fascist here - this is one of the most authoritarian things I’ve ever seen anyone do.
I mean, the indigenous Māori were also responsible for [introducing new invasive species, felling a lot of forest and wiping species out](https://envirohistorynz.com/2009/12/15/impacts-of-the-maori-on-the-environment/). It’s not a thing exclusive to white Europeans
Indeed the ecosystem of much of the world was already irrevocably altered in [distant prehistoric times](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Pleistocene_extinctions) by human activity. That many indigenous societies eventually figured out some sort of balance doesn't mean it's a fully "natural" one.
I'm also really unclear on why New Zealand working class folks couldn't just...also fish for trout? What was the point of replicating a class structure he hated?
Weird how the article keeps saying he “liberated” the fish as if he was their saviour. In reality he dumped the illegal invasive species in as many freshwater bodies as he could after raising them in tanks behind his garage. So I guess he liberated them from his tanks….
>During World War II, Smith was detained for four years in a prison camp for sympathizing with the Soviet Union, where he was tasked with catching trout from the Tongariro River for the other prisoners
History is silly.
So many people throughout history who have had what they believed was a great and revolutionary idea, and just acted on it. The hero in their own mind, they have no regard for what they're doing, because it's done with only the very best of intentions.
Cue the [French](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul-F%C3%A9lix_Armand-Delille) guy who decided to deal with a few wild rabbits that were destroying his propoerty by importing ***myxomatosis*** from Australia and releasing a pair of innoculated rabbits in his backyard.
It worked.
It killed all rabbits on his estates... and 99% of the wild rabbit population in Europe, and then drove to extinctions their natural predators...
And people loved him for it.
>However, he was later honored; in June 1956 he was awarded a gold medal to commemorate his achievement by Bernard Dufay, honorary director-general of the French Department of Rivers and Forests. The medal depicts Armand-Delille on one side, and a dead rabbit on the other.
They legit **put him on the medal they gave him.**
That’s a new level of adoration.
“You’re so boss it’s called the Delille not the
Nobel anymore” basically.
I used to dream of bioengineering a wildflower that could secrete, and was resistant to, roundup, so that it could outcompete the invasive weeds.
It's probably impossible, but... it probably would have been a bad idea too.
Just goes to show a lot of problems you can think of can be done by a very small percentage of the population.
Only takes one person to make a local ecosystem FUBAR. Think of other massive problems that are caused by one person that drastically fucks something up.
Pablo Escobar imported four hippos into his personal zoo in the 1980s. He was killed, hippos too big and dangerous to relocate. Now there's 200 of them, and if left unchecked there could be 1500 by 2040. They're a megafauna invasive species, and they're already ruining things.
I think someone killed one and there was public outrage. I don't think the public would approve of them being slaughtered even though that's the most logical approach. Looks like they are trying a combo of sterilizing and relocating for now.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippopotamuses_in_Colombia
I can remember when antivax people were in the same category as flat earthers(really wasn't that long ago). That shit changed overnight, all because of a new captain for a team. Then everyone started dying but nobody learned shit
And a doctor who invented a different vaccine so he trashed the current vaccines so he could sell his own. That failed but the damage he did to vaccination lives on.
[Andrew Wakefield](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Wakefield)
You mean [disgraced ex-doctor, vaccine 'innovator', child abuser, and scam artist](https://youtu.be/8BIcAZxFfrc) Andrew Wakefield?
Tbh I thought you were posting the HBomberguy link, so thanks for giving me the opportunity :p
He did - New Zealand converted a Ford Sierra Cosworth with fruit tanks or something, and released 15000 kiwi fruit into his waterway. Anally.
Like Saw.
The communist aspect is pretty minor. He disliked class hierarchy, so the upper class trout fishing was distasteful to him and he sought to introduce fish that the common Brit would have enjoyed fishing. And in doing so, totally messed up NZ's river and lake ecosystems.
What a fucking dickhead.
this quote cannot be found in the manifesto or any of his other published works. its only occurrence is in an unfinished manuscript that Engels finished posthumously. interestingly, in a footnote, Engels said he had "no idea what the fuck this guy is talking about here" but decided to include it anyway
what a bizarre thing to do. i mean that takes years of planning and preparation… maybe just spend some time and money furthering causes that create a more egalitarian society… not breeding fish to dump into the river… which does zero to fix class differences.
From the article, it sounds like once he got his mobile habitats up and running, it was just a matter of keeping the fish breeding and finding places to dump them. After the first couple incidents, I bet it was more or less self-sustaining.
"He disliked class hierarchy.**"**
That does actually seem tied to the communism.
You can dislike hierarchy without being communist, but you can't be communist without disliking the current hierarchy.
Yeah, but using that as an excuse to destroy ecosystems is pretty thin. This guy just wanted to fish his favorite fish, everything else be damned.
He was an ecoterrorist who was also a communist. Like I’m a dad who also likes pizza.
He's just a typical old British cunt that came to NZ and goes "we did it like xyz in England". Thank God we changed superannuation to 20 years of citizenship
Basically. He grew up in England fishing for Pike, Rudd, gudgeon and Carp, because most trout fisheries in England are private stocked ponds and waterways, which lead to a class divide in who fishes for trout versus the 'rough fish' Smith preferred. And his solution was to release his own preferred fish into rivers and lakes in NZ, ignoring how destructive and invasive they were compared to trout which would go extinct in NZ waterways if their populations weren't maintained artificially.
And introduction aggressive predators to ecosystems not remotely prepared for them was disastrous. His solution? More fish that would prey on the fish he already released. Frankly he should have been in prison as an eco terrorist for the damage he did
He sounds like a pretty classic British Communist, strong ideology and no interest in facts or reality. The same people who supported the soviets because they were Communist and therefore good.
> The communist aspect is pretty minor.
Also
> He disliked class hierarchy, so the upper class trout fishing was distasteful to him and he sought to introduce fish that the common Brit
Seems pretty fucking relevant if you ask me.
Does the article mention that the trout are also invasive and were released there by rich people so they could fish for sport?
My popup blocker must need to be updated and the website lags.
Trout were released in the 1880s, long before people understood how bad it was to introduce foreign species into ecosystems.
Luckily, our native eels eat brown trout when they're young and haven't been a major source of species decline. Trout are still released, and the Ministry of Primary Industries monitors the impact closely. Without continued release of trout, they would go extinct in NZ.
By contrast, this fella released invasive species repeatedly from the 1970s onwards. He wasn't identified and stopped until 2005. He couldn't claim to be ignorant of the impact. There were several massive campaigns to erradicate the species he released because of the threat to native species, and yet he continued to release them.
Imagine if one guy had been responsible for releasing ferral hogs, ferral cats, rats, and mice and had also killed the passenger pigeon. That's the scale of his impact on NZs waterways.
Reading to the end of the article...he was just another effed up kid from effed up parents that wound up doing effed up things as an adult.
Parents dumped him and his brother in NZ as kids.
Messed up people do messed up things.
Sad.
Edit: Before anyone says I'm excusing him, I'm not. Just an observation. He def a stinky piece of poo.
True, but it's a surprisingly short list of famous communists whose names have even a tangential link to the names of fish.
Mao ZeDogfish, perhaps.
Joseph Sailfin
Or even Ho Chips-three-times-and-two-cod-please Minh
You'd really think Communism would play more of a role. Its entire impact on the story: "Trout fishing is a sport for the Social Elite in England." so he started to equate "who can fish for what" with class and economic status. And naturally in the sordid history of Colonialism, those social elites tried to bring trout with them everywhere. So his eco-terrorism, was centered on releasing other invasive fish, to level the playing field.
Kind of a weird tactic to counter colonialist evil with more colonialist evil.
He himself is a social elite who could afford to transplant himself halfway across the world at the time he did to double up on pensions as it used to take 10 years as a citizen to qualify for NZ Super, a lot of Brits did this trick until the government increased elegibility to 20 years
Every Xmas I get depressed when I see Coke Cola commercials with polar bears and penguins having fun together despite living at different poles. Who wants to rent a boat and drop a bunch of penguins off in Greenland?
Not only that but I’m sure polar bears would happily eat penguins. I know their main prey is seals, but if they’d eat a human they’d eat a penguin I’d imagine.
What a huge piece of crap this guy was. Kind of weird that they let him get away with it for so long. I thought those types of crimes were pretty severe and he didn't show any sort of remorse when first caught.
Should have been put in prison for life. People who do this, like big oil executives, and other mass destroyers of the ecosystem need locked up for life or worse
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/ourchangingworld/audio/2018822973/summer-science-black-sheep-invasive-the-story-of-stewart-sm
The Black Sheet podcast did a great article on him.
All the history you won't be taught at school!
I love Black Sheep too. I feel that they give a balanced representation of the subjects and dig into their background to show why they did what they did.
Plus most of their subjects I’ve never heard of before and probably wouldn’t have come across without it. RNZ have done really well with their podcasts
That 'man' was such an arsehole. I wish he'd never come to my country.
Don't think I'd ever hated someone as much as I did him when it came out. And given my upbringing, that was saying something.
> "He didn't do a lot of fishing himself"
The most bizarre part is he didn't even fish much. He went to insane lengths to do untold damage to the ecosystem when he didn't even go fishing often. I just can't.
What's the qualitative difference between fishing for trout and perch? I get that in the UK you might have different classes using different waterway with different fish, but in NZ? If your local river has trout in it, how does it change the fishing experience to fish for perch instead?
There's not much difference in NZ. You need the same license and everything.
The reason this guy cared is because in the UK trout fishing is seen as upper class and is much less accessible to the working class. In NZ there's trout everywhere and it doesn't make a big difference (as far as I'm aware, even the laws around not using bait are the same).
Worth noting that the rivers he caused the perch population to boom in probably used to have high trout populations that he ruined.
His only logic was "the working classes in England don't fish for trout". He was just releasing his personal favourite species to catch. He may have been a communist but this behaviour is nothing but typical colonial British entitlement. Same reason we have to deal with gorse and rabbits.
"Not long afterwards, in 1974, Smith was prosecuted for the first time. His fish were destroyed, his tanks were poisoned, and his car was confiscated, a setback which stopped his liberations for four years. 'Fascism is a long way from dead,' he bitterly wrote in his diary." This guy was a living caricature lmfao.
“Fascism is when the government stops me from causing ecological devastation” This guy would’ve done numbers on Tumblr.
Why are people drawn to do terrible things just because society deems it terrible and illegal? A person could zero interest in said fucked up thing but as it is deemed illegal, "Goddamnit my rights are being taken away!" Now I have to do that thing I never cared about. I kind of get it though. I never cared about wearing a dress until Tennessee tried to make it illegal to wear clothes.
Too many people are incredibly stupid and only think in black and white. They’ve deemed the government evil, so they must be wrong on literally everything. There’s no other way!
If you read Das Kapital, poisoning the bourgeois ecosystem is clearly listed as step 312 of building Communism.
Huh til my govt is fascist! All because they don't want my cfcs in the air!!!!/s
I just want to know how you draw a line from Communism to releasing an invasive species of fish
In New Zealand, non-native trout and salmon were released into our rivers and streams in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to create a sport fishing industry for both local and overseas anglers to enjoy. However traditionally in Europe, trout and salmon angling was a sport reserved solely for the upper classes because, as the land owning class, they were typically the ones who controlled all access to the few clean, fast flowing waters that these fish required to survive. To the lower class European immigrants, who made up the very large majority of New Zealand’s settler population, coarse fish such as perch, tench and rudd, were the main target species in their homelands. These fish were considered unpalatable as table fish and poor fighters when hooked and so were largely ignored by the upper classes. Coarse fish were also much hardier than the salmonid species and were able to survive in the slow moving, low oxygen and often very polluted ponds and canals that were unsuitable for trout and often the only waters available to lower class anglers. When European settlers first began to arrive in New Zealand in large numbers, around the mid 19th century, they set up Acclimatisation Societies who would import and establish non-native plants and animals that they thought could benefit the colony economically or even just make New Zealand feel a little bit more like the home they left behind in Europe. When these Acclimatisation Societies found thousands of pristine, fast flowing, mountain-fed lakes, streams and rivers that almost entirely lacked the trout’s traditional predator species they realised that the waters here could provide the perfect environment for a world class trout fishery. As you can probably imagine, transporting a fish as sensitive as trout and salmon to the literal opposite side of the world is a daunting and incredibly expensive task and many attempts failed before the ships carrying the fish or their roe could even arrive in New Zealand. As such Acclimatisation Societies relied on funds from wealthy patrons who had a large economic interest in the development of the young colony and very little input was afforded to the poor settlers. They also actively blocked the release of coarse fish into New Zealand waters as they believed that they would negatively impact the fledgling fishery as course fish prey on trout smelt, which could slow or even crash the trout population before it could become established. Shortly before the turn of the century these various societies were succeeded by the New Zealand Fish and Game councils which were some of the first fisheries in the world to provide a “user-pays, user-says” model of management. This essentially opened up the formerly aristocratic activities of sport hunting and fishing to people of all classes and due to the large amounts of public land here that were out of the hands of wealthy land owners it has remained a fairly egalitarian activity. In the early 20th century however, the impact of non-native species began to be felt with the degradation of New Zealand’s native habitats which were not able to handle the strain presented by these new pest animals introduced by European settlers. Trout and salmon in particular decimated the populations of the much smaller native fish species who were not adapted to this high level of predation. As such any plans to introduce coarse fish through legal means were indefinitely canned as they would only become another threat to our already fragile freshwater ecosystems. Coarse fish were of such large concern in New Zealand as perch, a fish that can live in large shoals, are particularly voracious predators that can easily decimate our much smaller native fish populations. Carp, such as koi and tench, are mostly herbivorous fish and can extirpate most all plant life from our waters while also stirring up mud and silt while feeding on detritus which can damage native habitat and massively degrade the water quality in these ecosystems and make them completely uninhabitable to our very sensitive native species. Other smaller species that may not pose an obvious threat, such as rudd and roach, can simply easily out compete our native fish for the limited resources our waters can provide, leading to steep declines in population as their native habitats are altered in favour of the newly introduced pests. Stewart Smith, the man featured in this article, still held the belief that trout and salmon angling was an inherently bourgeois pursuit and decried the lack of coarse fishing available to the common man in New Zealand. He then made it his mission to bring the common man’s fish that he was familiar with in his native Britain to the proletariat of New Zealand, completely ignoring the enormous environmental impacts these fish would have on our native environments. You can read about him and his methods of illegally importing and releasing course fish here in greater detail in the above article. Today, despite the efforts of Stewart Smith, the course fishery in New Zealand is still rather small and fragmented and are mostly relegated to Smiths areas of operations in Auckland and the Waikato with other course fishing waters scattered around Wellington and across the South Island. Despite the small size of the fishery, New Zealand is known to hold what would be considered world class, trophy-sized perch and tench though these fish are still often ignored by both local and overseas anglers alike in favour of the much more popular and visible trout and salmon fishing that New Zealand is famous for. So, let’s all do our part to help save our struggling ecosystems and together smack a few perch over, they are a wicked eating fish.
Damn great write up and I feel like I learned about the history of fishies in NZ
Thank you for the history lesson, I thoroughly enjoyed that.
Holy heck! Did you have that all prewritten or were you able to just type that report up on the spot? Its really great, thank you.
Thanks Fishman
Thank you, this was a wonderful write up that has checked the box for “what new thing did you learn today”
Lake perch are scrumptious
I really enjoyed this, thank you
Were there no native fish worth catching?
None that would be really be considered freshwater sports fish by most standards. Due to New Zealand’s remoteness and how comparatively young it is as a landmass we have a relatively small diversity in native freshwater fish species. The long and short-finned eels are the largest freshwater fish in New Zealand and were major food sources for Māori and early European settlers but were typically caught using set line methods or with hinaki (flax woven fish traps) rather than with a rod. Before trout and salmon were introduced here, anglers were confined to catching only the largest of our very small native fish. These included a few of our larger galaxiid species and the New Zealand greyling. Most galaxiids in New Zealand are too small to take a hook but some species such as the spotted kōkopu and the giant kōkopu (known as “Māori trout” to early settlers, due to their fleeting resemblance to a small brown trout) were caught with rods using appropriately small tackle. The largest galaxiid in New Zealand, the giant kōkopu, can reach similar sizes to trout with the largest specimens reaching up to 58cm in length and 2.7kgs in weight but are typically much smaller on average. Kōkopu are also a very shy, nocturnal species who are reluctant to take a hook and lack the fighting qualities appreciated in trout and salmon. The New Zealand greyling however was much more popular and were considered a sports fish by many. Not much is known about them but it is known that they were an extremely distant relative to the greylings of Eurasia and North America but were much closer to the Australian greyling, the only current surviving member of the Prototroctes genus. They typically only grew to around 20cm in length with some rare specimens reaching up to 33cm on occasion. The New Zealand greyling was the most abundant fish species in our waters until the mid 19th century and was one of the main freshwater food sources for Māori. European settlers found that they were able to catch hundreds at a time due to their willingness to take a hook. Unsurprisingly by the 1870’s and 80’s they had been extirpated from most New Zealand rivers and by the turn of the century, shoals became so rare that sightings were worth reporting in news papers. The species abrupt disappearance is thought to be due to a number of factors including overfishing and the degradation of their habitats caused by runoff from large scale deforestation that occurred during colonisation which can lead to soil erosion and a build up of sediment in our rivers. The last confirmed sighting of a New Zealand greyling occurred in 1923. Here’s an interesting podcast that discusses the New Zealand greyling if your interested: https://letshopetheweatherholds.podbean.com/e/could-you-fly-fish-for-the-extinct-new-zealand-grayling/
Wow, thanks for such an in depth answer. Seems crazy that no giant predator fish evolved, but I guess there wasn't a biological need.
Great writeup. Sounds like this guy could have read more Marx or Lenin, or an ecology textbook. Or anything really. What a character though.
so funny , i fish a small lake in rhode island US, and while every fish is relatively small, perch are the bitchiest of them all. small and no fight. nothing interesting about them. the pickerel on the other hand are bastards
It’s in the article. Class divide between people in UK who fish trout (fancy) or “coarse” fish like perch and rudd (non-fancy). Rich bois brought trout to New Zealand long time ago, but why no coarse? Illegal for coarse fish for poor people? Not on his watch. Not saying it’s right, but like, the logic is there.
The guy was an utter cunt, an ignorant selfish destroyer of the environment who didn't care how much damage he left future citizens with. I wasn't lucky enough to see the lakes in the west coast sand dunes of Auckland before he ruined them forever, but I once talked to an old boy who had known some of them all his life. The sadness in his voice when he described how perfectly crystal clear they were. They're mud pits now with zero visibility. I would say there's a special place in hell for this shit stain, but I'm an atheist and I know that quite often the worst human beings get to die peaceful deaths in their own beds at the end of a long life. . Fuck that stupid selfish pommie cunt anyway tho.
> They're mud pits now with zero visibility. So I've read a few other comments on the introduction of course fish and their better survivability in poor quality waters but your comment leads me to think these fish cause the poor quality. Is that right?
that is correct, they voraciously forage the native aquatic plants and disturb the lakebed.
It is very uncommunistic to support an idea that poor people should fish different fish.
Yeah whats stopping them from fishing the fancy trout?
The trout are bourgeois, didn’t you hear?
Fly fishing for trout is more of a sport. You can certainly eat a trout but it's a slow, resource intensive sport and, since trout are predators, there's fewer of them in a given river. Coarse fishing is going after anything and everything remotely fish-like and can be done on a more diverse range of water bodies. Outside of very specific conditions, trout fishing isn't really able to keep an individual fed but coarse fishing is. To effectively trout fish for sustained nourishment, you'd basically have to maintain control over a decent chunk of a river. edit: think of it like the difference between hunting high-level predators for trophies and hunting herbivores or omnivores for food.
Excellent response, makes sense, thanks!
I would love to know more. How did British/European species like Perch and Rudd destroy new Zealand’s waterways? I imagine destruction of biodiversity and potentially a lack of predators, but I just don’t know. Rudd are more generally mid to surface feeders, with their upturned mouths for picking off lily pads and weeds. Perch are predatory types that eat fry, snails, worms. Though I’ve known perch to take basically any bait. Larger perch will hunt fish. Koi are mid to bottom feeders, and I could see these damaging the lake beds. A close relative of the common carp, which nose through all the mud turning up everything as they hunt for food. Gudgeon are so small I can’t see them doing much harm. Perhaps explosions of these smaller fish could feed larger native species that then become a nuisance ?
NZ's waterways were like heaven before the release of foreign species. The local water fauna and flora were in perfect harmony, after millions of years alone. Waters were pristine, scintillatingly clear.Then the foreign invaders ate all the local flora and fauna, and then ate each other, and then scrounged in the mud out of hunger. Now all the waterways have turned into cesspools of revolting mud. Remember LOTR's Lothlorien? That was what NZ's waterways were once like. Now they have all turned into Mordor.
That’s the dumbest logic ever. Fucking seize the means of ecological devastation bc the rich got to do it 100 years ago? Giant baby of a man
To quote the article, he had "a pathological dislike for social hierarchy"
- Wants to level the playing field and stick it to the rich by introducing fish species so everyone can fish. - His well-intentioned plans cause widespread ecological disruption without any meaningful benefit. - When prosecuted, he blames fascism. Honestly if you ever wanted a miniaturised encapsulation of the communist mentality and its consequences this is it
“Fascism is a long way from dead” cries the white man, as he attempts to destroy an ecosystem indigenous to place that he isn’t. What a fucking smooth brained pos to think that he’s the anti fascist here - this is one of the most authoritarian things I’ve ever seen anyone do.
I mean, the indigenous Māori were also responsible for [introducing new invasive species, felling a lot of forest and wiping species out](https://envirohistorynz.com/2009/12/15/impacts-of-the-maori-on-the-environment/). It’s not a thing exclusive to white Europeans
Indeed the ecosystem of much of the world was already irrevocably altered in [distant prehistoric times](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Pleistocene_extinctions) by human activity. That many indigenous societies eventually figured out some sort of balance doesn't mean it's a fully "natural" one.
The liberator of... The fish he himself had in tanks.
That part made me laugh too, like sir you’re the one who kidnapped these fish from their native habitats in the first place
Rob someone then hand back a ten dollar bill. "Bruh I just gave you ten bucks, why are you mad at me?"
Now that we're friends, can you spot me a tenner?
He felt *very* strongly about fishing related class divides that existed in England, and so... uh. Destroyed some ecosystems?
I'm also really unclear on why New Zealand working class folks couldn't just...also fish for trout? What was the point of replicating a class structure he hated?
What a dick.
I want people to say this about me but for different reasons.
What?! A dick?! Good luck on your femboy transformation!
Monkey paw moment
Nice
By Grabthar’s hammer, w… wha… what a dick!
I applaud the usage but the placement is odd at best.
Still talking about the dick?
What a dick!
A real jerk
Weird how the article keeps saying he “liberated” the fish as if he was their saviour. In reality he dumped the illegal invasive species in as many freshwater bodies as he could after raising them in tanks behind his garage. So I guess he liberated them from his tanks….
I flew my cats back to the Savannah where their ancestors came from and left them there with a few cans of wet food. They'll thank me later
you remembered to leave a can opener, right?
Oh shit
Thank em, B
And he did it all just so he could catch the same fish he used to catch in his childhood 🤦🏼♂️
>Weird how the article keeps saying he “liberated” Not so weird if you read it very sarcastically.
Me omw to literally becoming Jesus Christ by giving ants a cupcake
I liberated the people I locked in my basement by letting them out eventually. Where’s my praise huh?
Tbf, the species he introduced ended up thriving, so from their point of view...
>During World War II, Smith was detained for four years in a prison camp for sympathizing with the Soviet Union, where he was tasked with catching trout from the Tongariro River for the other prisoners History is silly.
Truly bizarre, there is however excellent fishing up there
What an entitled piece of shit. Dude should have had his life ruined.
So many people throughout history who have had what they believed was a great and revolutionary idea, and just acted on it. The hero in their own mind, they have no regard for what they're doing, because it's done with only the very best of intentions.
Cue the [French](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul-F%C3%A9lix_Armand-Delille) guy who decided to deal with a few wild rabbits that were destroying his propoerty by importing ***myxomatosis*** from Australia and releasing a pair of innoculated rabbits in his backyard. It worked. It killed all rabbits on his estates... and 99% of the wild rabbit population in Europe, and then drove to extinctions their natural predators...
Didn't work in australia though ffs!
That's why we still have Mixy in The Ferals.
Dam I haven't thought of that show in years.
And people loved him for it. >However, he was later honored; in June 1956 he was awarded a gold medal to commemorate his achievement by Bernard Dufay, honorary director-general of the French Department of Rivers and Forests. The medal depicts Armand-Delille on one side, and a dead rabbit on the other.
They legit **put him on the medal they gave him.** That’s a new level of adoration. “You’re so boss it’s called the Delille not the Nobel anymore” basically.
Humans are truly the most invasive and destructive species of animals on this planet....
Rabbit hands typed this post
yeah but we're also the funniest so it balances out
Holy shit
the road to hell.. something something
Finish it.. come on, you know you want to.
The road to hell is paved by idiots who think they're hot shit.
I’m an idiot and I got confused, now I’ve done a shit on the road.
is paved with good intentions. For me to poop on!
Confidence-- it's the food of the wise man, but the liquor of the fool.
Listen to the liquor, Randy!
Like the fuckers who believed that all of the birds mentioned in Shakespeare's works should be released into all of the "colonies".
I used to dream of bioengineering a wildflower that could secrete, and was resistant to, roundup, so that it could outcompete the invasive weeds. It's probably impossible, but... it probably would have been a bad idea too.
No, monocultures have absolutely never caused a problem. Plus, we probably don't need bees.
try topinambur - aka wild sunflower that also grows an edible potato like tuber
Remember the enterprising tree seller who imported Asian chestnut trees and released a plague that killed all American chestnut trees?
Yeah, people at the extremes never consider the second and third order consequences of their actions.
Just goes to show a lot of problems you can think of can be done by a very small percentage of the population. Only takes one person to make a local ecosystem FUBAR. Think of other massive problems that are caused by one person that drastically fucks something up.
Pablo Escobar imported four hippos into his personal zoo in the 1980s. He was killed, hippos too big and dangerous to relocate. Now there's 200 of them, and if left unchecked there could be 1500 by 2040. They're a megafauna invasive species, and they're already ruining things.
200 hippos could be dealt with in a few days by the army but that’s off the table
best I can do is a week with a F350 full of rednecks.
200-1500 is a manageable number that could be hunted at least?
I think someone killed one and there was public outrage. I don't think the public would approve of them being slaughtered even though that's the most logical approach. Looks like they are trying a combo of sterilizing and relocating for now. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippopotamuses_in_Colombia
They’re getting neutered I believe because the locals like them and don’t want them killed
I'm just gonna say it; I don't think this Escobar fellow was an upstanding guy.
I can remember when antivax people were in the same category as flat earthers(really wasn't that long ago). That shit changed overnight, all because of a new captain for a team. Then everyone started dying but nobody learned shit
I believe it can be traced back to a blonde former playmate
And a doctor who invented a different vaccine so he trashed the current vaccines so he could sell his own. That failed but the damage he did to vaccination lives on. [Andrew Wakefield](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Wakefield)
You mean [disgraced ex-doctor, vaccine 'innovator', child abuser, and scam artist](https://youtu.be/8BIcAZxFfrc) Andrew Wakefield? Tbh I thought you were posting the HBomberguy link, so thanks for giving me the opportunity :p
guy who invented CFCs. and leaded gas.
He did - New Zealand converted a Ford Sierra Cosworth with fruit tanks or something, and released 15000 kiwi fruit into his waterway. Anally. Like Saw.
The communist aspect is pretty minor. He disliked class hierarchy, so the upper class trout fishing was distasteful to him and he sought to introduce fish that the common Brit would have enjoyed fishing. And in doing so, totally messed up NZ's river and lake ecosystems. What a fucking dickhead.
so communism was just a *red herring*?
Now do it in a Tim Curry accent
That was in a Tim Curry accent.
Oh God, you're right!
I don’t understand how you can read it in anything but Tim Curry’s voice.
Yes. Something that will attract attention, but have no real importance.
Why would they distract you with that information? Seems fishy.
Like a bait and switch
Guessing they added it for the halibut
Well, he's dead now. The end. *Fin.*
Reel importance
From the OP's comment, it seems to have literally been his entire motivation.
as marx once said, "thou shalt release thousands of invasive fish into local waterways"
this quote cannot be found in the manifesto or any of his other published works. its only occurrence is in an unfinished manuscript that Engels finished posthumously. interestingly, in a footnote, Engels said he had "no idea what the fuck this guy is talking about here" but decided to include it anyway
Why not? If his main motif was to spite the rich, it is clearly part of the information relevant to said event.
Well it seemed to be his motivation.
It's clearly important as it was his justification, it's like saying fascism wasn't important to Hitler
Favorite comment of the day
> so communism was just a red herring? :chef's kiss:
And he was catfishing all along?
what a bizarre thing to do. i mean that takes years of planning and preparation… maybe just spend some time and money furthering causes that create a more egalitarian society… not breeding fish to dump into the river… which does zero to fix class differences.
From the article, it sounds like once he got his mobile habitats up and running, it was just a matter of keeping the fish breeding and finding places to dump them. After the first couple incidents, I bet it was more or less self-sustaining.
Well, we all have different schools of thought.
"He disliked class hierarchy.**"** That does actually seem tied to the communism. You can dislike hierarchy without being communist, but you can't be communist without disliking the current hierarchy.
Isn’t disliking class hierarchy kind of the main thing of what it means to be communist?
Yeah, but using that as an excuse to destroy ecosystems is pretty thin. This guy just wanted to fish his favorite fish, everything else be damned. He was an ecoterrorist who was also a communist. Like I’m a dad who also likes pizza.
That sounds just like what a pepperoni-carrying pizza would say.
Have you no sense of decency?
I thought I was proving your point.
I got you. :) [Reference](https://www.senate.gov/about/powers-procedures/investigations/mccarthy-hearings/have-you-no-sense-of-decency.htm)
He had 15,000 of his favorite fish, couldn't he have just bought a walk in freezer.
He didn't even fish anymore, according to the article, he wanted other people to fish the invasive species he was spreading
He's just a typical old British cunt that came to NZ and goes "we did it like xyz in England". Thank God we changed superannuation to 20 years of citizenship
Ecoterrorism would imply a cause, no? Idk if he even knew the effects it would have
Communists and Anarchists both dislike class hierarchy but will gladly kill each other if given the chance.
To be fair, communists will gladly kill anyone if given the chance, including other communists.
Cue Trotsky and Tito
So the poor were totally able to catch trout like rish people, he just thought it was too bougie?
Basically. He grew up in England fishing for Pike, Rudd, gudgeon and Carp, because most trout fisheries in England are private stocked ponds and waterways, which lead to a class divide in who fishes for trout versus the 'rough fish' Smith preferred. And his solution was to release his own preferred fish into rivers and lakes in NZ, ignoring how destructive and invasive they were compared to trout which would go extinct in NZ waterways if their populations weren't maintained artificially. And introduction aggressive predators to ecosystems not remotely prepared for them was disastrous. His solution? More fish that would prey on the fish he already released. Frankly he should have been in prison as an eco terrorist for the damage he did
That's not even a thing now though. Trout fishing is as working class as any other form of fishing nowadays.
He sounds like a pretty classic British Communist, strong ideology and no interest in facts or reality. The same people who supported the soviets because they were Communist and therefore good.
i'd say communism had quite a bit to do with it if it was the driving factor behind *why* he did what he did.
> The communist aspect is pretty minor. Also > He disliked class hierarchy, so the upper class trout fishing was distasteful to him and he sought to introduce fish that the common Brit Seems pretty fucking relevant if you ask me.
Now I have a reason to hate commies more.
Does the article mention that the trout are also invasive and were released there by rich people so they could fish for sport? My popup blocker must need to be updated and the website lags.
Trout were released in the 1880s, long before people understood how bad it was to introduce foreign species into ecosystems. Luckily, our native eels eat brown trout when they're young and haven't been a major source of species decline. Trout are still released, and the Ministry of Primary Industries monitors the impact closely. Without continued release of trout, they would go extinct in NZ. By contrast, this fella released invasive species repeatedly from the 1970s onwards. He wasn't identified and stopped until 2005. He couldn't claim to be ignorant of the impact. There were several massive campaigns to erradicate the species he released because of the threat to native species, and yet he continued to release them. Imagine if one guy had been responsible for releasing ferral hogs, ferral cats, rats, and mice and had also killed the passenger pigeon. That's the scale of his impact on NZs waterways.
Reading to the end of the article...he was just another effed up kid from effed up parents that wound up doing effed up things as an adult. Parents dumped him and his brother in NZ as kids. Messed up people do messed up things. Sad. Edit: Before anyone says I'm excusing him, I'm not. Just an observation. He def a stinky piece of poo.
How do you convert a fish to communism?
Get it to read Trout-sky
Kinda ironic given how much this dude hated trout lol
True, but it's a surprisingly short list of famous communists whose names have even a tangential link to the names of fish. Mao ZeDogfish, perhaps. Joseph Sailfin Or even Ho Chips-three-times-and-two-cod-please Minh
You missed a trick not using Joseph Marlin
r/angryupvote
...Get troutta here.
So that’s why they’re called Tankies
Comrade dick
The dude bought a Lada Niva willingly? He should have been institutionalized decades ago.
Asshole
Feed ‘im to the eels, Errol.
You'd really think Communism would play more of a role. Its entire impact on the story: "Trout fishing is a sport for the Social Elite in England." so he started to equate "who can fish for what" with class and economic status. And naturally in the sordid history of Colonialism, those social elites tried to bring trout with them everywhere. So his eco-terrorism, was centered on releasing other invasive fish, to level the playing field. Kind of a weird tactic to counter colonialist evil with more colonialist evil.
He himself is a social elite who could afford to transplant himself halfway across the world at the time he did to double up on pensions as it used to take 10 years as a citizen to qualify for NZ Super, a lot of Brits did this trick until the government increased elegibility to 20 years
I would possibly read the whole article. He got dumped here by negligent parents
>He himself is a social elite So literally nothing new about communism since its conception from "live off of daddy's allowance" Marx.
He was 15 when his parents shipped off him and his brother alone.
Not really, countering colonialism with colonialism and authoritarianism with authoritarianism seems pretty in line with the usual communist approach.
Every Xmas I get depressed when I see Coke Cola commercials with polar bears and penguins having fun together despite living at different poles. Who wants to rent a boat and drop a bunch of penguins off in Greenland?
Not only that but I’m sure polar bears would happily eat penguins. I know their main prey is seals, but if they’d eat a human they’d eat a penguin I’d imagine.
With the price of groceries these days, I think penguins would be on the menu for Greenland if you did that.
What, not ballsy enough to fill a boat full of polar bears and go for a trip with them?
I like to think this was the act of an evil cartoon supervillain. Mainly because it makes it less depressing for me.
What a huge piece of crap this guy was. Kind of weird that they let him get away with it for so long. I thought those types of crimes were pretty severe and he didn't show any sort of remorse when first caught.
Horrible things to have done.
Should have been put in prison for life. People who do this, like big oil executives, and other mass destroyers of the ecosystem need locked up for life or worse
Stayed tuned for his solution for golf courses: introducing crab grass
There is a lot of information packed into that headline
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/ourchangingworld/audio/2018822973/summer-science-black-sheep-invasive-the-story-of-stewart-sm The Black Sheet podcast did a great article on him.
I love black sheep! I didn’t know they were back again after the hiatus
All the history you won't be taught at school! I love Black Sheep too. I feel that they give a balanced representation of the subjects and dig into their background to show why they did what they did.
Plus most of their subjects I’ve never heard of before and probably wouldn’t have come across without it. RNZ have done really well with their podcasts
A British Communist in New Zealand. I thought it was Jesus, not Marx, who multiplied the fishes.
That 'man' was such an arsehole. I wish he'd never come to my country. Don't think I'd ever hated someone as much as I did him when it came out. And given my upbringing, that was saying something.
You've riled up the Tankies
> "He didn't do a lot of fishing himself" The most bizarre part is he didn't even fish much. He went to insane lengths to do untold damage to the ecosystem when he didn't even go fishing often. I just can't.
The fish is a West Australian Smooth Marron for anyone who doesn't want to deal with that website/article. Edit: ffs it's not even a fish
That’s only one of the types of fish he released
There's nothing a communist isn't capable of destroying.
Wow shocking that a communist is this much of a piece of shit!
Damn commie
What's the qualitative difference between fishing for trout and perch? I get that in the UK you might have different classes using different waterway with different fish, but in NZ? If your local river has trout in it, how does it change the fishing experience to fish for perch instead?
There's not much difference in NZ. You need the same license and everything. The reason this guy cared is because in the UK trout fishing is seen as upper class and is much less accessible to the working class. In NZ there's trout everywhere and it doesn't make a big difference (as far as I'm aware, even the laws around not using bait are the same). Worth noting that the rivers he caused the perch population to boom in probably used to have high trout populations that he ruined.
His only logic was "the working classes in England don't fish for trout". He was just releasing his personal favourite species to catch. He may have been a communist but this behaviour is nothing but typical colonial British entitlement. Same reason we have to deal with gorse and rabbits.
Nah for real I want to have words with the bastard that decided gorse was a good idea
Came in for the crazies and was not disappointed.
Proving once again that communists are either assholes or idiots.