The longfin eel is found only in New Zealand. Travelling far inland, it may be the country’s most widely distributed freshwater fish. The pectoral (side) fins have sixteen to twenty bony rays. This species is usually dark brown to grey-black on the back.

One study found that males swim out to sea to breed and die at an average age of twenty three years and females at an average age of thirty four. Growth rates are slow. Longfin eels grow at around two and a half centimetres a year to a length of thirty centimetres, and they slow down to only one and a half centimetres a year to a length of one metre. Shortfin eels grow a little faster. These slow rates are a result of temperature, food supply and competition. They are probably the world’s biggest eels. They may grow up to two metres, and the biggest caught and measured so far weighed twenty four kilograms taken from Lake Waihola, south of Dunedin in 1974. Any New Zealand eel over one metre long and caught inland is probably a longfin specimen. In 1882 Canterbury naturalist T.H. Potts listed some unsubstantiated reports of impressive catches, including a forty three kilogram eel caught by a shepherd at Stoneyhurst, and eels over fifty nine kilos from Lake Wakatipu ???

 

Eels were important food for the Māori, and it took effort and ingenuity to catch them. Traps, nets and other devices were often complex and sophisticated. In the 19th and 20th centuries, many New Zealand children went eeling, and catching one was almost a rite of passage.