A considerable effort is underway to save the country's rarest whitebait species.
More than 1000 shortjaw kōkopu have been especially bred in captivity over the last five years and released into Auckland's Waitakere Ranges today.
For conservationists, it's been a massive effort to ensure the survival of the small native species.
"They're no less endangered than kiwi, and yet we can still fish for them," Auckland Council biodiversity advisor Matt Bloxham said.
Shortjaw kōkopu were are commonly caught as whitebait when they were just juveniles.
But they were in decline, so Manaaki Whitebait launched a massive breeding programme to save the species.
"[We]first hatched the idea about 15-20 years ago. In 2019, we got to the point with the council where we were able to secure seven adult fish from the very lake we're standing on. From those seven, we then produced over a thousand fish," Manaaki Whitebait's Paul Decker said.
The fish are a welcome delivery for local iwi Te Kawerau ā Maki.
"This is a taonga, a tohu, a key species that indicates to us how healthy the environment is," said Te Kawerau ā Maki CEO Edward Ashby.
While fishing and predators have contributed to their decline, severe weather has recently become more of a threat — wiping out our entire breeding grounds.
"One of those four breeding grounds, which was the Marawhara stream at Piha that blew out during Cyclone Gabrielle, killed everything in the awa, including that whole breeding population," Ashby said.
The project would be monitored over the coming years to see how well the fish were taking to their new home and whether they were reproducing.
"We'll monitor them as much as we're doing now by sort of observation, by spotlighting," Bloxham said.
The scheme would also environmental DNA (eDNA) sequencing to check in on the species which "just picks up little fragments of their DNA."
The team behind the breeding effort was confident it would be a big boost but isn't ruling out further fish releases if necessary.
"It's the pinnacle of a fish breeder's career is to be able to contribute actively to saving a species," Decker said.
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