A Tauranga Fisherman - Captain Gilbert Mair and the Rurima Islands

Tauranga’s offshore fishermen once experienced record catches off a little-known group of rocks located near Matata. Known as the Rurima Islands or Rurima Rocks, they are located approximately 9 km (5.6 miles) west of Moutohora Island and 10 km (6.2 miles) northwest from the mouth of the Rangitaiki River. Rurima is the largest, with the smaller two being Moutoki and Tokata Islands. These uninhabited islands once supported large numbers of land and sea birds, tuatara and native rats.¹ 

Map showing the locations of some of the Bay of Plenty’s offshore islands including the Rurimas

The first European known to have fished the Rurimas was Captain Gilbert Mair NZC, who is best known for his military achievements during the Anglo-Maori Land Wars (1860-1872). He participated in the Waikato War, the East Coast anti-Hauhau campaigns, the Tauranga Wars of 1864 and 1867 and the pursuit of Te Kooti Arikirangi Te Turuki and the prophet-general’s Ringatu ‘rebel’ guerilla fighters (1870-1872). Given his leadership of colonial forces and the pro-government Maori Flying Column, as well as displays of personal courage in numerous actions, Mair’s NZ Military Cross was hard earned and richly deserved.² 

 

Captain Mair (far left) with his Arawa Flying Column in July 1870 at Rotorua’s Lake Rotokakahi (Green Lake)

Captain Mair was also an avid fisherman when off duty. Often based at Tauranga during his military duties during the 1860s, and civil duties in the Tauranga Magistrates’ Court during the 1870s, the veteran was able to indulge his passion. During offshore excursions, Mair was at the tiller, steering the 35-foot whaleboat he kept at Tauranga. The 2-ton craft was powered by sails and six Maori and/or Pakeha oarsmen-fisherman who regularly shared their record catches from the Rurimas with Tauranga Moana’s local iwi. In 1873, Mair took his whaleboat out to Karewa Island off the Tauranga Harbour entrance to collect tuatara for the British Museum.³

 

Mair with a dinghy load of dogfish

Fluent in Maori and with successive Maori wives and relatives, Mair acquired a detailed knowledge of Maori fishing methods and locations in the Bay of Plenty, including its offshore islands. He put this knowledge to practical use in later years and the Rurima Islands off the settlement of Matata became a favourite location.

In 1872 Captain Mair took his whaleboat and six Tauranga oarsmen to the islands on a fishing excursion and reported:

In four or five fathoms water, with six lines, we had a whale-boat half full in an hour. The first fish hauled in were followed to the surface by swarms of snapper, kahawai, kingfish, barracoota and maomao, and then we simply bobbed for them as you would for minnows in a brook until my arms ached with the exertion of lifting them over the boat's side.⁴

 

At nearby Maketu in 1885, Mair witnessed the remarkable hauling in of a great fishing net, 95 chains in length (1.1875 miles), constructed and deployed by the Arawa people.

 

The fish caught consisted mainly of kahawai, schnapper, trevalley, gurnard, moki, tarakihi, parore, kingfish, tutahuna, kapeta, pepeke, mangopare, mangotara (several kinds of smaller shark), the latter a small blue shark, much prized for its fine oil, also about twenty "takiari," which attains a length of 12 to 14 feet, and has been known to attack swimming horses, cattle, dogs, and human beings. There were also uncounted numbers of smaller fish, such as koheriheri, or koheru (horse mackerel), kutorotoro (sand fish), and some new species.⁵

The Rurima Islands with Moutohora Island beyond

Born in 1843, Mair retained his lifelong enthusiasm for fishing. Just eighteen months before his death at the age of 80 at Tauranga in 1923, a visitor to the town’s waterfront reported how he saw there a man who:

[C]hip, chip, chipped at the paint on a dinghy hull. He was of medium height, well built, and had the smooth cheek and freshness of complexion of a boy. His movements were decisive, and vigorous, and in judging his age one would have hazarded fifty years at the outside.

Yet it was Captain Gilbert Mair, over eighty years of age, enjoying himself in helping to get back into commission his friend’s fishing dinghy. That is more than eighteen months ago at Tauranga, and … I tried to link him up with his fighting days.

Captain Gilbert Mair straightened his back … and instead ‘of hair-breadth scapes in the imminent deadly breach’, he gave me office stories of the days when he worked in the Government Lands Department.⁶

The Rurima Islands as seen from above Whakatane

Today, the Rurima islands are an uninhabited nature reserve owned by the Ngati Awa iwi, and Moutoki Island remains an outpost for tuatara. ‘The Rocks’ continue to hold fish all year round but, while good catches can still be made in shallow water with the help of burley, the great shoals of Rurima’s golden age of fishing are long gone. The islands are now best known for snorkeling, diving and kayaking.⁷ 

Captain Gilbert Mair NZC. in 1921

The last words in this article belong to Captain Mair who in 1922, expressed a concern that many of Tauranga’s offshore fishermen share to this day:

 

Having resided in the Bay of Plenty off and on since 1864, and watched the countless shoals of fish which cover the sea from Mercury Bay to Cape Runaway in the spring for months, I perpetually wonder why our fish supply should be so precariously uncertain and expensive.⁸

References

¹ Bay of Plenty Regional Council, https://www.boprc.govt.nz/media/796325/islands-karewa-tuhua-mayor-moutoki-rurima-motunau-plate-motuhora-whale-motuhaku-schooner-rock.pdf

^{2 Mair, Gilbert – Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, Te Ara, https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/1m4/mair-gilbert}

³ Tinne, Ernest J; The Wonderland of the Antipodes, Sampson Low, Marston, Low, and Searle, London, 1873: 84.

 

⁴ Mair, Gilbert, Notes on Rurima Rocks. Transactions and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New Zealand, 1872: 151. 

 

⁵ Mair, Captain Gilbert, Reminiscences and Maori Stories, Brett, Auckland, 1923: 22.

⁶ Manawatu Standard, 3 December 1923: 5.

⁷ Bay Of Plenty Regional Council, https://www.boprc.govt.nz/media/796325/islands-karewa-tuhua-mayor-moutoki-rurima-motunau-plate-motuhora-whale-motuhaku-schooner-rock.pdf

⁸ Mair, 1923: 22.

Illustrations

Bay of Plenty map,  SunLive https://www.sunlive.co.nz/news/281986-all-safe-following-capsize-near-rurima-island.html

Mundy, Daniel Louis, Captain Gilbert Mair and his Arawa Flying Column at Kaiteriria Pā and camp, Rotokakahi, Ref: Mundy Album No 2, PH-ALB-86-p93-1. Auckland Museum, Auckland, New Zealand. https://www.aucklandmuseum.com/collection/object/am_library-photography-14314

Photographer unknown. Gilbert Mair in a rowboat, Whangarei. Ref: PAColl-7985-85. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. https://natlib.govt.nz/records/22335614

Photographer unknown, Rurima Islands, Wai 46 # A3, Te Rangahau Whenua Raupatu O Ngati Awa Report to Department of Conservation, 25 July 1992: 15.

Photograph by ‘Avenue’. Rurima Island and the rest of the Rurima Rocks viewed from Kaputerangi Pa above Whakatane, 19 November 2009, CC. Wikipedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rurima_Rocks_zoom.jpg

Mair, Captain Gilbert, Reminiscences and Maori Stories, Brett, Auckland, 1923: 3