Source: Radio New Zealand
A Northland mudfish with a ruler for scale. DOC
A deeply unglamorous and rarely seen creature that spends most of its life in mud has pulled off a last-minute upset by winning the title of Fish of the Year.
The Northland mudfish was not even in the top ten at the competition’s halfway point, but surged ahead in the final 24 hours – bumping the longfin eel, or tuna kūwharuwharu, out of the top spot.
Just under 6000 people around the country voted in the contest, which is organised annually by Mountains to Sea Conservation Trust.
Trust founder Samara Nicholas said the humble, secretive Northland mudfish – which was found only in a few wetlands around Kaikohe and Lake Ōmāpere – benefited from strong campaigns by the regional council and a local radio station.
“Even the Northland Rugby Union claimed they may actually change the Northland Taniwha name to the Northland Mudfish,” she said.
“I think people just got really fascinated by the fact that it’s so rare, it’s highly threatened. Not a lot is known about it. And it’s just was just so quirky that it seemed to capture the imagination of people.”
The secretive, wetland-dwelling Northland mudfish has been named Fish of the Year 2026. Supplied / Mountains to Sea Conservation Trust
Until the late surge by the mudfish, the longfin eel, the seahorse and the whale shark – the world’s biggest fish – appeared to be top contenders.
“It was just the buzz and the sheer amount of people getting behind the mudfish. And that’s what we want to do. We want this competition to create friendly competition between different organisations campaigning for their fish. The campaign went crazy in those last 24 hours, and the mudfish completely took it out.”
New Zealanders’ love of the underdog was also a likely factor.
Nicholas said the purpose of the competition was to shine a spotlight on creatures that were usually “out of sight, out of mind” – as was the case with many of New Zealand’s native fish.
With a maximum length of 15cm, the Northland mudfish was the smallest winner to date. It was also the first freshwater fish to take out the title, and so obscure it was only discovered in 1998.
Map showing the distribution of Northland mudfish. Supplied / Earth Sciences NZ
Its unique talents included the ability to survive droughts by burying itself in mud and breathing through its skin, Nicholas said.
That skill helped mudfish survive when a fire ripped through 15ha of conservation land next to Kerikeri airport in 2010.
However, the main threat to the survival of the Northland mudfish – and the four other species of mudfish around the motu – was the destruction of wetlands.
“We’ve drained around 90 percent of our wetlands in the last 150 years, and that has had a disastrous impact on our native galaxiids, including mudfish,” Nicholas said.
“We urgently need to protect and restore wetlands and riparian areas across the country to give freshwater fish, like the Northland mudfish, a fighting chance.”
It was the fifth time Mountains to Sea had run the Fish of the Year competition.
Last year’s winner was the bizarre, and aptly named, blobfish.
The Northland mudfish is sometimes also called the burgundy mudfish because of the colouring around its gills and belly.
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
