A "carpet" of dead, mostly eyeless, snapper which washed up on several Coromandel Peninsula beaches has left people mystified.
New Zealand's Ministry of Fisheries officials are investigating after holidaymakers at Little Bay and Waikawau Bay found hundreds of fish dead on the sand on Tuesday.
Auckland resident James Hughes spotted the snapper floating close to shore after children rushed up to him and his friends holding some of the dead fish, the New Zealand Herald reported.
"We spoke to boaties coming in and they said there was a carpet of them floating in the water."
A Department of Conservation official told Hughes fish in the Coromandel area were starving because of weather conditions.
"That's just completely untrue. This was something deliberate and it's just wrong," Hughes said.
Fisheries officials said the fish would be unsafe to eat and the mystery was being investigated.
It would be illegal to deliberately dump snapper, but there could be an innocent explanation, such as a net-splitting, a spokesman said.
Front page
RSS Feed