3.3 Fishes
Click on a section of the map to dive under the sea and discover what lies beneath New Zealand's waters
Key areas for fish biodiversity in the New Zealand marine ecoregion
New Zealand’s diverse fish assemblage is a globally unique mix of widespread, Indo-Pacific, Australasian, subantarctic, and endemic faunas. Approximately half of the species are widespread and about 18% are endemic to New Zealand. Many coastal species are widespread around the North and South islands, with northern species (ca 15% of coastal fishes) reaching southern limits between East Cape and Cook Strait, and southern species (ca. 8% of coastal fishes) reaching northern limits between Banks Peninsula and Cook Strait. Oceanic and deepwater species show a similar mix of northern and southern distributions, with the Chatham Rise marking the distributional limit for many species.
Workshop participants specialising in fi sh taxonomy and ecology delineated 12 areas in New Zealand’s marine environment that are regarded as key locations for fi sh biodiversity. They also identified categories of fish that are an important component of New Zealand’s marine biodiversity, but whose locations cannot be easily represented on a two-dimensional map, or whose distributions are unknown. These categories include deepwater and pelagic fishes and hoki (Macruronus novaezelandiae).
Contributors: Clinton Duffy, Malcolm Francis, Bob McDowall, Chris Paulin, and Rob Murdoch.
References and further reading: Paulin and Roberts (1992), Francis (1996), Anderson et al. (1998).