not the best of photos but I don't have a proper macro lens and the fish is very small. Mudfish are highly-specialised galaxiids which aestivate underground during drought (like lungfish). Early settlers often dug aestivating mudfish from the ground while farming, and used to joke that the New Zealand soil was so fertile that you could produce both fish and potatoes from the same field. There are five species in NZ and another in Tasmania. The Canterbury mudfish is endangered.
January 2011
