Jimmy Allingham

This one remains a mystery.

It could be something natural or it could be something to do with land use or a combination of both.

At this point, we simply don't know.

So that's the mystery at the moment of the Pukipuki Lagoon.

Well, about two weeks ago, officials from the Horizons Regional Council, which is the Manawatu Whanganui Regional Council, were doing some work at Pukipuki Lagoon and discovered it had dried out.

Now, Pukipuki Lagoon, it's between Himatangi and Tangi Moana and coastal Manawatu.

So people heading north from Wellington on the road...

would probably know they go through State Highway 1 heading towards Sanson and Bull, so it's to the left of that towards the coast.

The lake itself is about 15 hectares in size, but it used to be much bigger, and a couple of weeks ago it was discovered that it was completely dry.

There's been a period throughout March of pretty low rainfall in coastal Manawatu, but the cause of this is unknown, and on that dry lake bed there were...

hundreds, potentially even thousands of dead eels, as well as some fish and some freshwater mussels as well.

But eels are pretty amazing, or tuna, as Maori call them.

And we've got short fin eels and long fin eels, so that they've buried themselves into the mud there.

below the surface, and when I checked last week, members from three local iwi had rescued about 3,000 eels from the dried-up lake and taken them to nearby waterways, but there were still, when I went there to have a look just over a week ago now,

there were still hundreds, if not thousands, of bodies of dead eels, decomposing eels on the surface of where this lake was.

Now, by the time I got there, there'd been a bit of rain, so that just turned it into a muddy bog, really, with lots of puddles.

And even a few days after this was discovered, that this lake had dried up, there were still iwi volunteers there,

combing through this mud looking for live eels which I have to say by the time I was there it seemed almost quite a forlorn task there were just so many dead eels around but they did find some when I was there and hopefully they got rescued too.

Well, locals that I spoke to weren't familiar with this, and they have said that land use around the lake has changed over time, so potentially that's played a part there.

What caused this is under investigation at the moment, and I've checked in again with the Horizons Regional Council, and it's working with DOC, because this is conservation land, and local iwi to investigate what could have caused this.