KEY POINTS:
People eating eels from Lake Forsyth/Wairewa on Banks Peninsula are risking their health, according to a scientist measuring the lake's toxicity.
Toxic blue-green algae had already killed dogs, sheep and cattle that drank from the lake, Dr Barbara Dolamore, a Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology (CPIT) senior lecturer in biochemistry and molecular biology, said today.
"The water may look safe, but it isn't," said Dr Dolamore, who has been investigating the environmental effects of toxic cyanobacteria on the lake since 2004 with funding from the CPIT Foundation.
"Livestock and dogs have already died from drinking water from the lake and the local runanga don't want this happening to people who live near the lake - or to visitors to the area," she said.
The local Wairewa runanga had sole eeling rights to the lake and Dr Dolamore said since the nodularin toxin was not destroyed by cooking "accumulation of the toxin in fish could also be hazardous to people's health".
Wairewa runanga chairman Robin Wybrow said the foundation's research project alerted the community to the lake's dangers.
"The research is incredibly valuable across all areas," Mr Wybrow said. "She has made us aware of potential health issues and spurred us to do something about it."
The runanga wants to build a groyne beneath cliffs at the northern end of Kaitorete Spit to create an opening into the lake and has applied for resource consent.
Mr Wybrow said it was hoped that "harnessing the ocean's natural energy and tidal patterns" would allow the lake to breathe.
"If we can keep an opening at least 80 per cent of the time, we may be able to improve the lake's water quality and save the eel fishery," he said.
- NZPA
