Story: Te mahi kai – food production economics

This fishing lure shank is made from the shell of a black-lipped pearl oyster, which only lives in the tropics. The shank was found in an archaeological site at Tairua on the Coromandel Peninsula. It is one of a very few existing items known to have been brought to New Zealand by early Polynesian arrivals. Māori adapted the trolling-lure shanks in New Zealand, using stone, bone and local shell instead of pearl-oyster shell.