Close to my Otago Peninsula home there’s a creek called Smith’s running into Otago Harbour, and I walk to it most mornings. By the bridge one crisp autumn day, I was astonished to see a scattering of strange fish lying flat and stranded in the rocky intertidal zone, a dozen of them, unearthly silver with forked tails and big eyes suggesting they inhabit the ocean’s dim-lit depths.
