Maramataka and Fishing: The Māori Lunar Calendar

What a maramataka is

A maramataka is a Māori calendar that keeps time by the moon and the stars rather than by the sun. Every night of the lunar month has its own name and belongs to a stage of the moon, and the months are marked by particular stars rising before dawn; Matariki or Pūanga, depending on the iwi, signals the New Year. The knowledge came from Eastern Polynesia and was reshaped here, over centuries of observation, to a southern sky, cooler seasons and new plants and animals. Te Wānanga o Aotearoa describes it as both a calendar and an almanac, and Te Papa as a monthly guide to planting and fishing. The Science Learning Hub of the University of Waikato and Ngā Pātaka Kōrero o Te Arawa both call it environmentally led: people adjust to the signs of te taiao, not the other way round.

No single calendar for the whole country

There is no national maramataka. When Lincoln University researchers collated 43 published and unpublished versions in 2006, the months ran from 29 to 32 nights, and they found none from South Island iwi. Te Kahuratai Painting (Ngāti Manu) puts the number across the country at more than 500, and says a coastal calendar differs from an inland one, and one side of a mountain can differ from the other. Iwi also start the month at different points: most at the new moon, some at the full moon. Because the moon takes about 29.5 days from one new moon to the next, every calendar needs a way to stay in step; some iwi add a thirteenth month in certain years, while Te Arawa, by its own account, adds or drops days with the season. Even the first night can depend on the horizon. The Lincoln authors suggest the young moon is seen sooner from an open east coast than from inland country where mountains block the view.

How the maramataka has guided fishing

Historically a maramataka was consulted before almost any undertaking, from planting and harvest to fishing and important hui, because some nights were held to suit particular work better than others. The Lincoln report notes that the monthly calendars were more precise than seasonal ones, naming the very days on which food gathering was or was not advised, and that their emphasis followed the land: sea fishing among coastal tribes, eels and other freshwater fish elsewhere. Manuscripts that Te Kahuratai Painting studied for the Ngāti Manu rohe in the Bay of Islands name the nights when the main run of īnanga was expected and the right times for particular fishing methods at particular places. A historical calendar from Ōtaki, credited to Mita Te Tai, marked each night with symbols about fishing, and the ethnologist Elsdon Best recorded it early in the twentieth century. The calendar always worked with seasonal signs as well; the Science Learning Hub gives the flowering of pōhutukawa as a long-held sign that kina are ready. Since 2010 a project of Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga, the Māori Centre of Research Excellence, has compared this knowledge of the lunar rhythm with science, using wānanga, catch information and laboratory work.

The maramataka and the moon on our pages

Each place page on this site shows the moon as astronomy describes it: the phase, how much of the disc is lit, and solunar bite times built from moonrise, moonset and the moon passing overhead and underfoot, all calculated for that place's coordinates in New Zealand time. The moon is what the two have in common. A maramataka, though, is more than a phase: it depends on when the moon is first seen from a particular rohe, keeps in step with local stars and signs, and carries the knowledge of the people who hold it. A calculated phase cannot tell you which night it is in any iwi's calendar, so our pages carry no night names and we do not turn our moon data into a maramataka.

Where to find a maramataka from iwi and hapū

The calendars worth using are the ones iwi, hapū and their organisations publish for their own rohe. On the Kāpiti Coast, Ngāti Korokī, one of the five hapū of Ōtaki, developed the Maramataka 2026/27 with the support of Te Whakaminenga o Kāpiti, and Kāpiti Coast District Council sells printed copies at its service centres. Ngā Pātaka Kōrero o Te Arawa publishes Te Arawa's maramataka resources online and revises them as new knowledge comes to light. Maungaharuru-Tangitū Trust produces a maramataka every year and posts it to its registered households. For a general starting point, Te Wānanga o Aotearoa offers Nā Hina, made with Professor Rangi Mātāmua, which gives the Gregorian dates of each new and full moon and suggests users also consult their hapū, iwi and kaumātua; the wellbeing site All Right? adapted its maramataka from Wiremu Tawhai's Living by the Moon, the maramataka of Te Whānau-ā-Apanui (Huia Publishers, 2013). Away from home, the iwi or rūnanga of the place you fish is the one to ask.

Why we do not rate fishing days by the maramataka

Scoring a day as good or poor by the maramataka would mean taking one iwi's calendar and applying it to everyone else's rohe, possibly with a count of nights that does not match the local one. It would also put a commercial label on mātauranga Māori that has its own kaitiaki. In Ko Aotearoa Tēnei, its 2011 report on the Wai 262 claim, the Waitangi Tribunal found that current law allows Māori traditional knowledge to be used by others with neither consent nor acknowledgement, and held that the obligations of iwi and hapū as kaitiaki of such taonga are central to Māori culture surviving. So this guide explains and links rather than lists nights, and the daily outlook on our place pages comes from the forecast, the tide and astronomy only. Showing any iwi's maramataka would need that iwi's agreement, for its own rohe.

Common questions