The familiar stranger of the freshwater world. It is a fish that does not belong, but is here anyway. It is known from the pet store. Bright orange, flowy fins, swimming in circles in a glass tank. But in the wild, goldfish are different. They turn back to their natural colour. This is a dark olive-green to bronze. They grow much larger than their pet store cousins. A wild goldfish can reach 30 centimetres. It can weigh over a kilogram. A pet that becomes a pest. Survivors with a superpower. Goldfish can live in water that would kill most other fish. Warm, stagnant, low in oxygen, even slightly brackish. They survive the winter under a layer of ice. They breathe through their skin when the oxygen runs out. And they live for decades. A wild goldfish might be older than the person who released it. A fish that outlives its owner. The fish of the abandoned garden pond. Someone bought them as pets. They got bored. They dumped them in the local stream and forgot about them. Now they are there. Breeding, eating and refusing to leave. To catch a goldfish is to catch a piece of someone's bad decision. The fish that should be in a tank but is instead in a ditch. It makes the best of a bad situation. No Māori name because it is not a native fish. It came from Asia, via Europe, via the pet store. Today it is the fish of the stormwater drain. The one seen swimming under the bridge. Bright orange against the grey water. The drain is dark. The goldfish swims, bright orange against the grey. It is fat and healthy. It lives where nothing else can. It does not know it is a mistake. It does not know it does not belong. It just swims. That is what fish do.