Umbrarium

Te Ara's encyclopedia entry on patupaiarehe also sets out the ponaturi: sea fairies with white skin, red hair, and long clawed fingers, spending days under the sea and coming onto land only at night. Like patupaiarehe they fear sunlight and fire. They are he iwi atua — a supernatural people — not ordinary humans, and not merely a European goblin pasted onto Aotearoa.

A major cycle tells of Tāwhaki and Karihi avenging their father Hemā. The ponaturi are held in a house until dawn, then doors and windows are opened so light floods in and destroys them. Other manuscript traditions vary details, including companions such as the kanae, but the night-sea / fatal-daylight pattern remains stable across reputable summaries.

Malevolent alignment fits the hostile role in these narratives; Night visitor and Deadly threat mark shore raids after dark. Storm coast and drowned place are the correct settings. Do not invent underwater city tourism or merge every pale fairy of Māori tradition into one species — patupaiarehe are forest and mountain kin with overlapping traits, not identical.

Cross-reference Patupaiarehe as the closest archive neighbour, Maero as another non-human people of the wild, and Taniwha as a different water power. Prefer Te Ara and iwi-aware scholarship over fantasy bestiary padding. In these accounts the sea has a people, and dawn is their ending.