Marine restoration is a lazy business. All you have to do is stop fishing an area and marine ecosystems heal themselves. However this is not the case with green-lipped mussels in New Zealand. 100’s of square kilometres of sub-tidal mussel beds were fished to extinction in each harbour around New Zealand. The industry collapsed and […]
Category Archives: Restoration
Probe holes
With a lot more mowing at Point England this Winter the flocks of South Island pied oystercatcher are leaving a visible sign in the paddock. The probe holes are very dense right to the edges of the paddocks which means that I am also seeing holes from other species like White-faced heron and Pukeko. Casual […]
Roost heights at Tahuna Torea
Today I took photos of the shorebird roosts at Tahuna Torea when the tide had just covered the main spit roost. The tide height was predicted to be very high today (3 August 2019) at 3.4M Westhaven 8:53am. Conditions were relatively calm and the tide had not (yet) hit the high tide line on the […]
Reversing the decline of the Shorebirds of the Tāmaki Estuary
I presented this report to the Maungakiekie-Tāmaki Local Board today as they are yet to seek advice from a shorebird expert at Auckland Council in developing their Open Space Network Plan (OSNP). It recommends: Shorebird expert to review the report. Local Boards commit to reverse declining shorebird numbers. OSNP revised with dedicated and enhanced shorebird […]
Pest monitoring Selwyn Bush 2019
We identified 19 tracking locations (S1-S19) in 2014. The first 10 (S1-S10) were used in this survey. The survey was repeated in March 2019. The first 10 locations were searched and three out of 10 tracking tunnels were found. Seven new tracking tunnels were installed on the 10th of March. On the 16th of March […]
Freshly planted mussel bed
I think this is the worlds first photo of a freshly planted mussel bed. Altho I have been to most of Revive our Gulf’s deployments (including the first one in 2013) we have’t dived on them straight away. After taking this photo I deployed three time-lapse cameras to record suspected predation (I was happy to […]
Seeking clarity
I have been helping Forest & Bird campaign for the Sea Change – Tai Timu Tai Pari marine spatial plan. I talk about some of the work I am doing in the Gulf here.
National don’t care about our environment
Motukorea volunteers
First weeding day with the OBC And Mike Lee was awesome. I have made a small website for volunteers to join up.
Okiwi mussels
The Okiwi Estuary (Whangapoua, Aotea / Great Barrier Island) used to contain the last naturally occurring soft-sediment mussel reef in the Hauraki Gulf. “Aggregations ranged from a few individuals to meters in diameter. Mussels were frequently attached to pipis, partially buried in the sandy substrate. There were an estimated 3.2 million adults. Compared to other […]