We set off to Rakino with a number of tasks to undertake; a rubbish audit, water testing with Bert, and penguin sign construction. We ended up achieving the first two tasks, making some progress on signage, and taking on a few extra jobs besides. All to the good; a roaring northerly extended our stay by a couple of days and we didn’t mind at all.
You can read about the rubbish audit here https://www.rakino.org.nz/2025/06/08/rakino-waste-audit/ and I’m confident Bert will report on the stream and pond testing in due course. The penguin signs are a work in progress, so hopefully Matariki long weekend will see them installed, FINALLY.
The coolest thing that happened to me was sighting a live little blue penguin for the first time ever on Rakino. Usually I just document dead kororā, so I was really happy to finally see a young’un, hunkered down under a rock ledge in the vicinity of Maori Garden Bay. There are plentiful penguin tracks around the coast currently, with many double tracks heading out into the tide, indicating parents off fishing for the day. Please, dog owners, ensure your dogs are within sight and under control at all times.
Kororā tucked under a rock ledge.
I also got to photograph a kākā at John and Carolyn MacKenzies. Accounts over the weekend are of up to five of them skraarking around overhead, which is pretty exciting for a kākāphile like myself.
A young female kākā with an admiring audience of tūī, and a solitary bellbird.
Granddaddy vine which we collected a black sack of pods from.
The second bummer was the burgeoning bloom of clay sediment out into Maori Garden Bay which exacerbated as the rain intensified. This was particularly heartbreaking for me, as it is in the same area as our little blue penguin sighting, and also the numerous penguin tracks we had seen the previous day. It’s unacceptable to cause this level of environmental damage on Rakino, and should have been anticipated and mitigated.
Sediment in the stream prior to the bloom out into the bay.
Generally an excellent week spent hanging out though, some tasty pizza dinners cooked by Kate as she refines her offerings in anticipation of the Bay Belle floating pizzeria, https://www.instagram.com/baybellenz/ and many sociable evenings spent with all our island friends. I can’t tell a lie though; the rubbish audit was way too much fun.
Bert wielding a net in order to capture pond greeblies.
In early May, Montana and Marta from Waiheke Resources Trust visited Rakino to catch up with last years inaugural hui participants, and any other interested Rakino-ites. The main focus of the visit was to have a look at a couple of the wetland areas Bert has been water testing in, take a look at the invertebrates found in these areas, but also talk about any other initiatives we might be keen to instigate.
A lively discussion was held on Bert’s deck; most especially around the possibility of introducing a community composting system with a view to starting a community garden. Bert had initiated this part of the conversation, and unbeknownst to me this is a passion of Lyndsey’s, so I was very happy that Simon had made a last minute post on the community FB page, as Lyndsey turned up like a whirlwind of enthusiasm for the potential of this project.
We then headed down to investigate Bert’s wetland, followed by a visit to Hanna and Craig’s pond. I can report there are vast quantities of water boatmen in the pond, and no shortages of mosquito larvae on Rakino.
Marta sharing her knowledge of water creatures while Simon, Mon, Bert, and I observe.
The Hui was held on Waiheke again this year, at the Waiheke Sustainability Center where WRT are based. Participants from Aotea, Kawau, Waiheke, and Rakino attended. This year Simon, Lyndsey, and I self-selected to attend.
There were four main workshops, firstly a tuition in using GIS tools to track pest animal and weed control, as well as volunteer hours. This is a useful tool for recording as it can be quickly utilised for data reports, but also demonstrating to council their funding is being well spent. I cannot tell a lie; the feature that received the most admiration was an excellent widget that demonstrated before and after visuals of planting and wetland restorations, with the sideways movement of a cursor. I’m going to twist Simon’s arm into adding this feature somewhere on this website even if it kills him. Thank you to James Siddle for the presentation.
This was followed by a workshop on engaging with Mana Whenua, presented by Kim Collins from Waiheke Marine Project. Regretfully the intended Mountains to Sea run snorkeling trip around Rakino and Otata organised for Rakino and mana whenua rangatahi had to be postponed then cancelled this year due to inclement weather, but will be planned again for early next year, hopefully during the summer school holidays. It will be a great snorkeling day out for anyone aged 10 to 25, with a little bit of citizen science thrown in also. This is a good low key starting point for Rakino..
The last workshop of the day was the one Lyndsey was hanging out for, Waste Auditing and Surveying, with Denisa Kolouchova from WCRRP. https://islandwastecollective.co.nz/waiheke-community-resource-recovery-park/ This was a really valuable workshop and evolved into a discussion about how we can deal with the problem of food and cardboard waste on Rakino. I’ve been interested in this problem for a while, as you can see here; https://www.rakino.org.nz/2024/03/04/the-rubbish-report/ but it really needs a passionate permanent resident to drive any project like this, and happily Lyndsey and Bert are those people. I’ll be a great cheerleader though! This will take some of the load off Tom and Pat, and benefit the whole community. More to come…….
Septic tank wizard Craig gets up close and personal with the maw of the septic tank.
It was an early start for us on day two as we were traveling from Auckland. Montana cooked us a delicious breakfast of scrambled eggs courtesy of Kai Conscious Cafe, and then we powered into the Septic Tank System Workshop, with Marta, and Craig Brown from CBC Wastewater. Septic tanks cause trepidation, no denying it. I suspect the majority of septic tank owners know very little about how they work, and how to maintain them so as to avoid great expense. I knew next to nothing about them despite having lived with one for seven years a few decades ago. I now have a pretty decent understanding about the inner workings of the scariest things on the island. I’ve looked into the maw and found it mainly harmless, and not that stinky. Craig was a great speaker with a compelling style of presentation. If you want the levels of scum/water/sludge measured in your septic tank, I now know how to do it, and what the ratio should be. That doesn’t mean I’m going to though… I think he’d be a great guy to get over to Rakino for a septic tank workshop some time in the future.
Scum/water/sludge measuring device/poo stick; a length of bamboo.
We finished up with a session at the Waiheke Library, with a plan to move ahead with our various island projects, and a commitment to meet again next year, maybe on Kawau or Aotea. An inspiring couple of days, great to meet up again with the representatives from other islands, and make some new contacts and friends.
Many thanks to Waiheke Resources Trust for their great organisation, the Kai Conscious Cafe for their delicious food, the presenters who gave their time and energy, and the participants for showing commitment to a really cool initiative. See you all again next year!
In early May, Bert, Dylan, and I hosted a day visit to Rakino by the Waiheke Resources Trust.
Bert hosting a wetland tour for us on Rakino in May.
The WRT staff were visiting Kawau, Aotea, and Rakino as part of their mission to create community driven links between the four Gulf Islands. Check out the link to their website here : https://wrt.org.nz/
We had a busy day roaming through Bert’s and Kendal’s regenerating wetlands, visiting the nursery, and the intrepid Waihekeans Kristin, Montana, Nathalya, and Kym also had a comprehensive vehicular island tour courtesy of Dylan.
This was a precursor to a hui to be held by Waiheke Resources Trust on Waiheke in mid June, and attended by people from each of the four islands.
My association with WRT goes back a couple of years when they helpfully umbrella-ed a Local Board grant application, so I was enthusiastic to meet them in person, but also to connect with people from other islands. I was also interested to see a different side of Waiheke. I’d only visited the island in the past for events like Sculpture in the Gulf, and other people’s Big Birthday celebrations, so I was keen to have some encounters on Waiheke that were less injurious to my wallet with people that were similarly interested in ecology, environmental restoration, and waste reduction. Bert, Dylan, Simon, and I self-selected for the meet-up.
This necessitated a ferry trip and overnight stay, as the hui was to be held over two days.
Simon and I arrived early, and went for a quick wander around Oneroa. We spotted a likely looking chap in redbands and a swandri striding along the opposite side of the road. He had the reassuring aspect of a Rakino-ite, and turned out to be part of the delegation from Great Barrier as we discovered when we got back to the Sustainability Center which houses the WRT. Bert had arrived, but unfortunately rough weather meant that Dylan was unable to make the journey from Rakino to Waiheke in Kraken.
After lunch provided by the Kai Concious food rescue team followed by introductions we headed out on the first visit, to the Waiheke Community Resource Recovery Park, formerly known as the Waiheke Transfer Station, or ‘the dump’. WCRRP is part of the Zero Waste Collective, and it’s their task to divert as much ‘waste’ as possible from landfill. We had an animated discussion with Keith Enoka, the general manager of the waste collective, followed by a tour of the recovery station. I urge you to check out this link; it’s pretty inspirational, and an important consideration for all island dwellers as everything we bring to the island eventually ends up being removed at great expense. https://islandwastecollective.co.nz/
Bundles of recovered cardboard.Electric rubbish truck recharging.
Our next visit was to the Compost Collective. Mike Fogarty heads up the composting team, and he gave us a comprehensive run through of the processes involved. The collective is supplied with food waste from a number of Waiheke restaurants which they compost with green waste. It was a post-prandial challenge to stare into the bin which had a top layer of fat/meat/bones, but the final product is a rich, dark, worm-laden compost which has a high nutrient value. Check out the link here : https://wrt.org.nz/composting/
Mike and the clever bins designed for the layered composting system he has developed.Mike answering our composting questions while Simon looks askance at the meat/fat/bones devolving.
This was followed up by a visit to the plant nursery. The nursery supplies eco-sourced native plants to the public, but importantly, to the wetland planting restoration projects run by WRT, our next visit…
Waiheke nursery visit.
The Rangihoua wetland restoration project is seriously impressive, not in any small way because of the sheer volume of weeds that have had to be removed before any planting could get underway. Moth plant and woolly nightshade are a curse, but multiply that with invasive honeysuckle which is not permitted to be dealt with by spraying, and the task looks gargantuan. Kym Rawson the restoration manager gave us a tour of the area which is in varying stages of regeneration. It’s looking great, and I was also really impressed by the numbers of volunteers the project has, given that mainly people like planting trees, but weeding less so. Kym visited Rakino in May with the other WRT team, and had been impressed by the regenerative plantings on Rakino, as well as having useful insight to share about our wetlands.
Part of the extensive Rangihoua planting.Kym talking about weeds and how to remove them…
We returned to the Sustainability Center to relax, chat about the day with our new acquaintances, indulge in a couple of cold beverages, meet up with some more WRT staff, and feast on a potluck dinner, before heading off to our accommodation.
Day 2 of the hui focused on group workshops and a presentation by Livné Ore on the ins and outs of making successful funding applications. Livné was invaluable in guiding me when I applied for a modest sum for a snorkeling workshop, so I found her presentation helpful. Dylan had also found a window in the dodgy weather and managed to safely steer Kraken to Waiheke, so he could attend the final day.
Kristin and Montana will be collating all the outcomes of the hui, but broadly speaking there was agreement that it would be useful to share existing knowledge and resources, and that there was potential power in getting Auckland Council to view our collective islands as a distinct region while retaining our individual ‘cultures’. Thinking about some specific collective inter-island projects was also front of mind. We are also keen to re-convene in a year, as well as hold regular catch-ups and connect on social media. Everyone was keen to stress that none of us represent our individual islands, but as hui participants we have shared goals and interests. I’m looking forward to reading the collated discussion.
Many thanks to WRT for the huge effort in co-ordinating the hui, all the site visits, the great food provided by the kai conscious team, and many thanks to all the other participants who traveled to attend. I really enjoyed meeting people from other islands and seeing a completely different side of Waiheke to previous experiences.
If there is one seafood Rakino is particularly abundant in, it’s spiky kina.
The un-charismatic sea urchin has managed to stealthily encroach on sub tidal rocky reef crevices all around our island. This would be bearable if there were vast schools of old granddaddy snapper with blubbery lips thick enough to crack their carapaces open, but the snapper inhabiting the reefs are in the main part juveniles. Likewise, crayfish are functionally extinct in the Hauraki Gulf, which means they exist in insufficient numbers to fulfil their role in the ecosystem as a predator of kina.
A young snapperfrom above
As a consequence kina are steadily munching their way through swathes of kelp beds creating kina ‘barrens’, which is pretty much what it says on the tin; areas barren of everything except kina. Healthy kelp beds are our most important and most diverse coastal ecosystems. They are nursery areas for many commercially fished species as well as a food larder of smaller rocky reef fishes for those species. They should teem with life, and in areas of high protection, they do.
Common triple-finA smiley yellow-lipped parore
They are also a larder for the seabird species we see around Rakino, the shags, little blue penguins, reef herons, gannets, shearwater, and petrels. The seabirds eat fish and their guano feeds nutrients back into the kelp beds so the cycle can continue.
Kelp, yet to be munched by kina
This is the time of year to eat kina because they are supposedly sweeter and plumper. In some regions the collective wisdom is to harvest them when kowhai is in flower, in other areas when pohutukawa is in flower. Generally I would hazard the correct time to collect them is in Spring, at low-tide. If you were to adhere to Mātauranga Māori you would harvest them in the days immediately following a full moon.
The bag limit for kina is 50 per collector per day.
I’ve always been averse to kina; the descriptions of its flavour sounded frankly nasty, but I braved a mouthful after a recent snorkel and was pleasantly surprised. The orange roe is the part to eat, and its texture is quite firm. They were briny, lightly iodine flavoured, and mildly sweet. The immediate sensation was that I had eaten something tremendously healthy. Kina are tremendously healthy! Kina is a good source of Iodine, Selenium, Vitamin B6 and VitaminA; and a source of Magnesium, Phosphorus, Potassium, Riboflavin (vitamin B2) and Vitamin E.
I’ve noticed kina gradually creeping onto the menus of good restaurants around Auckland, in the same way they creep into every rock crevice available. I found this recent recipe from Al Brown on RNZ, so I’m sharing it in the hope you’ll all put some kina entrees on your Rakino summer menu this year. I advise a glove to protect your hand as you lever them off the rocks, and a bag to put your catch in. Don’t worry, they don’t move quickly…
A citizen science project funded by the Waiheke Local Board.
On Labour Weekend of 2022 Experiencing Marine Reserves held a workshop on Rakino Island, the purpose being to train the snorkeling participants on timed swim methodology in order to collect rocky reef species abundance and diversity data, to better understand the state of Rakino’s rocky reefs. Ten Rakino-ites attended, and EMR also brought ten of their volunteers over for training.
Rakino snorkelers
The funding for this was provided by the Waiheke Local Board, and Waiheke Resources Trust generously umbrella-ed our grant application for free, in the interests of encouraging an ongoing relationship with the Rakino community. https://wrt.org.nz/ We’re very grateful for this. We were also able to purchase an underwater camera and some dive slates with the funding.
We spent the morning in the Hall learning to identify the rocky reef dwelling species we were likely to see around the Rakino coastline, and schooling up on health and safety. Both of these things are harder than they sound!
Seaweeds in Maori Garden Bay
After a shared lunch the intrepid snorkelers donned their wet-suits and headed for the Sandy bay transects EMR trainer Sophie had plotted out earlier. One group headed around the rocks in the direction of Maori Garden Bay, and the other headed out towards the variously named island in Sandy Bay. I stayed on the beach with the weighty responsibility of counting snorkelers in and out of the water, and generally keeping an watchful eye.
Parore in kelp
It was a chilly October day and a couple of snorkelers sensibly heeded the health and safety instructions and headed back to relative comfort of shore when they felt out of their depth. The team that headed in the direction of MGB had a more successful snorkel so we have abandoned the transect around the back of the Sandy Bay island in favour of a couple of less challenging yet more fruitful transects.
Happy snapper
Simon has since constructed a species identifying chart, and a form for participating snorkelers to record their fish counts on. https://www.rakino.org.nz/fish-count/ The hope is that over time we’ll accrue enough data that it can be mapped to show trends. Unfortunately this year didn’t start brilliantly weather-wise, so it’s not been easy to coordinate snorkelers, but we have a chat group established on FB messenger, and we may get one more fish count in before winter, at which point we’ll resume again in November. We’ve tried to get one fish count in per month. It requires ongoing practice to get the methodology right, and hopefully next season the weather will be calmer and the water less turbid.
Three young snapper in the kelpRocky reef fish habitat
I’ve also since learned to snorkel and identify the commonplace fish species so I can participate too, though I’m still learning how to wrangle the underwater camera!
The project is intended to be ongoing, and driven by volunteers. If anyone who couldn’t attend the workshop is keen to participate in future please let us know.
Riparian planting, storm water mitigation, slope stabilisation.
Exposed tree roots above cars parked down by the wharf.
The January 27th Auckland flood has me thinking about flood mitigation because storm water run-off has caused a bank to slip into a stream on our Auckland property, but also the culvert running onto our Rakino property has barely stopped running this year, and has consequently dug itself a stream channel which was once ephemeral, but now seems a permanent fixture.
We want to slow the water flow down so as to avoid scouring and flushing out of sediment, and we want to ensure the water is cleaned of any contaminants before it eventually ends up in the Hauraki Gulf. It’s always been the way to pass run off and storm water to the properties downhill, but I think we need to increasingly look at mitigating at the source, water collection, riparian planting, and establishing ‘cleaning’ plants like carex in wetland areas.
Here are a couple of interesting studies from Landcare Research for perusal..
I have good news for the aspiring Rakino fish-counting snorkelers. Many thanks to the Waiheke Local Board who have approved the grant we applied for to fund the Experiencing Marine Reserves workshop to be held on Rakino this coming Labour Weekend. Part of the grant includes funding for an underwater camera for documentation purposes, so with a bit of practise we’ll be able to show the non-snorkelers what lives in the rocky reefs around Rakino.
Also a big thanks to the excellent people at the Waiheke Resources Trust who supported our application. I’m confident we can build on that relationship in future.
Here is the link for anyone who is interested in Rakino-based citizen science;
It’s free to participants, and we’ll supply your lunch. All the details you need to know are in the link, but don’t hesitate to email me at lisa@lisawest.co.nz if you require anything further.
