A low spring tide on Rakino is my favourite time, because there are places you can winkle into that are generally inaccessible on foot, if you are feeling intrepid. Having never attempted a to reach the northern end before, Saturday September 21st offered up a perfect alignment, low tide, brilliant sunshine, no wind.
A keen rock-pooler, I’m the first to admit that sometimes Rakino rock pools can be spartan. Rock oysters and pupu abound, but chitons, limpets, and anemones do not. If I found a common brown sea anemone I would be overjoyed. Therefore, you cannot imagine my overwrought hysteria when we stumbled upon some small colonies of jewelled sea anemones lurking in a hidden puddle. It was in sharp contrast to the previous days overwrought hysteria, but more of that shortly…
Jewelled sea anemones
Heading northwards involved a fair amount of whining and griping from me, rock jumping, bare foot scrambling, dodgy rock hand holds, and at times heading in the chilly sea in order to get around a minor piece of rocky headland, in spite of the retreating tide. This was not made easier by the discovery of part of a shed cray exoskeleton, promptly named Reggie, and carried for a couple of hours over the rough terrain, with no breakage. I also managed to not drown my phone. There were caves, holes in rocks, plenty of kelp, rocky beaches, and splendid isolation.
No sooner did I say ‘we might get to the bottom of Pat’s place!’ than we literally ran into a stone wall. We could not go around into the raging tidal surges, and we could not go up the sheer clay cliffs which were reminiscent of Suvla Bay on a good day, so we had to admit defeat and turn back. This was a wise move as the tide was on the turn. Luckily turning tail is always faster than heading into the unknown..
The previous day had been markedly different. We arrived on the island with a senior coastal engineer, a representative of Auckland Council who has the not too arduous task of visiting all the inhabited gulf islands with council assets in order to ascertain council’s response to the challenge of a changing climate, and gather feedback from residents with regard to the long term resilience of those assets. Unfortunately it was torrential rain, a howling gale, and a near empty island, but we managed to wrangle up a few hardy Rakino-ites for him to talk to. The feedback was great, and after a short but interesting meeting we wandered around to Home Bay, so he could look at the council administered assets there.
Imagine our distress and embarrassment when we stumbled upon a scene of marine carnage; the beach littered with dead fish, three eagle rays with their wings hacked off, and saddest of all, a kororā, dead on the barge ramp. I do not wish to see this again, and if you are the holiday home owner responsible for the tradies that left this mess because of their callous disregard for our island marine life, please do the rest of us a favour and hold them to account. Set netting is legal, but leaving it unattended for a length of time in an area rays and penguins frequent is despicable. Thankfully Lez gave the idiots a well-deserved earful.
I managed a late afternoon rock scramble south of Woody Bay on Sunday. The kelp looked lush, and good habitat for marine critters, enticing for some summer snorkeling adventures.
Monday and Tuesday were spent getting a bit of late season planting done, thank you to John MacKenzie and the Rakino Island Nursery for supplying the trees. They will either get tough or die, but it was so damp after the torrents of Friday I think they’ll be fine. The flax, kowhai, and whau flowers are ripening and the tui were thwocking each other out of the sky as they pre-emptively scoped out food sources, vantage points, and territory, springtime business as usual.
Simon spotted a couple of these slinky critters in the grass under the trees, elusive moko skinks, most likely a breeding pair. I’m happy they are surviving the predations of Kingfishers and pukeko.