Spring Tide on Rakino September 2024

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

Jewelled sea anemones
White striped anemone

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.

A hole in the rock formation.

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.


Drowned kororā on the Home Bay barge ramp
One of the hacked up eagle rays.

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.

Kelp at the bottom of the saddle between Woody and West Bays.


Tassels of Neptune’s necklace bordering a rock pool.

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.

Moko skink

Hauraki Gulf / Tīkapa Moana Islands Hui, 2024

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.

Rakino Easter Treats 2024

Rakino Easter Round-up

Firstly, thank you to the hardy Rakino-ites that humoured me by turning up at the unreasonable hour of 10am for the first of the #ecofest2024 events organised for Easter. The icy south-west wind was howling into West Bay as our group hugged the cliff and hacked and poisoned rhamnus, but the views were spectacular.
Elsewhere, the moth plant removalists were hard at work ripping out the devil’s weed and plucking pods. Bert has an enviable and cunningly wrought device which is just the ticket for this tedious job. It’s a sort of hooky prongy thing on a long pole, and he should probably patent it.

Julianne killing rhamnus

The second event was a 4pm low-tide beach clean-up at the northern end of West Bay, and it was really cool to see how many kids were there. My expectations for buy-in of my fanciful ideas are usually quite low, so massive thanks to everyone who turned up. Unfortunately the beach rubbish at West Bay is mainly small pieces of plastic which are entwined in the leaf and feather middens of the high-tide mark. Common items were foil lolly wrappers, small indeterminate pieces of plastic bags, and jandals. It wouldn’t be a beach clean without finding clothing pegs and soft silicone baits, but my favourite find was a foil wrapper claiming to contain a ‘fart bomb’, and Steve Livesay dragged a sodden duvet inner and cover up the saddle track which impressed me mightily. The beach was also smothered in Lion’s Mane jellies, some of whom were clutching onto bits of plastic. I asked them nicely before removing it…


Lion’s Mane Jellies en masse


Buckets of beach rubbish

I didn’t attend the Sunday RRA meeting as planned because I was setting up for Market Day, but I hear that much gratitude was given to Lez in the form of many rounds of applause, there is progress on the Hall, and the progress on the Fire Shed is self-evident, so many thanks to Chris, the Stephen’s (Thomas and Wong), Henry, and John Beasley, plus everyone else who has worked on the shed. It’s looking great. Let’s hope it doesn’t need to be utilised in a hurry.

Harriet played a blinder in generously offering up her garden for a Market Day fundraiser for the Westpac Rescue Helicopter Trust. The kids’ activities for humans of all ages went down a treat, and I reckon we should expand on those for future events. A huge thank you to everyone that helped out, provided materials, time, and participated in this event.


Pinch pots and painting

A colourful garden party!

Thanks to:
* Lez for jigsaw cut outs, and John for the test pots and treats,
*Lucy for teaching pinchpots,
*Reilly, Natalie, Carolyn, Dylan, Jo, Jim Wheeler, Lisa, and Harriet for their creations.
*Eleanor for her paintings and life drawings.
*Bert on sausage sizzle with William weeping over onions in the kitchen.
*Simon for the poster, Gary for helping set up, and me for the interminable spruiking..
*Lyndsey & Caroline for their vintage goodies.
*All the Rakino-ites who supported.

We raised $1350 for Westpac… which will be paid this week.


Bert on sausage sizzle duties.

It was also the last weekend ever of the Woody Bay Pizzeria as Alf hangs up his pizza paddle. We dropped in at Monday lunchtime and trade was roaring in the calm of the bay after a few days of a brutal westerly. Woody Bay was full of boats, and pizza eaters.

I hope everyone else had a relaxing Easter, but I had to go home for a rest. . .


Woody Bay on Easter Monday


Rakino Easter Market

Join us across three venues for the Easter Market, Sunday March 31st, 1pm – 3pm.
Our hosts are Lyndsey at 51 Ocean View Rd. with a selection of vintage treasures, Harriet at 6 Ocean View with a group show of artwork, crafts, a pottery making activity for kids, and Wim and Jo on the corner of South Pacific and Woody Bay Rd. for kids clothes and hair accessories.
There will be a sausage sizzle at 6 Ocean View, with all proceeds going to the Westpac Rescue Helicopter Trust.
Please bring gold coins for the sausage sizzle, $3 to an excellent cause.

The Rubbish Report

Reading the minutes of the Labour Weekend RRA meeting I saw that someone had brought up ‘rubbish’ as an issue. I’m still uncertain as to what the issue was, as no-one I spoke to could remember the specific details of the topic as it was discussed, so I guessed it was probably something to do with putting recycling correctly in bins and composting food scraps instead of throwing them out with household waste.


I put my hand up to look at the way Rakino-ites put our waste into the communal bins because I’ve had some unpleasant olfactory surprises over the years when I’ve gone to dump my own recycling/household waste after my island visits. I’ve also been perplexed at the sheer volumes of waste that Tom has to deal with after busy weekends, the perennial issue of dead and dying vehicles, and the annual consternation around inorganic collections.

After speaking to Kayleigh Appleton at Waiheke Resources Trust I had an enthusiastic online meeting with representatives from the Island Waste Collective on Waiheke, and the WRT. The discussion was wide-ranging, but the most useful things I took from it was the possibility of availing ourselves of a can crusher from Waiheke, and diverting cardboard from the waste stream going off -island into a community composting initiative. Waiheke Resources Trust would happily provide a composting workshop for interested Rakino-ites.

Keith Enoka, General Manager of Island Waste Collective put me in touch with Bret Dragt from Auckland Council, who sent through the Gulf Islands Waste Plan written in 2018 with input from the Rakino Community, and some useful tips for household waste reduction.

Regretfully we have failed to achieve the waste reduction goals as set out by ourselves.

Tom has done an excellent job on the rubbish contract, tidying up the previous shambles at Home Bay, keeping the bins clean and tidy, and generally cracking down on illegal dumping as far as it is possible, but bach owners, myself included, could be doing a great deal more.

This is the 2018 Waste Plan and Report as it relates to Rakino.

As you can see, the ambition was to achieve the aforementioned composting scheme and use cardboard brown waste on-island, but this hasn’t happened. The bokashi bins have also not been utilised to their full potential. It’s a lost composting opportunity.

Bret Dragt also provided this helpful guideline for waste reduction :

https://www.wastenothing.co.nz/council-collections/hauraki-gulf-islands/rakino-island/

Finally, here is the most recent waste reduction plan, out for community consultation now :

Waste_Plan_2024_FINAL_Document

As you can see, the same issues still exist, six years on. The C & D waste referred to in the document is Construction and Demolition waste, the removal of which is the responsibility of builders and householders at their own cost, NOT the council and it’s contractors.

The lowest hanging fruit we can deal with immediately is removing all food waste and cardboard from the waste stream.

I propose we avail ourselves of a community composting workshop via the Waiheke Resources Trust, for any bach owners or residents who want to become composting ninjas. Given that the proportion of green waste to brown waste (paper/cardboard) should be about 50/50 in a successful compost I believe we could eliminate cardboard from the piles of waste which travel off-island.
I’m happy to facilitate the organisation of a composting workshop.


West Bay Track weed & Beach Clean-up this Easter

Save the date! Saturday March 30th at 10am for a weeding bee on the West Bay Track followed by a high tide swim for the intrepid. Bring along your weeding gear, sunblock and togs. Track access is at the end of Woody Bay Rd.

https://ecofest.org.nz/event/track-weeding-and-beach-clean-at-west-bay/

Come back at 4pm with a bucket and a buddy, and let’s clear West Bay Beach of the rubbish middens. We’ll do our visiting sea critters a favour.

Flora and Vegetation of Rākino Island Group, Inner Hauraki Gulf.

Part 1: Islets and Reef Stacks

Survey data generously provided by Ewen K. Cameron & Shelley Heiss-Dunlop.

https://www.rakino.org.nz/rakino_botanical_survey.pdf

Published by Auckland Botanical Society, December 2023, vol. 78 (2) pp. 113-139

Part 1b: West islet group of five islets/stacks

https://www.rakino.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/ABSJ-791-June-2024-p43-56-1.pdf

Published by Auckland Botanical Society, June 2024, Vol. 79 (1) pp. 43-56.

Winner winner kina dinner

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 snapper from 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-fin
A 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…

https://www.rnz.co.nz/collections/recipes/fried-kina-on-toast

Rakino fish-counting project to date..

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 kelp
Rocky 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.

Easter Art Ramble

Art Ramble Map

As our art space is red-stickered this Easter we are hosting an ‘art ramble’. There are four venues as listed on the map, and you are all welcome to ramble around to each of them between 2pm & 4pm on Easter Sunday, or if those hours don’t suit txt or call the host to arrange a more convivial time, possibly when the sun is shining. The Easter forecast is challenging, but don’t let a howling gale stop you. Slap on a rain-slicker and a pair of red-bands, grab yourself a refreshing rambling beverage, and set forth! The exercise in gale force winds will be bracing, and you’ll cross paths with your fellow windswept islanders while seeing what the island artistes have been working on. Start at either end of the map; it’s a very small island and the distances are short.

Here are a few tempting samples of art to view…

Desirable bronze lancewood leaves by Jim Wheeler.
Delicious discs by Holly Shepheard
A natural history plethora of wearable beetles & moths by Lisa West
Carolyn MacKenzies ever popular Rakino flora & fauna paintings
Beautiful pearls by Harriet Sommerville.