Discovering & documenting a reef 11km offshore, 23m depth off the South Taranaki coast. Involving a Dive club, Iwi, scientists and students.
Taranaki
This regionally and nationally recognised project aims to discover and document subtidal reefs found offshore of South Taranaki, NZ. Initially focusing on one target reef (11km offshore and depth 23metres), a number of surveys will be conducted throughout the year to capture the ecological variance across seasons and years.
A range of basic scientific methods will be employed by local community groups to survey the reef. It is hoped that this research effort will continue into the future and expand to incorporate additional reefs. Survey methods employed : A proto-type camera situated for weeks at the reef, until retrieved, taking short video bursts over night and day, benthic (reef floor) surveys, fishing surveys, and acoustic surveys. Project Partners are: South Taranaki Underwater Club, Hawera High School, Patea Area School, Te Kaahui o Rauru and Te Runanga o Ngati Ruanui Trust.
The project has involved a broad range of the community - youth, recreational fishermen and divers, retired professionals, people who like to tinker around and build things, scientists, engineers, iwi, people with heart, love, gratitude and respect for our coastal environment and passionate and dedicated project team leaders - Karen Pratt and Bruce Boyd from Hawera, Taranaki.
The Project won the 'Protecting our Coasts and Oceans' category in the 2017 Green Ribbon Awards, held at Parliament on the 8 June. And in 2016 won a Taranaki Regional Council Environmental Award for 'Environmental Action in the Community'. The Project is fortunate to have had since its inception until early 2017, the support of scientific officer Thomas McElroy who holds a Bachelor of Science majoring in marine biology, ecology and biodiversity with a Masters in Marine Conservation. In early 2017 Thomas left to go overseas. Fortunately for the Project - Joshua Richardson had joined the Project back in 2016 and has been a treasured addition. Joshua holds a Masters in Marine Science. The Project has made efforts to engage with the wider scientific community, and now collaborates with Auckland University’s Leigh Marine Lab, Dr Radford, an acoustic specialist, Andrew Stewart of Te Papa (fish ID work), NZ sponge specialist at NIWA, Dr Kelly and Sadie Mills of NIWA for other species ID work. All species observations are uploaded to 'NatureWatch NZ' an extremely user friendly free database available to anyone. Using 'NatureWatch NZ' allows us to share all our results and connect to a wide network of experts who can validate our sightings (the app for this is iNaturalist).
Initial funding for the Project came as part of the Government’s National Plan for Science in Society - via the 'Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment' (MBIE) funding the ‘Curious Minds’ initiative (young people, communities and scientists collaborate on a science project.) In 2015 the Curious Minds initiative was launched and Taranaki (administered by Venture Taranaki) was one of the pilot regions given funding. In 2015, the South Taranaki Underwater Diving Club applied for funding under the Curious Minds science challenge to explore the question "What makes the sub-tidal reefs at South Taranaki unique?" This Project received funding from the first and second funding rounds of $19,321 and $19,681 respectively. The TSB Community Trust has also supported the Project, via the South Taranaki Underwater Club receiving funding to purchase a high quality underwater camera. Significant donated time and resources come from the South Taranaki Underwater Club members, as well as donated time from Project Leads, marine scientists and media lead.
Other factors influencing the desire for the Project’s research was a 2006 DOC report ‘Netting Coastal Knowledge’ which identified gaps in knowledge and information about the South Taranaki coastal marine area and in particular seafloor biology, fish diversity and abundance. There was also increased concern and interest by the community in their local marine environment with the filing in 2015 of a marine permit application with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for seabed mining for ironsand in the EEZ, offshore of Patea in South Taranaki. Importantly the local divers realised that significant information on the underwater marine life ‘was in their heads’ and not known by most of the community and that this Project would be one way they could share this knowledge, as well as grow their own understanding through working alongside scientists.
The key aims of the project are to:
Raise awareness of the coastal environment within the local community, which for the general public is physically difficult to access – being 11km offshore and at a depth of 23 metres.
Inspire curiosity within the youth of South Taranaki to enhance their confidence in science and encourage them to consider a future in science
Enable and promote inter-generational learning between local divers, fishermen, recreational beach users, scientists, engineers, iwi and passionate environmentalists
Encourage community stewardship of the marine environment through initial collection of baseline data and ongoing monitoring. There is the desire to see the Project continue as a long term study and for the data, pictures, videos and website to become assets for the community. Divers and students will become increasingly familiar with applying scientific methods of data collection – which enriches the skills of the community.
Drawing on a vast range of skills, knowledge and experience of the community, a project team was assembled to build and place an “in-situ” camera on the reef floor to continuously record the reef environment. This is the first such experiment in South Taranaki.
The purpose built camera was built by Leith Robertson of Wells Engineering, and consists of a GoPro Hero 3 with an Ikelite 5700 underwater housing, a custom made intervalometre (instructing when the lights and camera are to come on and off) and custom made hydro wipers (from a specialist firm
in Nelson, Zebra-Tec). Configuring the software was unexpectedly challenging for the specialist electrical engineer, with a good deal of trials eventuating. Final trial runs were conducted in a Project member’s goldfish pond (shared on Facebook!) There were also surprising aspects learnt along the way – for instance, needing to re-set the camera to account for daylight savings, setting the light source at a sufficient distance from the camera so the night video was not overly impacted from light ‘bounce back’ from the plankton and the need to add weights inside the housing to overcome negative buoyancy.
Obtaining photographs of night species of fish rarely occurs, especially in the ocean conditions experienced off South Taranaki, yet the project is able to do this. Captured recently were species active at night such as lantern fish and southern bastard cod.
This Project is highly ambitious and difficult with the environment being the biggest challenge - given the rough and dangerous sea conditions for launching boats off the Patea bar, and retrieving footage from the camera. Divers need to dive during the turn of tides due to the strong currents. The Patea Bar needs calm conditions for students going out on a charter vessel to conduct a fishing survey. The Reef is at 23m depth, so this also impacts on the time able to be spent doing benthic survey work, collecting of samples and general observation work.
A query with Massey University indicates the cemented, concretionary shelly sandstone reef could be 80,000 years old, and part of the Inaha and Rapanui Terraces which are 100,000-200,000 years old.
Another unanticipated and surprising development – was discovering the variety of sponges at the Project Reef. Contact was made with the NZ sponge specialist at NIWA, Dr Kelly, in an effort to learn the species of sponges. The relationship has blossomed to the point where the Joint Project Lead, Bruce Boyd’, has contributed his photograph of Dactylia varia for Version 2 of the NIWA Sponge Guide, as well as his photographs for a new entry of Stelletta conulosa. The Project team has also been asked to provide some samples of sponges which are unusual/new to science that Dr Kelly would like to double check for spicules as they could be new species.
Knowledge and familiarity with the NIWA Sponge Guide also resulted in Joint Project Lead Karen Pratt, recognising a new species of sponge on the local Ohawe beach in South Taranaki. The sponge has been donated to NIWA as a new species of Axinella and recorded in NIWA’s Specify database and used as a holotype (a single type specimen upon which the description and name of a new species is based).
Both the Hawera High School and Patea Area School have conducted fishing surveys at the reef, and at a recent Workshop (10 March 2017, with 50 guests) the students gave presentations on the data collected for fish diversity and abundance during these surveys. Based on the analysis to date, the students think the reef may serve as a juvenile nursery for blue cod. Seasonal variations were also identified in the data results. Students record length and weight before releasing the fish, and calculate ‘catch per unit effort’ (CPUE).
The software (Open Source ‘Quadrat’) has been readily adopted by students, for analysing the benthic survey photographs.
A very popular and well received exhibition of the South Taranaki Reef Life Project at the Aotea Utanganui, South Taranaki Museum – has been on display from December 2016 and has recently been extended until the end of May 2017. The Project’s Facebook page shows video footage of the display.
One of the Project leads was invited to the Turanga Ika Marae in 2016, to do a presentation about the Reef Project for Te Kaahui o Rauru and DOC management.
STUC members were able to contribute information on sub-tidal reef life, at a recent Hearing, with the Decision Making Committee for the EPA, as part of a recent EEZ marine permit application.
An important part of engagement has been the establishment of a Facebook page, Website and YouTube Channel.
Involvement has sprung from the desire to share with the local and wider community, the largely unknown richness of life that exists on the offshore reefs. There is also the desire to gather the information in a collaborative way that involves the community and marine scientists working together, to build an asset of knowledge that can be built on far into the future.
Funds raised will go directly towards the continuation of Project Reef Life. Funds will be focused toward growing methods of data collection and research on the Project Reef so both local community members, along with national and international followers, will continue to be enlightened and educated by this citizen science project on life below the South Taranaki Ocean surface.
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