EDITORIAL: Great Barrier Island has long been seen as a so-called ‘environmentalist’ haven. Since the hippy movement of the 1970s engulfed the motu, you can’t take a step without bumping into a tie-dyed-wearing hippy lecturing us about keep cups and how they could never fathom living in the awful concrete jungles of Auckland City.
Yet the reality is stark. Everything from the bare necessities of life to people and fuel is shipped on and off the island using ancient diesel ferries and light aircraft. Many island residents, particularly in winter, rely on diesel generators running day and night. The truth? We would likely be much more environmentally friendly living in a tower block in Auckland City and taking public transport.
Ironically, the island and its residents are on the receiving end of some of the largest council and central government ‘eco’ subsidies in Auckland. Millions flow into initiatives like Tū Mai Taonga and Medlands Ecovision, what a contradiction. Step onto the beach and you’re likely to hear someone waxing lyrical about growing their own wheatgrass or organic buckwheat. But if that’s true, why do mountains of food arrive at the island’s airports and ports week after week, year after year? Subsistence farming? Clearly not.
Last summer, a tourist was accosted by a local for daring to ask for a disposable coffee cup. This was all due to a so-called ‘ban’—a ban that wasn’t even official—instigated by one of the island’s self-appointed eco-gestapo. Meanwhile, I recall one environmentalist defending mass weekly barge deliveries of food by arguing it was necessary to sacrifice the island’s arable crops to propagate the Kākā parrot. What is it with these people?
Some of the older hippies, ironically, are climate change deniers. They’ll lecture you about how everyone else is killing the planet. This in psychological terms is known as cognitive dissonance with perhaps a drop of self-serving bias. Denying climate change because actually it’s hard to admit we’re destroying the planet from our ivory towers. Newsflash. It’s not just the 1 percent. It’s you!
And now, the latest drama: last week, someone was heard shrieking at a local whānau in Oruawharo Bay for riding a jet ski because it might have inadvertently frightened the dotterels. While I’m by no means in favour of mass murder of dotterels, at least I admire the local whānau for not being hypocrites.
Save the dotterels if you like, but let’s not kid ourselves. There’s even an irony in the name Medlands Ecovision. It’s a contradiction in terms. There’s nothing eco about any of us living on this island. So, while we’ve somehow miraculously wrestled with being environmental terrorists, might we also find a way to not be hypocrites?
![New Zealand In Depth12 Dec 2024 'Giant batmobiles': In search of the manta rays of the Hauraki Gulf 8:49 am on 12 December 2024 Share this Share on Twitter Share on Facebook Share via email Share on Reddit Share on Linked In Kate Newton Kate Newton , Senior Journalist, In Depth @katenewtonnz Every summer, the world's largest ray species cruises the waters of the Hauraki Gulf. Researchers are racing to find out more about these charismatic creatures as their habitat continues to decline around them. The plane's shadow skims over the wide ripples of the ocean, its twin engines throttled back into a low burr, searching. To the left in the distance is the Tutukaka coast and Whangārei Heads, and to the right, the Hauraki Gulf fades to a hazy horizon. But our eyes are fixed on the surface of the water just a few hundred metres below us. Then, crackling through our headsets, comes the one word we've been waiting to hear: "Manta." Exclamations erupt over the comms and everyone's eyes now swivel to where Catherine Meyer, seated near the front of the 10-seater on the left, is gesturing out the window. "My nine o'clock." The plane banks round into a tight loop. There, unmistakable against the peacock-blue, is the black diamond of an oceanic manta ray, te whai rahi - the largest ray species on the planet. A photo of a manta ray photographed from a planeDespite reaching up to nine metres wingtip-to-wingtip, spotting a manta ray from above still requires a sharp eye. Photo: RNZ / Cole Eastham-Farrelly For the past half-hour, we've been following the 200-metre depth contour beyond the Poor Knights Island group, along a route determined earlier that morning at Claris airport on Great Barrier Island. There, we rendezvoused with Lydia Green - island resident and project director of Manta Watch NZ, a charitable trust she founded in 2017 and has run mostly solo ever since. Manta rays, which can measure up to nine metres wingtip-to-wingtip, are found worldwide. Until recently, though, there was only anecdotal evidence of them visiting and living in New Zealand waters. Once Green and a crew of researchers and volunteers started running boat surveys, and encouraging citizen scientist sightings from fishing boats and other vessels, verified sightings exploded. Since 2020, there have been more than 1200 manta ray sightings between North Cape and Wellington, and Manta Watch has satellite-tagged 20 individuals that have been tracked as far north as the tropical Pacific. What Green really wants to prove is that these manta rays are no passing visitors, but a native population that breeds here. Consistent, frequent data collection is crucial. Despite being globally endangered, the species is classed as 'data deficient' in New Zealand - denying it the greater protections that would come with being declared locally endangered. The manta ray may need those protections. The biodiversity-rich Hauraki Gulf has been in a state of decline for decades, and last-minute carve-outs to the Hauraki Gulf / Tīkapa Moana Marine Protection Bill, a piece of legislation years in the making, have dismayed marine researchers and environmentalists. Today's flight is the first aerial survey of the gulf's manta ray population - covering in just a few hours an expanse of ocean that would take days and days to survey by boat, and taking Green ever closer to cracking the manta code. An aerial view over Claris and Kaitoke on Great Barrier Island's east coastThe survey flight took off from Claris on Great Barrier Island's east coast. Photo: RNZ / Cole Eastham-Farrelly At Claris, we board an angular, blunt-winged Britten-Norman Islander - a Swiss Army knife of a plane with big windows, and perfect for the low-altitude, low-speed cruising necessary to spot rays from above. From take-off, it takes just a few minutes to clear the hills of Great Barrier, where tree fern crowns pop like green starbursts from the otherwise dark bush. Then we're out over the ocean again, and already Green has spotted something. There's a work-up on the surface, where fish gather to feed, and in turn attract birds and larger marine animals. There's no ray action, though, and we head further out into the gulf. At the controls is Island Aviation pilot Hobby Hafiz, who has also flown aerial surveys in this area for BBC's Blue Planet. Green sits up front next to him, quietly directing Hafiz towards anything of interest she spots on the surface. Lydia Green is wearing a red tshirt and sunglasses and rests her arm on the back of a seat while sitting onboard a small plane.Manta Watch NZ project director Lydia Green prepared the route for the flight based on known manta ray hotspots. Photo: RNZ / Cole Eastham-Farrelly Also on board are World Wildlife Fund New Zealand chief executive Kayla Kingdon-Bebb, and two volunteer spotters and marine science postgraduate students, Sanaa Nair and Catherine Meyer. For Nair, this is the best day of her short career so far. As soon as she discovered Manta Watch existed, she pestered Green via email for a year, before eventually tracking her to a conference and demanding to volunteer. "I had no idea [manta rays] were here until two years ago. It just blew my mind." Manta rays have the largest brain of any fish, have no stinger, and eat only krill - like whales, they are gentle giants of the ocean. From her first sighting on a boat, Nair was captivated by these "large, beautiful, charismatic, insanely intelligent" animals. Armed with clipboards, she and Meyer take a side each, resting their foreheads against the windows as they scan intently for signs of life below. Catherine Meyer holds a pen ready to take notes while looking out a plane window.Marine science postgraduate student Catherine Meyer was one of two dedicated spotters on the flight, noting down the time and details of each manta ray sighting. Photo: RNZ / Cole Eastham-Farrelly Before Meyer spots that first ray, Green already has a working theory that they'll congregate along the contour lines, where the depth of the ocean floor changes. Here, the upwelling of fresh ocean water into shallower areas brings with it an abundance of the zooplankton that manta rays love to feast on. And after that first sighting, they're suddenly everywhere. It's all Meyer and Nair can do to note down the details of each one: the time it's spotted, its colouring, what kind of behaviour it's exhibiting. "I can't write fast enough!" Meyer says, but it's not a complaint. The excitement has infected everyone on board, shuffling and turning in our cramped seats every time someone says that magic word, "Manta." Hafiz the pilot joins in on the action, his keen aviator's eyes making him a natural - the rays may be big, but they're still tricky to spot from afar. Manta rays aren't all we spot. There are pods of dolphins, a Bryde's whale, flocks of pelagic birds, and a fever of 15 devil rays - the other species Manta Watch NZ aims to document and protect. Sanaa Nair, wearing an aviation headset, looks out a plane windowManta ray spotter Sanaa Nair pestered Lydia Green for a year to let her volunteer. Photo: RNZ / Cole Eastham-Farrelly By the time we land in Whangārei for a refuelling stop, the team has found 17 manta rays - a mix of the more common 'chevron' rays, which are black with white shoulder markings, and melanistic rays, which are completely black: "like giant batmobiles", Green says. The route back to North Shore airport takes us through the inner Hauraki Gulf, where we spot one more cruising manta ray to add to the day's total. "It's like a huge, exciting game of hide and seek," Green says the day after. The residual "manta buzz" kept her awake most of the night. "They're such an elusive animal and the biggest thing for me was just having a good idea of where I thought they'd be, because it's the first time we've ever conducted a dedicated aerial survey." Confirming her suspicion that manta rays would be found on the depth contour lines was "massive", she says. "I was just really proud of the knowledge that we've been able to collectively gain." Sanaa Nair, Lydia Green and Catherine Meyer laugh together sitting outside a small airport terminal.Sanaa Nair, left, Lydia Green and Catherine Meyer share their excitement together while going through a final pre-flight briefing. Photo: RNZ / Cole Eastham-Farrelly The concentration of sightings in the outer Hauraki Gulf also supports another hypothesis: that the rays stay out in deeper water at this time of year, and then as summer progresses and blue oceanic water inundates the gulf, they follow their food sources further inshore. "It sets a really good foundation for how we're going to conduct all of our survey efforts moving forward this year," Green says. From now until autumn, Green's life will be dictated by wind and tide. As Manta Watch's only permanent staff member, she juggles fundraising, upskilling volunteers, and doing outreach education, but her overriding concern at this time of year is organising vessels and crew for the boat surveys that the trust hopes to conduct over the season. Born in the middle of the UK, hours inland, Green nonetheless had an early and deep connection to the sea. "I was always drawn to bodies of water and I had an aquarium. And basically as soon as I had autonomy over my body, I went to the coast and I never looked back." She completed a marine biology degree and then dedicated her life to following the ocean, continuing to learn from first-hand experience. Seventeen years ago, she fetched up in New Zealand, and when she and her partner moved to Great Barrier four years ago, manta rays became a full-time job. An aerial image of the east coast of Great Barrier Island.Much of Manta Watch NZ's work is based out of Great Barrier Island in the Hauraki Gulf, where project director Lydia Green lives. Photo: RNZ / Cole Eastham-Farrelly The trust's work has grown organically, helped along by Green's "manta husband" Mark Erdmann, a coral reef ecologist based at the University of Auckland and non-profit organisation Conservation International. "He owns a boat, which is very helpful. He enabled the project to really grow in terms of the satellite tagging project." At other times, Green's work maintains a DIY element. She owns a drone, and will often put it up from shore at Okupu, the island settlement where she lives. At the height of the season the rays come close enough in that she's been able to collect footage of them, adding to the growing tally of sightings. But what she really wants is to get as many people involved as possible. Manta Watch will launch its citizen science app this week, which will let anyone who spots a manta ray log a sighting with the time, date, GPS location and other details such as photographs. Over 70 percent of the trust's sightings come from the general public, but Green says there is a lot of to-and-fro at the moment to glean the details they need to verify a sighting, and get good-quality images where they exist. Flourish logoA Flourish data visualization "With the app, it just streamlines everything and hopefully cuts out a big chunk of admin for our project. "The really cool function is that you can upload everything offline because a lot of these areas don't have cell service … and then it will upload when you've got signal." But at the same time that Manta Watch is seeing sightings rocket as people become aware of them and go "manta crazy", the ray's habitat is also under threat. The Hauraki Gulf is in "a state of advanced decline", WWF's Kayla Kingdon-Bebb says. "We've seen that through successive State of the Gulf reports produced through the Hauraki Gulf Forum. We're very concerned to see the health and mauri of Tīkapa Moana restored. We know that oceanic manta rays are a sentinel species, so they can tell us a lot about the health of the ecosystems in which they reside." Negotiations and give-and-take over more than a decade between ecologists, locals, mana whenua, commercial and recreational fisheries interests led to the drafting of the Tīkapa Moana / Hauraki Gulf Marine Protection Bill, which was introduced under the previous government and supported by the current government. The Bill will create 19 new protected areas, tripling protected areas from 6 percent to 18 percent of the gulf. Some of those are 'high-protection' areas, where fishing and other extractive activity is forbidden. A manta ray with white markings on its black back cruises in bright blue waterManta rays are globally endangered but the are classified as 'data deficient' in New Zealand as very little was known about them here until recently. Photo: Manta Watch NZ / Mark Erdmann](https://aoteagbi.news/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/4KFBYNY_NZ_MB_0089_2022_02_22_8_1_Mark_Erdmann_png-600x338.webp)
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Well said, totally agree! Thank you
Good wee read, The real elephant in the room is population growth globally.
Most kiwis are not aware that only 200 years ago the global population was 1000,000,000 and it’s now 8200.000.000.
There’s lots of propaganda saying that it’s because of the baby boomers, the men that returned from Ww2, but I really question this because how many men came home from ww2,, 10 million?
At the moment countries like Ireland have a population of 50%, 15 years old or younger.
I believe we all must do as much as we can to reduce our personal environmental footprint, but in saying this little NZ of 5.000.000 cannot change what 8200.000.000 humans are doing to the environment, the amount of resources, energy, consumed and the amount of rubbish produced, and pollution created.
China alone last year burnt 4000.000.000 tons of coal, imagine what India, Indonesia, Russia and the other 170 + countries burnt.
I really hope that our politicians and government departments do not waste money when lots of people are struggling.
The global population grew by 75 million last year, the global population clock has twice as many births than deaths, what’s planet earth going to look like in 50 years time with 8200.000.000 breeding?
I personally think that we must keep it real and face what is coming up.
What a lot of waffle. The locals live life their own way, not the way others think they should. Most are very aware of environmental impacts and do their best to minimise these. The growing popularity of solar has been revolutionary and many houses now use this as their primary source of power. Yes, there are eco warriors (as opposed to terrorists) and they can be quite ‘over the top’ but it’s a place where you can be yourself and be accepted with all your idiosyncranasies. If visitors or part-time locals find this too much to handle then they could find somewhere else to go and whinge about how awful the locals are there. It’s not and never will be a perfect world but on the Barrier is beautiful, embracing and especially it’s accepting.
Fact full ness a book by Hans Rosling about population growth decline due to many coming out of poverty is a great read.If you want to keep it real.
What’s happened to the barrier
Back when we lived there for 9 years we never had a generator. There were places with generators yet they were not a necessity for many. People worked hard just to sustain their lifestyle in the purest way. Now times have changed and people have deemed them a necessity for the electronic age. Not only do you have them everywhere now you also seem to have imported riff raff according to the reports I read from there. I understand progress and keeping up with the times yet I can remember when that was never a priority and people on the rock supported each other, bartered and lived a simple but very full life. I love the memories and it’s a shame that progress also means stealing etc and the place is not what it used to be.
I’m not sure we can actually believe the numbers and maybe that part actually is the propaganda. As for the footprint- yes keep it clean but maybe we have been told some porkies on that front too…..
Barrier is a stunning place to live.
Many work their whole lives to afford a life like we already live.
Cars and Generators are expensive to run so excess use isn’t an option for most!
Locals tend to be passionate about their island and can get emotional about misuse or those who don’t respect it.
I think it’s exceptional a community looks out for its own well being and come up with initiatives to look after its own health, wellness and pollution issues.
The need to import food and supplies is just a necessity of life for the shops/ business and locals. When we can, most use local goods…. It’s pretty fantastic and every little bit helps the local economy and environment.
Most of the houses we build here, the architects and owners are mindful of the environmental impact and power systems are usually very modern and solar capable.
You can’t stop progress and everywhere, not just barrier is changing with the times, at least Barrier still puts in an effort and tries!
It’s easier to see yourself as “eco” when surrounded by nature, even if the lifestyle itself isn’t sustainable. Look out at the trees and your garden, not the ferries, planes and rubbish tips.
The efficiency of urban density—is, objectively, a far smaller environmental footprint than shipping food and fuel to an island. But that kind of lifestyle doesn’t feel as romantic or ‘connected to the earth’, which is often what the “eco” identity is tied to.
Thing is. Who would want to live in town if you could live here?
I think anyone who lives here has to come up with some strange justification. I like the ones who just say I love living here and being away from built up areas and leave it at that.
Most who are staunch about living here don’t say, I can’t live in Auckland because it’s so environmentally unfriendly. It’s because of selfish reasons of not wanting to be penned in with other people. Which I think is a valid reason, but no need to dress it up as for the good of the planet. The truth is we are all snobs who can’t tolerate the general public. And that’s the truth.
There are 100% quite a few who do practice low impact living but it’s more so because they are old and that was they are use to.
I even clearly have some grandiose self importance about being here. This rock does not need any one of us. In fact quite the opposite.