Te Whanga Hauora o Tutukaka

---

Te Whanga Hauora o Tutukaka Vision 2030

Restoring the mauri of Tutukaka Harbour to a vibrant and healthy state where kelp forests flourish, marine life abounds and our communities thrive.

Ki Uta Ki Tai

Tutukaka Harbour, ancestral rohe moana, safe-haven, picturesque playground, hidden holiday gem, and now home to an ever-growing community of families, retirees and professionals. All of us drawn to her natural beauty and the dream of a pristine moana, a harbour paradise unspoilt by the ravages of modern human impacts. And from the surface perhaps we can still pretend the dream is a reality. But look below the surface and another reality stares back at us. Sediment covered sand, smothering algal matts, bare rocks, denuded kelp forests and kina barrens are the new reality.

Imagine if we could step back in time a mere 50 or 60 years, into the memories of those who grew up on the shores of the harbour. Those memories include peering down through clear waters to dense kelp and seaweed gardens, lush seagrass beds, crayfish feelers bristling from cracks and crevices, schools of fish a plenty, including snapper, kahawai, mullet, piper, hunting kingfish. Memories of wading out from Church Bay to Phillip Island at low tide to collect kina, crayfish, oysters and picking up scallops on the way back to the beach for the evening meal.

Now imagine stepping into the future, the year is 2030. What reality do you want to see as you don mask and snorkel and swim out from the shores of Pacific Bay, Kowhawera Bay or Church Bay. The future of our beloved harbour is in our hands! Our vision is to support mana whenua in their role as kaitiaki, as they strive to restore the mauri and mana of their ancestral waters. Working together we can restore the mauri of Te Whanga o Tutukaka, the mauri of our communities and the future memories of our children and grandchildren. 

As the only deep-water harbour on this part of the coast, Tutukaka is unique in providing shelter and diverse habitats, including shell/sand substrate, rocky reefs, sea grass beds and kelp forests that offer lower wave energy environments than the exposed coast, as well as good tidal flow with associated natural nutrient flows. In a healthy state Tutukaka harbour is an important nursery and feeding area for many fish and invertebrate species including piper, mullet, snapper, kahawai, sweep, blue maomao, red moki, several wrasse species as well as stingrays and eagle rays. There are several crayfish nursery areas within the harbour including Kukutauwhao (Lighthouse Bay), Phillip Island and the eastern side of Pacific Bay. Historically there was a healthy, functional scallop bed in Church Bay, along with dense pipi and cockle beds. Other important invertebrates and taonga species were once abundant in the harbour: seahorses, octopus, sea cucumbers and of course, kina to name just a few.

Currently, Tutukaka Harbour is in a highly degraded state, due in part to excessive runoff of sediment, pollutants and high nutrient loads from adjacent land use, but also from overfishing and harvesting, both within the harbour as well as along the adjacent coastline. Impacts of local overfishing include severely depleted kōura (crayfish) and tāmure (snapper) numbers, which have significantly contributed to extensive kina barrens replacing much of the ecklonia kelp forests. Kina barrens cause very low invertebrate diversity of both encrusting and mobile species, which has resulted in large areas of virtually bare rock where once there were vibrant and diverse reef communities.

To address these issues and restore the harbour to a state of vibrant ecological health will require a collaborative effort involving all sectors of the community working together with this common purpose. Key to this is acknowledging the diversity within our community and respecting the varied user relationships we have with the harbour. We can bring together our various skills, knowledge and experience to develop restorative practices and management strategies towards this common goal.

Te Wairua O Te Moananui – Ocean Spirit Trust. Our Vision: A healthy ocean in which coastal ecosystems and human communities thrive in a harmonious, respectful and mutually beneficial relationship. 

Our Trust has been coordinating community-based ecological monitoring of the harbour and surrounding coastline for the past five years. We currently have two connected regeneration projects underway in Church Bay: The Motu Te Maika (Phillip Island) kelp and reef regeneration project and the Wairepo Moemoeaa wetland regeneration project. Both projects will contribute to the ecological health of Church Bay and its catchment, which will in turn contribute to the Te Whanga Hauora o Tutukaka Vision 2030. Please see the accompanying documents for more details on these projects. 

We see these projects as a starting point, and we invite you to join us in realising the vision of a healthy and vibrant harbour to pass on to our children and grandchildren.

---