All good except drought on GBI Sea report The jellyfish gave beach lovers on GBI a wonderful gift: they undulated out of here, right around Christmas Day, just as holidaymakers began arriving by ferry and plane! I bet most visitors were blissfully unaware that until literally hours before they set foot on the beach, hundreds of purple blobs had marred the shoreline and the sea. Long-term locals say something untoward comes in every year. Some years, sorry to say, it’s been bluebottles; last year a “red tide” of small seaweed. I’m happy to coexist peacefully with whatever’s in the water as long as it doesn’t harm us. That philosophy is served us well post-jellyfish, when we found ourselves swimming for a few days in “iggy city” – among groups and loners of nearly transparent creatures so tiny you can barely grasp or clearly discern them, but large enough to feel them around you. We’ve encountered them before and we think they’re sea gooseberries, whose gelatinous globular bodies are 99 percent water. The sunlight was just right for capturing them stranded on the black iron-sand beach as the tide went out. Thankfully they’re all gone now. A virtual gift If you don’t yet have a 2017 calendar, perhaps you’d like to print out or have printed one we made with some of our favourite GBI photos. https://www.dropbox.com/s/rxu1b854ibp9wcy/GBI%20calendar%202017.pdf?dl=0 If you print the file exactly as it is, back to back, it will all fold properly into place. The tricky bits are stapling it and punching holes in the pages. Hint: The back page doesn’t need a hole. The Barrier in the media – again and again, and again! Garden of the Week Intrepid (and lovely) market gardeners Gerald and Caity Endt have become quite the celebrities! In November they were the subject of New Zealand Gardener’s “Garden of the Week” feature: http://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/home-property/nz-gardener/86091655/garden-of-the-week-living-the-good-life-on-great-barrier International Renown Soon after that a Canadian TV crew filmed them from harvest to delivery on one of their weekly “pot luck” produce boxes days. In addition to weekly boxes, they also supply their beautiful salad mix (a mix to the max!) to restaurants here, sell a big range of seedlings, fruit trees and spectacular rose plants at the weekly and seasonal markets, and in summer they’re part of OOOOBY (Out of Our Own Backyards) in Auckland. No wonder they need five interns at a time! Great Destinations This internet radio station covers locations around the world. The Barrier was featured last month in “Relax on New Zealand’s Great Barrier Island – but leave the hair dryer at home”. You can read the transcript instead of listening or just enjoy the gorgeous photos! http://greatdestinationsradioshow.com/2016/11/20/relax-on-new-zealands-great-barrier-island-but-leave-the-hair-dryer-at-home/ Funky Fun Someone’s video of their GBI holiday – very sweet! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsoe9lfdhEs Screen shots from Funky Fun. The first one is Awana Stream, which flows into Awana Beach. The others are "nice places on the island"! I’ve been finding with all these articles, videos, TV shows and now a radio programme, that everyone’s Great Barrier Island is different, like the poem “The Blind Men and the Elephant” I knew as a kid. Islands of the Gulf – Great Barrier This TV doco series from the 1960s was the first made in New Zealand. The writer, producer and presenter is the intrepid Shirley Maddock, who travels the rough dirt roads of the Barrier to meet some of the 240 people living here at the time and get a feel for island life. https://www.nzonscreen.com/title/islands-of-the-gulf---great-barrier-1965 Determination One day after swimming when the wind was fierce we observed a pair of seagulls trying staunchly to get from the pond to the sea, perhaps 150 metres. The wind was coming straight at them and though they made no progress at all for minutes at a time, they refused to give up. They flapped their wings resolutely, occasionally swooping down and back up again. Here they are about halfway there. They eventually made it and we doffed our swim caps to them! “Ridge to Reef’ Revisited Over a year ago I wrote up my notes from eight speakers on the fauna and fauna of Great Barrier Island. My intention was to send one or two a month, so far I’ve only sent two! Here’s another one, orcas. Still to come are native plants, freshwater fish, seals, black petrel and turtles. Ingrid Visser, the only researcher specialising in the orca in NZ waters Orcas are in the dolphin family, but they’re also called killer whales, possibly because they kill whales! These top predators in the marine food web are as large as some smaller whales – up to 8 metres and over 5 tonnes. They can dive more than 800 m and live more than 50 years. Males and females are easily distinguished by differences in their fins. The one on the left is female. Orcas are found in all the world’s oceans, but until Ingrid began her research in the 1990s little was known about them in New Zealand waters, even if any were resident around the coast or if the ones sighted were just passing through. Between 1992 and 1999, she counted 167 individual orcas around New Zealand. Her research was instrumental in the reclassification of New Zealand orca from “Common” to “Nationally Critical”. By photographing the white eye patches of 98 orcas, Visser found that in addition to differences in the dorsal fin, individual orcas can be identified by their eye patch. As Sarah Dwyer had said about dolphins, identifying individuals is important for studying how far they move, how often they breed and their social structure. (none of these orca photos are mine, obviously!) New Zealand orcas are the only ones known to eat stingrays, eagle rays and electric rays as staple foods, in addition to fish, squid, dolphins, sharks and seals. Eating rays is dangerous, even for killer whales! Sometimes the rays do the killing – their spines release poison and can penetrate the orcas’ insides. And by foraging for rays in shallow waters, the orcas can become stranded. For the orcas to risk their lives, the rays must be mighty tasty (my comment, not Ingrid’s)! Orcas are fearsome predators, but they’ve never been recorded attacking humans. Instead, we are their only enemy. Though they’re now "protected” in New Zealand, they’re still vulnerable to being struck by boats, tangled in fishing nets, injured by fishing lines, harassed, and made ill by polluted water. With less than 200 remaining, every one lost brings the local population closer to extinction. Orcas form long-term social groups known as pods. The pod size of New Zealand orcas is small, around two to four, but they come together in big pods at mating time. There’s still much more to learn about them, Ingrid said. Anyone near or on the sea can participate in citizen science, she concluded, not only by reporting strandings to 0800 DOC HOT but also by taking photos and reporting sightings, which can help researchers determine resident and transient populations. You can learn more and get a good sense of Ingrid’s work and her passion for protecting orcas in "GoPro Orca Rescue": www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pRHO1psAYY New Years Picnic The longest running annual event on the island – more than 70 years! As you might expect, the Picnic has a mellow vibe, with stalls, music, and for the kids a bouncy castle and long-plastic-sheet water slide! The event, with its “Wonder Raffle" and auction (we got a Hooked on Barrier T-shirt!), is a fundraiser for the Aotea Family Support Group, which is comparable to the Golden Bay Community Workers. Imagine a world where the needs of everyone in every community were met as a matter of course and no one needed extra support from a funded and fundraising organisation! Castles in the sand On the following weekend we went along to the sandcastle competition on Medlands Beach. Here are a happy hippo, a merry mermaid, a sandburger, jagged jaws, and a crumbling castle. Summer garden You can see how dry it’s been – only 10 mm since mid-November, and the landscape is fading from green to brown. Water deliveries by someone who pumps from a stream have begun in earnest. We’re fine for now, with two rainwater tanks that filled during the August and September deluges, but with no rain on the foreseeable horizon, while other areas are inundated, the word we’re using here is “dire”. Left to right – zukes, silverbeet, kale, tomatoes, mint and cukes. J And we’ve been keeping ourselves in salads, greens, beetroot and others. Our first rampicante, which is a summer squash or winter pumpkin, depending on when you harvest it. Its vine is the first plant on the ground to the left of the picnic table. Maybe it got its name because the vine grows rampantly? Paul and Mary return! The earth revolves steadily around the sun, bringing my beloved son and daughter-in-law ever closer to their third annual February visit! I’m sure they love to see us, but I think the places we’ve been lucky enough to live in are also part of the appeal. Like last year, I’ll probably skip my blog next month while we all enjoy another round of exploration, conversation, food preparation!! and fun, and they take a whole lot of new photos you’ll be seeing in March! Ready for take-off at San Francisco airport last year. Oceanview Road from a real estate site $500,000 for the bach over the road! Friday the 13th full moon over the sea
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