Students lead the way in first seaweed plant-outs.
Our first seaweeds are in the water and it’s the students of Te Kura Kaupapa Māori o Ngā Mokopuna who are making it possible.
It’s September and the water is a cool 12 degrees. It’s time for our first baby seaweeds to travel from the lab at NIWA to the Worser/Kakariki Bay community site. It’s been nearly 2 years in the making, but finally the real regeneration begins.
After a karakia the seaweeds are lowered into the water to be picked up by the Kura Kelpers. Ready and waiting with their freshly woven kono (baskets) to carry the seaweeds to their new home. The time chosen for this has been guided by the maramataka and Taranaki Whānui.
A Kura Kelper holds a kono containing ‘green gravel’ which is ready to be placed in the regeneration sites.
The students have been working with Māia-te-oho Holman-Wharehoka for the past term, preparing for plant-outs. Māia is a weaver, amongst other things, from Taranaki Whānui and has been weaving this knowledge into the project.
A total of 5 clusters are planted out with a mix of small and large rocks - known as ‘green gravel’. With guidance from Love Rimuirmu team members Rachel Parry and Joe Warmington, the hardy students dive down several metres using their free-diving skills to place the stones out one by one.
“Seeing the Kura Kelpers go from those first days of learning three years ago, to them planting out the very first of our seaweeds has been incredible” says team member Joe Warmington. “The growth of them, the growth in our team is something special. And now we hope for some growth in our seaweeds”
Check out this short video of the journey from lab to ocean:
What's in the kono? A kelper gets ready to swim back and grab some more green gravel.
With a mixture of 20 total rocks going into the water and a further 30 put out over successive days, now comes the monitoring work. We’ll be watching our fledgling seaweeds closely over the coming months.
It’s always inspiring to see the students leading the way, and the energy in the project team is electric as we get another step closer to realising the dream of a seaweed rich te Whanganui-a-Tara.