Soiree and Snorkel Celebrates Seaweed Restoration
Over 100 people stopped by Breaker Bay Hall on Saturday 16 December 2023 to join Mountains to Sea Wellington’s (MTSW) free community snorkel and Love Rimurimu Seaweed Sea-lebration, presented with support from the WLG Community and Environment Fund.
MTSW initiated the Love Rimurimu project three years ago, after it came to light that local seaweed forests were in decline. Love Rimurimu is looking at how science and community can reverse the trend.
Saturday’s Sea-lebration featured all things seaweed including seaweed foraging tours, seaweed products, books, kōrero - and of course a chance to join one of MTSW’s classic community snorkels to get up close and personal with the seaweed forest around the coast of Breaker Bay.
Presented in collaboration with the Breaker Bay and Moa Point Progressive Association, the Hall was bustling with a local market featuring Te Motukairangi Weavers and a taonga pūoro maker (traditional Māori musical instruments), while Maori frybread filled the hall with delicious smells!
Saturday’s event was held to mark major milestones for the Love Rimurimu project, in which rimu kakauroa, or giant kelp has been grown in the lab at NIWA and planted out by the MTSW team around the coast of Te Motu Kairangi / Miramar Peninsula. It also gave participants a chance to learn more about the current pressures on seaweed caused by warming temperatures, sediment, and human impacts on the coastal environment.
Julie Anne Genter, MP for Rongotai, said she spent a half hour in the water “staring at some of the most indescribably beautiful complex life on earth. The kelp, the seaweed - its purple and orange and green - it's stunning! I absolutely love snorkelling and Mountains to Sea makes it so easy. It’s free, you just show up, you get all the gear, you get a guide and go right into the seaweed forest. I recommend it to everyone. It's life changing!”
Josh and Jack showing off their favourite seaweeds after a Seaweed Foraging tour. Jack said “We learned that all of the seaweeds here are edible, I never knew that it's a really safe thing to do, to try things out and experiment with it in our food. We’re really excited!
Maxime and Cammile (on the left) chat with MTSW’s Joe and Sheryl (on the right) about local seaweed species. Maxime says “I haven’t really paid attention to seaweed before but there is so much to know about it, that we can eat it, and use it as ingredients, and in the garden.”
(Left) There are many species of rimurimu, or seaweed, on the coast around Te Motu Kairangi / Miramar Peninsula. (Right) Joe from Love Rimurimu leading a free seaweed foraging tour on the coast of Breaker Bay.
Love Rimurimu’s Citizen Science Coordinator Rachel shows off a lovely piece of rimu kakauroa, or giant kelp - the same species that adorns Love Rimurimu’s new T-Shirts!