#farewell spit

[sourisverte]

  Nelson, New Zealand

[ellaandtheocean]

Amber skies at Farewell Spit and Golden Bay, the very tip of the South Island. 

[oceansoftheworld]

Race to save 100 stranded whales on New Zealand beach - BBC News

Another 300 pilot whales have already died in one of the worst such cases seen in the country.

:(

Pilot whales

[indizombie]

More than 400 pilot whales - which are technically members of the dolphin family - came ashore up Farewell Spit, South Island last week, but since then about 200 more have stranded themselves. New Zealand has one of the highest stranding rates in the world. About 300 dolphins and whales end up on beaches in the country every year. Many of these incidents happen at Farewell Spit. In February 2015 about 200 whales beached themselves at the same location, of which at least half died.

'New Zealand whales: Authorities to move 300 carcasses', BBC

[fightflight]

Shoreline

[drhoz]

Drhoz and Purrdence's NZ Trip 2025-2026 : Flying In

This trip was to the South Island, but we still had to fly into Auckland first (riding a tailwind so strong we got in before they had any of the stairs available).

But at least I got to see a few landforms I didn't get to see on the first visit, such as Rangitoto Island, one of the many MANY volcanoes Auckland is built on top of. It's the youngest and largest of the volcanoes, having formed about 600 years ago, and built up from nothing over a 5-10 year period.

The full name of the island is Ngā Rangi-i-totongia-a Tama-te-kapua ("The days of the bleeding of Tama-te-kapua") after the the captain of the Arawa canoe which came to New Zealand from Polynesia in about 1350, and was badly wounded on the island after losing a battle with the Tainui iwi.

I was already on the lookout for species as soon as we landed, and spotted one moth (a Geometrid) and two flies in the terminal, but since I was going past on an escalator I didn't get any photos, alas.

Flying down to Christchurch took as over the northernmost end of the South Island, and Farewell Spit, a 30km long sandspit formed from all the sand washing down off the Southern Alps on the western side of the island, and swept north by the prevailing current. The spit and the extensive tidal flats behind it are protected bird habitat, but also a place of frequent mass whale strandings, alas.

Further south we flew over the Canterbury Plain, formed from all the gravel, sand and glacial flour coming down off the Southern Alps on the eastern side. It's crossed by some very interesting braided rivers, and tens of thousands of kilometers of enormous hedges grown to try and protect the paddocks from the howling winds that come down off the mountains.

Before humans arrived on the island most of this would have been covered in dense forest. In fact, much of the trip this time was through areas that had been entirely cleared for agriculture, which was one of likely factors behind my poor species count on this trip (a mere 729). The number of places we stayed at that had perfectly manicured English-style gardens didn't help either. Nor did the very weird weather. There was snow in Dunedin just before Christmas - summer temperatures and the flowering seasons were running two months late. At least on the South Island - on the North Island temperatures were reaching an appalling 35C.

[fuckyeahstickers]

[jeanhm]