Abel Tasman HOW TO GET THERE. Themes that are developed at this site: Visitor impact. Tides and life in the estuary. Weed watch

Transcription

1 Abel Tasman Themes that are developed at this site: Visitor impact Tides and life in the estuary Weed watch The Abel Tasman National Park has good quality facilities for schools, on-site accommodation, a national park and a marine reserve on which to base your studies and usually, fine sunny weather. There are two ends to the Abel Tasman National Park, the southern end is begins at Marahau, and the northern end is based around Totaranui, - although the coast continues beyond there. Both sites are on the edge of estuaries, both have beautiful beach areas and both have access to forest. Abel Tasman terrestrial environment is seriously modified by logging, burning and farming. There are big problems with weeds and possums in the park. These activities will help you to learn to recognise some weeds and the signs of possums and investigate some of the diverse habitats that make up the 96km coastline of the park. Estuaries are partly enclosed areas where salt and fresh water meet. More than two-thirds of the Abel Tasman coastline is estuary providing great opportunities for education in the environment. Check the tides and plan for low tide activities in the estuary and high tide activities in the bush or on the water. HOW TO GET THERE Marahau is on the Motueka side of the Takaka Hill, and just past Riwaka on SH 66 you have the option of turning off to Kaiteriteri and following the coast or going the more direct inland route over the Marahau Hill. Totaranui can be accessed by boat from Kaiteriteri or by road travelling over the Takaka Hill to Takaka. Follow the signs to Pohara and Tata Beach which will lead your past the Abel Tasman Memorial and on to Totaranui. The drive from Takaka to Totaranui takes about an hour, about half the distance is on unsealed road. 1

2 FACILITIES CHECKLIST Abel Tasman National Park Huts Camp sites Tracks Whariwharangi Wainui Bay Bay Separation Pt Totaranui Takaka Awaroa Bay Education Centre Camp Ground ABEL TASMAN Tasman Bay Motueka Nelson There is good parking at both Totaranui and Marahau. Take care to lock vehicles and don t leave valuables in them. Both sites are suitable for wheelchairs with care. Good toilets available. Water in the Abel Tasman National Park is known to have the gut parasite Giardia, all water should be treated in some way before drinking. The accommodation has filtered water available. The Education Lodge at Totaranui can be booked by contacting the Department of Conservation in Takaka on The Marahau Outdoor Education Centre can be contacted at (c/o Vig Franklin RD2, Marahau.) Groups wanting to walk the track and camp along the track should book with the Department of Conservation Area Office in Motueka (there is a school discount that only applies to booked visits). River Tonga Is Bark Bay Torrent Bay There are a variety of walks at both sites, Totaranui has more walks available than Marahau. There is a Visitor Centre at Totaranui with information panels covering the history and Natural History of the area. Marahau has a series of information panels in the shelter at the end of the track. Both sites have plenty of open spaces for picnics and games. The beaches are reasonably safe, and there is potential for kayaking, swimming, estuary and shoreline exploration. HAZARDS Marahau Outdoor Education Centre Marahau Sandy Bay Ngaio Is (Abel Tasman N.P.) Kaiteriteri Adele Is Fishermans Is kilometres Potentially there is deep water off the beach and large waves may be present depending on weather. Generally both sites are fairly sheltered from most winds, except strong northerlies. Wasps will be present, particularly near the beech forests. This is a high use area, there will be other people using the tracks, beaches and facilities. Don t leave valuables unattended. 2

3 NATURAL HISTORY The Abel Tasman coastline is predominantly made up of granites, which weather to give the characteristic golden sands found on the local beaches. In the hills behind the coast are the cave-filled marbles and limestones that Golden Bay is famous for. Until 1942 much of the park was farmed, since then it has been regenerating well. In many places you can see the gorse is beginning to die off and the native trees and shrubs are taking over again. In the estuaries, just above high tide mark, pockets of native rushes can be seen. Looking out across the flats at low tide you will see mud snails (Amphibola crenata) and crab tubes dotting the surface. Birds may include the inquisitive weka, white-faced heron, mallard duck, pukeko, pied stilt, pied oystercatcher, gulls, paradise duck (putangitangi) and terns. Watch out for kingfishers (kotare), as they wait to snatch any unsuspecting crabs or small fish from the mud or shallow water. You may hear little blue penguins at night sounding like small donkeys. HISTORY Maori people have lived on this coast for at least 500 years and although many of the sites were seasonal there were also permanent occupation sites on the Awaroa Estuary. On the way to Totaranui by road you pass the Abel Tasman Memorial which was erected to commemorate the incident in 1642 that put Aotearoa on the western world s map. At Wainui several of the Dutch navigator s men were killed. The scuffle, in hindsight, was probably due to a misunderstanding between the two cultures. Tasman s men, having killed several Maori people, decided that this was a hostile place and left. The coast was explored in more detail in 1827 by the French explorer D Urville. The influence of these early visitors is seen in place names that survive today like: Astrolabe Roadstead, Adele Island, Watering Cove and Observation Beach. The colonists burned the hillsides for grazing land but soon found the granite-derived soils were not as fertile as they hoped and bracken and other plant colonisers were soon working their way back over them. In 1942 the Abel Tasman National Park was formally established and has been added to on occasions since. Today it is one of the main meccas for overseas tourists visiting the country. In 1993 a Marine Reserve was established centred on Tonga Island. All marine life within the reserve s boundaries is protected. People are welcome to visit the reserve provided they do not disturb the plants and animals living there. 3

4 ACTIVITIES Pre-trip classroom preparation On this trip there will be opportunities for children to try out simple experiments and undertake surveys. Any activities that introduce the idea of meaningful results will be good preparation. There can be some work after dark. Fears and apprehensions may need to be explored first. Things to bring Binoculars for bird watching. Ice-cream containers for seashore explorations. Identification books. CD or tape of native bird song. Paper and pencils. Some string. Food for baits. Torches. Balls, tennis sized and several larger netball-sized. Animal track ID sheet. STARTER ACTIVITIES A. Cat and bush robin (adapted from Myers) You will need two balls (or similar) for this game. A larger one (netball-sized) to be the cat, and a smaller one (tennis ball) to be the robin. Form the group into a circle, and introduce the balls to opposite sides. The cat ball can only move around the perimeter of the circle, being passed from person to person. The robin ball can fly across the circle or be passed from person to person. The object of the game is for the cat to catch up with (touch) the robin, and for the robin to keep escaping the cat. See how the game goes with the number of people playing and introduce more cats and robins to speed the game up! How many cats can the robin keep ahead of? B. Animal stories Later in the resource we will be looking at ways to find out what animals live in the park. This activity is to try and get the group to start thinking about human/animal interactions. Divide the class into groups, including a parent helper for younger children. Each group has 5 minutes to plan a story to be acted out for the rest of the class. The story must contain an animal and cannot have any spoken words! It could be a story about a nice animal like a baby weka, an obscure animal like a worm, or an unusual animal. The groups take it in turns to act out their stories, and at the end, the rest of the class has to try and guess the animal in the story! It would be good to have a group of adult helpers to act one out for the class too. 4

5 IN THE ENVIRONMENT A. Tides This activity helps to show the different living conditions experienced by animals living at different levels on the beach or in the estuary. To represent the animals and plants living in the inter-tidal zone, position the group over a picnic table or on a natural slope. They can crouch down and use their hands to represent small filter feeding animals (a filter feeder will filter the water passing them to take out tiny food particles). A piece of string held between two taller people will represent the tidal water level. B. How many snails in the estuary? At low tide you will see the mud snail (whetiko) Amphibola crenata dotting the surface of the mud flat on the inland side of the estuary. Marahau estuary has an area of 41 square hectares. Of this, about six hectares are suitable habitat for the mud snail. Totaranui estuary has an area of 19 square metres. Of this, one hectare is suitable habitat. How many snails live in this estuary? Mark out metre squares in the sand. Count and record the number of snails per square metre in 10 locations between high and low tide and average them to get a representative value for each square metre. There are 10,000 m 2 in a hectare. Work out an estimate for the total number of snails from these figures. C. Productivity - how much biomass? Some studies have suggested that estuaries are six times more productive than farmland. Is this estuary one of those places? A spring balance is required for this activity. To extend the numbers previously calculated for snails to a production figure you need to know the weight of the snails. Ideally you should also do the same calculations for crabs, cockles and worms. An average weight is best calculated by collecting and weighing a sample of the animals, then dividing the answer by the number in the sample. Please return all animals to the mud flat afterwards. Multiply this number by the number of snails you found in the above section. If you want the answer to be in hectares rather than square kilometres then divide this answer by 100 (there are 100 ha in 1 km 2 ). A local farm will have a stocking rate of about 10 stock units (sheep equivalents) per hectare, with each stock unit weighing 60kg. This means a farm is supporting 600kg per hectare. How does this compare with the estuary? D. Glowing reports Totaranui only (adapted from Earle Norriss) If you are staying overnight at Totaranui, you may like to take the group on a night walk. Take your torches and follow the main track heading south out of Totaranui for about eight minutes. You may not want to mention the glow worms so it is a surprise, use your discretion. Glow-worms glow brightest when the group is quiet and torches are turned off. Glow-worms are not worms but the larvae of a small fly called a fungus gnat. The larvae hang sticky threads down and glow to lure small night flying insects into the threads. 5

6 On the way back to the campground you can walk along the beach. Try sitting down on the beach, being totally quiet and listening for 5 or 10 minutes. What noises can you hear? You may hear the little-blue penguins, morepork (ruru), possums, plus the waves and other campers. If you can find a long bit of driftwood, use it to stir the seawater near the beach. You may see what looks like bright sparks of light in the water. This is what is called phosphorescence, and is caused by tiny zooplankton (animal plankton) in the water that release flashes of light when they are disturbed. Phosphorescence is variable and is dependant on the how much plankton is in the water. E. Night calls Learn the sounds made by morepork and weka. How many weka can you hear? Design a monitoring programme that can be repeated by other schools that visit to see if weka are increasing. F. Beach mural Using a large area of beach draw a mural that illustrates all the plants and animals you have learned about during your trip to the Abel Tasman National Park. Use bits of washed up seaweed or driftwood to help decorate this huge artwork. The sand can be textured and groomed to give a nice effect. Take a photo of the completed work to take back with you. ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT A. Who else lives here? A national park is protected for all to enjoy, but pests like possums, pigs, mice, rats, goats and deer are not protected and cause a lot of damage to native plants and animals. Lets try and find out who else lives here. Possum. Most of the creatures we are looking for are nocturnal, so they only come out at night. We are going to have to try and detect them by their tracks. On a smooth piece of beach or in the estuary above high tide zone, smooth out a series of patches of sand and place a bait in the middle of each one. Baits to try might include peanut butter, a quarter apple, some cheese, slice of bread, an egg (whole), a lolly, or some rice pudding! Early the next day visit the patches and try and work out what animals have visited the baits by looking at the tracks left in the sand. Make each site far enough away from the others so that a possum won t wreck the whole lot when visiting one site! Signs of animals living in the park can also be found by day. Look out for damage to the possums favourite plants five finger, rata and black tree ferns are all subject to sustained attack. See the master sheet with diagrams of animal tracks. B. What effect do visitors have on the park? (A discussion) The Abel Tasman National Park has about visitors per year. Most are day visitors coming in for day walks or by boat, but at least stay overnight. Most of the campsites used today are in the same places as Maori used. A National Park is a place that is meant to preserve nature for people to visit. How many people can visit the place before it starts to get wrecked? 6

7 Try and rate these effects on a scale of 1 10 (1 is a tiny effect and 10 is a big effect). Walking tracks, leaving rubbish, camping in tents, using huts, walking off the track, fishing, hunting, swimming, going to the toilet, kayaking, lighting fires, washing, spoiling historic sites. Which three effects have the biggest effect on the park? What rules might stop the Park getting loved to death? C. Visitor survey With so many visitors visiting the park each year it is becoming a real problem for the Department of Conservation to provide the things that are needed by so many people, without damaging the environment. We could find out if there s something more DOC could do by asking some of the visitors. What questions could you ask people using the Park while you are there (remember that some of the people may not be able to talk very good English, so the questions must be quite easy to understand). Your survey could find out: Where they have come from? How they got to hear about the park? What things could be improved? You want to ask them questions relating to the discussion you had in Section B (above). Try and find out what effect their visit has had on the Park. See the master sheet for a basic example. D. Who lives where in the estuary? The inlets at Marahau and Totaranui fill and empty of water twice in each 24 hour period. Students could continue investigating the estuary by completing drawings at high and low tide. Make a simple survey of the sorts of plants and animals you can find near the high tide mark and compare them to those found at mid and low tide marks. Some are more able to tolerate the departing tide than others. You can try and name them from books if you want to, but children often enjoy making up their own names. For each particular sort of plant or animal try and work out where its favourite place (habitat) to live is. What makes a favourite place so good for that particular thing. The mudsnail is a land type snail but has found that estuaries are good sources of food. They can eat more than twice their own body weight per hour while feeding, being most active when the tide is low. There habitat is moist, muddy sand that doesn't dry out. E. Make a mobile Mobiles look great, and can be a really good way to show how food chains work. Using pictures you have drawn of some of the animals and plants you have seen in the estuary, string them up so they represent an estuary food web. Start with some tiny microscopic plant plankton and algae. What things eat sea plants? Grazers and filter feeders like mud snails, cockles, mussels, and some small fish. What eats those things? The scavengers like crabs, whelks, seastars, and some bigger fish. What eats those things? Predators like herons, oystercatchers, kingfishers, penguins and even fish and people. Include introduced animals like stoats. 7

8 FOR THE ENVIRONMENT A. Weed watch Abel Tasman National Park, our smallest National Park, may also be our weediest. You have probably noticed gorse and pine trees already. There are also a number of serious weeds which have not established. These include old man s beard, banana passionfruit, Mexican daisy and climbing asparagus. Help us by looking out for these weeds using the Fact Sheets included in this pack. Report sightings to the hut wardens or use the surveillance weed form and send it to the Motueka Department of Conservation office. Weeds are spread by wind, water and animals. They are also spread by people and encouraged by many human activities. Burning encourages weeds, because most of our native species are not adapted to fire, whereas many species from overseas actually benefit from fires. The seeds survive in tough seed capsules and germinate after an area has been burned. Many native seeds are destroyed in fires, and so can only regrow when seeds are spread from unburned areas, usually by birds. Look out for the scars of past fires. To help control weeds in Abel Tasman National Park the most important thing is to prevent fires. Learn to identify wilding pine trees and spend some time weeding an area of the park. Contact the Department of Conservation to arrange an introduction to this activity. Old man's beard is not yet widespread in Abel Tasman. Keep a look out for it and help to keep it this way. B. Design a poster Using the results of your park visitor s survey, come up with a pictorial or symbolised poster that tells people how to look after the National Park. Because some of the visitors here can t understand English, you must design it so that it needs no words! C. A pest trapper s manual Make up a pest trapper s manual that suggests the types of bait that trappers could use. Here are some suggestions of what to include. Explain what sorts of bait you used and what you found worked the best. Do some bait types work best for certain types of animal pest? Could you catch certain pests using different baits? You might like to include some trap designs. What have you discovered about the animals that live here? D. What's in a name? Is Abel Tasman a good name for the park? Does it reflect the special features of the park? Write an essay debating the keeping of the name Abel Tasman versus suggesting a new name for the park. NEARBY SITES Waikoropupu Springs located just past Takaka on a short side road are famous for their stunning clarity. Old gold workings are an added feature. Split Apple Rock Beach is a lovely place to go if you can find it! It is accessed through the Split Apple Rock subdivision between Marahau and Kaiteriteri. Follow Tokongawa Drive and turn left into Moonraker Way. The track to the beach leads off from the turning circle at the bottom. 8

9 FURTHER INFORMATION Department of Conservation Offices at: Takaka Totaranui Motueka or at the Conservancy Office in Nelson and at Information Centres in: Takaka Motueka and Nelson OTHER RESOURCES A Totaranui Education kit has been in existence for many years. This collection of photocopied resources and information, while somewhat dated is still useful. Copies are held by many Nelson Schools. It is no longer available commercially. The Abel Tasman National Park Handbook is a wealth of information. The brochure, Abel Tasman Coastal Track gives a good outline of the coast. A brochure is also available on the Tonga Island Marine Reserve. The booklet Landscapes of Golden Bay has some good explanations of the geology surrounding the region. Landscapes of Golden Bay, Andy Dennis and Geoff Rennison, Department of Conservation, ISBN: look under great walks on the DOC web site for a history of the Abel Tasman National Park. 9