Mountains to Sea Conservation Trust is a national New Zealand organisation dedicated to connecting people with nature through inspiring education and hands-on action. Their mission is to empower people everywhere to care for their local freshwater and marine environments.  From 4-7 June, they held their annual wananga (conference) at nearby Te Aroha Pa marae and part of the programme involved a field trip to CUE Haven.

CUE Haven has had a long relationship with the Mountains to Sea Charitable Trust.  Over the years they have conducted a variety of educational programs for students on water quality testing, protecting waterways and freshwater plant and animal life at CUE Haven.

The visit today was coordinated by Mountains to Sea staff Hana Aiken and Patricia Hawkins.

The plan was for the group to visit CUE Haven on the evening of the 4^th to do what is known as nighttime spotlighting.  Spotlighting involves using torches to find aquatic life in the streams and wetlands as well as nighttime insects in the bush.

Earlier in the day, Anastasia, Nicholas, Patricia and Tracey came out to plan the route and to set out nets to catch fish in the stream.  Thomas and Mahrukh took them on a short tour of the wetlands and stream area.  We limited the route to the wetlands boardwalk and the areas by Piriti Nui and Piriti Maharanoa.  We would have also liked to take the group further upstream to where the stream flows along the Riroriro track as in the past koura, kokopu, eels and other aquatic creatures have been found there. Unfortunately, that part of the track has been closed since we had the big slip in January this year.

We started at the bottom of the property and Nicholas placed the first trap.

The traps were lowered into the water and secured with poles.

Each location was marked with a tape to enable it to be found easily at night.

We moved through the wetlands placing more traps in the stream and pools.

The traps were baited with Vegemite on a leaf.  Eels apparently can’t resist it!

In fact, within a few minutes an eel, about a metre long, approached the trap but was too big to enter the small trap hole. You can see him in the red circle.

Altogether eight traps were set out.

At almost 9 pm, 42 members of the Mountains to Sea Conservation Trust arrived for the spotlighting activity. It was a perfectly calm and not too cold winter evening. Everyone gathered by the CUE Hub and Mahrukh gave a brief introduction to the CUE Haven project and Thomas gave a safety briefing.

Patricia then explained the plan for the evening’s exploration and some additional safety information.

The participants broke into four groups.  Each group was led by one of the team who had placed the traps.  Each group was assigned a colour and participants received a coloured light to wear that corresponded to the colour of their team.  That way the leaders would always be able to ensure the group remained intact.

Each team headed out on a different route and visited all of the trap sites.

Each trap was inspected and any creatures caught were transferred to a bucket or a viewing container so that all of the teams could study it.  Each animal was confined for the shortest time possible and carefully released.

The traps caught small eels

And Banded Kokopu

In addition to aquatic life, the teams were on the lookout for insects and other creatures of the night.  They saw numerous wetas in the weta hotels and nursery web spiders on the hunt.

They also inspected an old puriri tree and found lots of spiders and other invertebrates in the bark.

In addition to the nets, they also looked for aquatic creatures by spotlighting directly into the streams.  As a result, they found many more banded kokopu as well as macroinvertebrates.

After over an hour of exploring, everyone came back to the CUE Hub to clean up and for a quick debrief and discussion.

The group had planned on coming to CUE Haven for a day walk on the on Friday but unfortunately bad weather forced a change of plans, however, since the wananga lasted through the weekend, some people came for walks on their free time.

We want to thank Hana and Patricia for organising the visit for their colleagues, most of whom were visiting from out of Auckland.  It was a really nice evening and we enjoyed meeting everyone and also learned a lot during the walks.  We look forward to having more Mountains to Sea Conservation Trust staff back to CUE Haven for an extended visit to CUE Haven and for follow up research.