Facts
Te Matuku Marine Reserve was approved in 2003 and formally established in August 2005.
Boundaries
How to get there
Special natural features
The estuary
Rocky shores
A place for birds
Passage Rock and offshore
Marks of settlement
Tangata whenua
Map showing boundaries of the
Te Matuku Marine Reserve
The 690ha marine reserve includes all of Te Matuku Bay, apart from a small marine farm area on the outer western shore, and extends into deeper water across Waiheke Channel beyond Passage Rock.
The boundaries are from the mean high water mark around Te Matuku Bay and the bays at its entrance (Whites Bay, Little Bay, Sandy Bay and Otakawhe Bay) out to a line level with Kauri Point on Ponui Island.
The reserve is located at the far south-east corner of Waiheke Island and can be accessed by land and sea. By land access is via Orapiu Road, which skirts around the head of Te Matuku Bay and continues out to Orapiu Bay (about 30 minutes from the wharf in Matiatia Bay). There are good views of Te Matuku Bay at several points along this road. Pearl Bay, on the outer eastern side of Te Matuku Bay, is a 20 minute walk from Otakawhe Bay at the end of Hunterville Road.
A special feature of the reserve is its diverse mix of habitats. It has saltwater wetlands, broad intertidal mudflats, low lying islands, shell spits, rocky shorelines and the deep water of the Waiheke Channel around Passage Rock. Each of these distinct marine habitats provide homes for particular groups of plants and animals.
The estuary extends from the seaward edge of the intertidal zone, over 28 hectares of mudflats, towards the land. Fine silty muds dominate this area, largely derived from sediment washed from the surrounding land.
A sequence of plants - from eel grass on the mudflats through mangrove and salt marsh, to maritime fringing bush and finally up into lowland broadleaf forest - is special because such natural successions of changing plant communities are now rare in northern New Zealand.
The eel grass (Zostera) grows patchily across the lower mudflats and may help stabilise the lower shore. The soft mudflats and intertidal sands of the bay provide habitat for a variety of shellfish such as cockles, pipi and wedge shells, and some seashore snails, crabs and worms.
All provide rich pickings for wading birds at low tide and, as the tide rises, juvenile flounder and mullet move in to feed on this abundant invertebrate marine life in the bay.
Close to the head of Te Matuku Bay, mangroves grow in dense stands, especially along the banks of channels that run out onto the mudflats. The mangrove stands are havens for mud snails, mud crabs and other creatures which feed on the leaf litter and they are also a refuge for the birds that feed on these animals.
Behind the mangroves, the salt marsh of glasswort, rushes and sedges is submerged only by the high spring tides. It is fringed by salt meadow that includes a range of mostly herbaceous plants such as sea goosefoot, sea plantain, sea primrose, remuremu, shore celery and bachelor's button.
The entrance to Te Matuku Bay has rocky shores and gravel beaches where common seashore snails, chitons, acorn barnacles, small black mussels and tubeworms abound in the intertidal zone. This area has also been colonised by the introduced pacific oyster. Outside the bay a variety of brown seaweeds grow below the low tide level.
Two shell spits on the eastern side of Te Matuku Bay are important roosting and nesting areas for native and overseas migrant shorebirds. The variable oystercatcher, Caspian tern and the endangered New Zealand dotterel nest on these spits.
Annual migrants such as godwits, knots, sandpipers and turnstones, that breed on the Siberian tundra during the northern summer, fly south to avoid the winter there and enjoy another spring and summer in New Zealand.
Our internal migrants, wrybills and pied oystercatchers, that breed along the shingle banks of the South Island's braided rivers, overwinter in northern harbours and are frequent visitors to Te Matuku Bay.
Other coastal birds that live in or use the bay are banded dotterels, white-fronted terns, reef herons and spotless crakes. The Australasian bittern (or matuku ), a rare wetland bird, has been recorded in the bay.
The bay's fine muds extend out into the Waiheke Channel, around Passage Rock and to deeper holes beyond the entrance to Te Matuku Bay. Typical mud dwellers found here include burrowing polychaetes, echinoids, sea stars, sand dollars and gastropods. On subtidal reefs, sponges, anemones and nudibranchs are found.
Extensive beds of horse mussels and large seaweeds, common in the gulf, grow around Passage Rock, which is also habitat for crayfish and snapper.
In pre-European times Te Matuku Bay was an important food gathering and canoelanding place for Maori living in the coastal settlements and nearby mountain pa of Maunganui. Thick shell middens in the bay are evidence of its past bounty. Te Matuku Bay was also Waiheke's earliest European settlement but all that remains are the sites of the first school and the Pioneer Cemetery at the head of the bay, both accessible from Orapiu Road.
Ngati Paoa is tangata whenua and traditional guardians for Waiheke and Te Matuku Bay, although other iwi, such as Hauraki, also have ancestral ties with this area. The area is of historic, cultural and spiritual importance to the tribe.
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