Australasian gannet/takapu

The Australasian gannet/takapu is one of three species of gannet which belong to the booby family. They are usually found in large colonies on offshore island around New Zealand and southern Australia and have been nesting at Cape Kidnappers/Te Kauwae-a-Māui since the 1870s.

Numbers have steadily increased to 6,500 pairs, which makes it the largest and most accessible mainland colony in the world.

The gannets average lifespan of between 25 to 40 years has a remarkable start. The 16 week old chicks, which have never been airborne before, take on a 2,800 km Tasman Sea crossing. 2-3 years later, the young birds return from Australia to undertake tentative mating. However, it is not until they are five years old that they nest in earnest, after which most spend their life around the coastal New Zealand seas.

Landscape

The towering cliffs are made up of sandstone, conglomerate, mudstone, river gravel, pumice and silt, as well as glimpses of petrified wood and lignite. Fossilised shells can be seen in the sandstone near Black Reef.

The Cape’s coast, cliffs and dunes provide habitats for native vegetation and wildlife. Birds here include the white-fronted tern/tara, variable oystercatcher/tōrea, reef heron/matuku waitai and Caspian tern/taranui. Little blue penguins/kororā nest around the Cape.

The offshore reefs are rich in marine life, including the sandmason tube worm that constructs sand tubes on the rocks.

The geology of the cliffs at Cape Kidnappers influences the nature and frequency of landslides. The type of landslides at this beach can’t be predicted. Although there are some events that make them more likely to happen – such as earthquakes or rain – there is no obvious trigger for many of the landslides. Periods of hot, dry weather and temperature changes can lead to the rocks expanding and contracting, which can cause cracks in the rock that can eventually result in a landslide or rockfall. Coastal erosion also contributes to instability of the cliffs.

The area sits within the footprint of Cape to City – a collaborative, landscape scale restoration project that is working to ensure our native species thrive where we live, work and play. 

The fish hook shape of Hawke Bay coastline adds to the imaginative legend of Cape Kidnappers origin.

Maui-tikitiki-a-Taranga, a famous mythical hero, was fishing with his brothers, and decided to show them his supernatural powers.

He chanted his prayer, broke his nose and smeared the blood onto a magical jawbone. With it, he fished up the North Island or as the Māori name it, Te-Ika-a-Maui, the Fish of Maui. After Maui departed, his brothers attached the fish with their weapons, hacking it into pieces and helping to form the mountainous terrain of the North Island. The sacred jawbone used as the hook was left to form what is now known as Hawke Bay.

When Captain Cook visited the area in 1769, a group of Māori in canoes came out to the ship Endeavour to trade. They took aboard the canoes a Tahitian boy. Shots were fired at the retreating canoes resulting in some Māori being killed and the boy swimming back to the ship. Cook then named the area where this occurred as Cape Kidnappers.

There have been three serious injury landslide events reported in the past 50 years, and large landslides with the potential to be fatal happen every year.