Farewell Spit 1

Oyster Moon
Paul Foskett & Rhu Nash
Fri 8 Nov 2013 20:42

We took the tour of Farewell spit in the afternoon, total waste of money.  Billed as eco tour, saw a few oyster catchers and that was it.  The guide was more intereseted in debris on the beach than ecology.  Well maybe this picture of a cottage right next door to the beach, complete with grazing sheep makes up for the tour.  Down side, next to the carpark.  The farm buildings were on the other side of the raod.

 

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Aye, aye doing a waste pipe insection before the tour.

 

 

Farewell spit is about 27km long.  Wind generated waves from the west and southwest pick up sand grains and deposit them continuously in a northly direction all along the coast.  Offshore ocean currents also bring silt in from the north, and then east, as the current swings in between the North and South Islands,  When the sand and silt reaches the sheltered waters of Golden Bay it drops out and the waves spread it about. The offical start (or end depending on your outlook) of the spit is in Fossil Bay. Good thing, there was a seal basking here, well chilling out anyway. Look at that face.

 

 

According to our guide, this riverbed was laid down in Gondwanaland, well before New Zealand was formed, and far older than those gravel and sand deposites on Wharariki Beach.

 

 

Our tour bus…

 

 

The incessant winds shape the spit.  Massive crescent shaped dunes (barchan) line the spit’s northern (seaward edge) and shuffle slowly eastwards under the dominant westerly wind.  Although, according to our guide, a couple of the dunes stay in a permanent position.  The bus didn’t stop so we couldn’t get a photo.  It did stop, so we could soak up the ambiance (!) further down the beach.  There were seals all the way down the spit.  This is big fat male and a couple of females.

 

 

There are supposed to be thousands of godwits here, and other wading birds.  Well we saw oystercatchers.  There is also a gannet colony, but we weren’t allowed near that either.

 

 

Did spot these starfish low down the shore.

 

 

The spit itself is growing in girth.  The bit we see is just the tip of a huge sand deposite.  Before the ice age, the spit connected South and North Islands.  They get mass landings of whales on the spit.  They usually all die as difficult to get rescuers out this far.  After autopseys they are usually staked to the ground…. Can’t let the posh people further along the bay get upset by whale carcasses rolling on the golden sands.  Paul and I soaking up the ambiance…

 

 

Back on the bus to go to the loghthouse and have a cup of tea.  We thought the guide was joking, he wasn’t.  Anyway we got to wander around a bit.  There were three lighthouse keeper cottages built here.  One now used by the tour company, another by visiting dissectionists and artists and the other by DoC staff.  This whale skeleton outside one of the houses.

 

 

The lighthouse

 

 

And a set of instructions..