About the Project

A measure of mana in Te Ao Māori is the ability to provide manuhiri (visitors) with bountiful, locally sourced, fresh kaimoana, particularly at marae hui and tangihanga. The health of waterways, streams, rivers, lakes, and the sea are of paramount importance. In the past and into the future, the practice of kaitiakitanga, literally guardianship of kai, was and is an important role. Kaitiakitanga not only managed and provided food for whanau and hapū, but also ensured the sustainable harvest of raw materials required for such things as shelter and clothing.

Kina is a delicacy and staple food for Māori. Kina numbers can explode in the absence of large fish and crayfish. Under the principles of kaitiakitanga it would be appropriate to control kina numbers in the area concerned to try to restore the balance of nature. Ideally this would have been controlled by a rāhui, but the time for that has passed.     

It is important to Māori to behave as good ancestors and leave our descendants with enough abundant healthy resources so that they and their descendants can continue mahinga kai practice into the future. This is particularly important to provide resilience in light of the growing threats of climate change.

Kina are one of the main herbivores in Aotearoa’s coastal oceans. A kina barren is when kina overgraze seaweed forests until there’s very little left. This devastates the natural habitat for a huge range of marine plant and animal species – including the kina themselves.

Kina numbers increase when there aren’t enough of their natural predators –  like crayfish, big snapper and blue cod. Kina also change their feeding behaviour when there are no predators. Instead of hiding from predators in crevices they start actively foraging, often forming a line along the remaining kelp forest (‘grazing front’). The kina then move like a line of lawn mowers and quickly decimate what is left of the kelp forest.

Overfishing is one of the biggest causes of kina barrens. Those same big fish and crayfish that help keep kina numbers in balance are popular on the dining table. In places with high fishing pressure, it’s all too easy to take too many of these crucial kina predators away and seriously disrupt the food web and the overall ecosystem. Not enough crayfish and snapper = too many kina and active feeding behaviour = no seaweed and rock barren = no habitat = no fish, including crays and snapper, and eventually no kina.

Kina barren can be areas of rocky reefs covered by a  large number of kina. They can also be barren rock areas with only a small number of kina scattered through the area, as the majority of kina have already moved on to find more food

Kina aren’t bad! They’re a valued taonga species, both an important food source and playing a crucial part in natural ecosystems. The problem that causes kina barrens are not the kina themselves, but the lack of kina predators.

The aim of this research is to investigate the effect of lowering the kina population to a level that allows the regeneration of seaweed forests.

We want to see what the effect is of removing kina from the project site. And we’re hoping to learn what processes can be applied to other areas around Wellington, and even other regions in Aotearoa through collaborations with iwi and community.

While we’re hoping to see seaweed or kelp regrowing, we don’t know for sure what the regenerating seaweed cover will look like – which is why we’re doing this research project.

Regrowth of the seaweed forests might not be easy due to other impacts on regenerating areas. This could be sedimentation, pollution, lack of spores or competition by invasive species. So we have a long way to go to ensure a healthier harbour that can support seaweed forests with a larger number of kina predators and an abundance of healthy kina hidden in the rocky reefs of the harbour.

That’s why we’re documenting the state of the rocky reefs carefully. We’ve collated data that shows the decline of the kelp forests and we will monitor what happens after we have removed the kina. We use GPS-tracked data including photos and videos of the reef and we count kina throughout the research area.

Pretty much all species that live in the coastal marine environment are impacted by a kina barren.

This includes some of our most popular eating species, like crayfish and pāua, and will lead to further decline of big finfish species. A decline in underwater forests means that we lose nursery grounds for a wide range of marine life, habitat for small crustaceans and fish that would attract larger fish species like snapper. Sponges and other sensitive marine life lose their protection and die off, leaving behind barren rock.

There are also a lot of interesting and quirky species like wheke/octopus, sea horses, sea stars and colourful anemones that lose their homes when the seaweed goes.

Underwater forests provide people with a lot – including food, they buffer waves, protect shores from erosion and sequester carbon, mitigating climate change while supporting huge biodiversity. Our underwater forests are a crucial part of the wider natural environment that we’re part of, they are important to many people’s health and wellbeing, and they are just magic places to play and explore.

We’re basing the number of kina we take on research. We’ll be removing kina until there is a population density of 1 to 2 kina per square metre. And we’ll be monitoring this carefully as we go.

Once a seaweed forest has turned into a kina barren, it only takes a small number of kina grazing to prevent regeneration. Studies by Nick Shears at the University of Auckland have shown kina populations need to be reduced to 0.5 kina per square metre to give kina barrens an opportunity for recovery.

We will record the number and weight of the kina we remove from the research area and report the information to MPI.

Many of the kina from already barren areas will be malnourished and unusable as kai moana. Kina that actively graze on kelp forests and are in the process of creating barren are well fed and more suitable for kai moana. 

Kina that are usable for food will be offered to local marae. Taranaki Whānui and Te Atiawa will explore other ways to use kina under the restriction of the permit and one potential use could be fertiliser.

Wellington Underwater Club divers have started monitoring seaweed at the northern end of the Miramar Peninsula in 2016. The volunteers observed increasing numbers of kina and a steady increase of kina barren in the area. Grazing pressure by kina has accelerated over the last three years at Kau Point and the remaining seaweed forest is now under threat of turning completely into a barren. At Point Halswell seaweed forests have been recorded by sea kayakers with fellow kayakers pictured in a dense giant kelp forest. In 2022 divers recorded only barren areas where seaweed used to grow. 

The citizen science divers of the Club use a range of monitoring methods to document seaweed forests and kina barren. They record the gps coordinates of 25m transects (building tapes) and count kina one metre either side. Divers take regular photos (photo quadrants) to document what covers the bottom. Divers also stitch photos together creating photomosaics (‘photo maps’) of an area. GPS tracked video dives are other common ways to record what a specific spot looks like at a certain date.

In March 2021 divers placed markers along the edge of the seaweed forest. 13 months later kina had moved across the area and decimated a thriving forest leaving only rock behind (ink to video). The monitoring reports were crucial for the permit application to MPI and are building the baseline data to investigate the changes after kina removal. The reports are available on our website (link to reports).

Some areas in the project site are at the tipping point into a kina barren, while others turned into a barren a few years ago.

It takes years for kina numbers to build once predator numbers start to decline. However, once their numbers reach a critical point and the kina start changing their feeding behaviour they can turn healthy seaweed forests into kina barren within 12-18 months.

Point Halswell has already turned into a barren area and Kau Point is close to being fully turned into an. Without reducing kina numbers urgently to a level that allows regeneration of seaweed we will lose the remaining kelp forest and the ability of the area to regenerate by itself.

Te Atiawa ki te Ūpoko o te Ika ā Maui have mana whenua rights over the moana and have active kaitiaki overseeing the harbour. Te Atiawa, Taranaki Whānui, and Atiawa Nui Toni Fisheries (MPI special permit holder) will use the insights from the project to build mātauranga and ensure the research project works to local tikanga.

Wellington Underwater Club (WUC) divers regularly monitor seaweed forests and kina barren, collecting data on kina numbers and the impact of kina grazing. The long-term monitoring data by WUC is providing the baseline data for the research area. WUC and volunteers from Wellington’s dive community are supporting the kina removal and ongoing monitoring of the project area.

Mana whenua and the community work towards a shared goal: a healthier, more diverse, and more resilient marine environment. This means more abundant marine life and better quality kai moana.

More and more kina barrens have been documented across all of New Zealand over the last decades, particularly along the east coast of the North Island. 

The decline has been so drastic that many research and kelp restoration projects are being established across Aotearoa, including in Tīkapa Moana / Te Moananui-ā-Toi – Hauraki Gulf (at Leigh, Hauturu-o-Toi/Little Barrier, and Ōtata at The Noises), Te Tai Tokerau / Northland, Te Tauihu-o-te-waka / Marlborough Sounds and here in Te Whanganui-a-Tara / Wellington. Kina removal is showing good results in research areas, but the scale of decline around the country is so big that removal alone is not a long-term solution. We need to build back kina predator numbers and ensure the marine habitats that support them are healthy. Be careful what we put into the ocean and what we take out – ki uta ki tai – from the mountains to the sea.

Volunteer divers will continue monitoring the project area after kina have been removed and check for spots where kina have been missed. The BigKinaCount is an easy way for all scuba divers to get involved and help out! You can join one of the local dive shops or get in touch with the Wellington Underwater Club to join.

The WUC citizen science group will continue to monitor the project area and collect data to assess for changes in the density and biomass of seaweed in areas that were kina barren before removal. We are expecting changes in seaweed cover after 12-18 months if environmental conditions in the area will allow seaweed to regrow and will run monitoring dives to assess changes.

Kina removal is strictly regulated under a special permit from the Ministry of Primary Industries (MPI).

Kina grazing pressure is an immediate threat to the remaining kelp forests along the northern end of the Miramar Peninsula. Kina numbers urgently need to be lowered to ensure remaining kelp forests are not further decimated by kina grazing and kelp remains to provide spores for natural recovery of the kina barren that formed over recent years. We already know that kina from some of the project areas won’t be usable for food. Taranaki Whānui will decide the process for removing kina that is unusable for food (within the restrictions of the permit).

Volunteers have to register for removal events and are only allowed to collect kina and no other seafood species. MPI has to be notified ahead of time of collection activities and volunteers have to carry the permit with them on the day. Kina can be distributed to marae to provide food for communities but they can’t be sold.

Wellington Underwater Club started monitoring of giant kelp in 2016 and documenting the effect of kina grazing in 2019. Divers and volunteers have spent just under 1,000 hours developing and trailing monitoring methods, documenting the rocky reefs at the northern end of the Miramar Peninsula and working on the Ko te kaiwhakahaere o kina o Whanganui-a-Tara (Managing Kina in Wellington Harbour) project. Volunteer monitoring efforts, in-kind provision of monitoring equipment (thanks to Oceansense Ltd) and work on the kina management research project amount to NZD 108,000 investment (up to September 2022).

Project set up in numbers: 54 Monitoring Events, 147 Attendees, over 928 Volunteer Hours 

Volunteers of the Wellington Underwater Club have developed Wellington’s Big Kina Count (link), a pathway for all scuba divers in Wellington to get involved. The kina count encourages divers and Wellington Dive Shops to participate. And did the volunteers get to work! In the 2021/22 summer buddy teams counted up to 440 kina during their ten minute survey! Additionally, volunteers have contributed to outreach activities on seaweed and raising awareness about the importance of seaweed forests and their threats.

It takes a lot of time to remove kina from a relatively small area and putting the responsibility on volunteers is not a sustainable approach! Other areas are less accessible for a start. Alternative approaches are needed and Taranaki Whānui and community groups had proposed a different approach to MPI, including investigating the option of creating ‘blue jobs’ to remove kina in the research area. The proposal was not taken on board and responsibility to manage kina handed back to volunteers. 

Even if there is an opportunity to create jobs for restoration to manage kina in specific sites, the only viable solution to manage kina on scale around all of New Zealand is rebuilding stocks of kina predators, like tāmure and koura and restoring a balance to the ecosystem.

Increasing kina numbers and extending kina barren are a problem on a much larger scale – even at one of our project sites we already see well over 10,000 kina. Imagine how many kina there are in barren areas all around the country. In barren areas the kina are not valuable as kaimoana for the table. We need more natural predators to stay on top of kina all around our coastal reefs. Edible and valuable kina are found in healthy kelp forests and in balance with their predators and managing the stock of valuable taonga.

On our website, at events, by reaching out to the community and other projects and by presenting at conferences.

Kina and kina products from kina removed from the project area can be used by mana whenua; however, it is illegal for any products to be sold by anyone who holds kina from removal events from this research project. Volunteers who are attending removal events have to register and attend all relevant project briefings.