News
Seaweed regeneration 17 months after kina removal
May 2024
17 months after the kina removal events at Kau Point a variety of seaweed species are growing again on the reef! Check out this video…
Monitoring - 5 months after kina removal
May 2023
Just 5 months after the kina removal events at Kau Point seaweed is starting to regrow. Check out this video…
Over 4,300 kina removed
February 2023
Another record removal event. 60 volunteers collected over 4,300 kina from Kau Bay. Read more about the event here…
Documenting kina grazing and kelp growth
February 2023
See what happened in front of our KinaKam time lapse cameras. Check out the videos and read more about our monitoring activities…
Record kina collection
January 2023
What a start to the year! 52 volunteers removed a record number of 4135 kina from Kau Point! Read more about the event here…
Kina race
January 2023
Ever wondered how fast kina can move? We were surprised how fast they are!
Watch the video here…
A great community effort
December 2022
38 volunteers pulled together and removed 1,286 kina from Kau Point!
Read more about the event here…
5,500 kina removed and counting
December 2022
15 volunteers removed over 2,100 kina from Kau Point on Friday after work. Read more about the event here…
3,401 kina removed!
December 2022
Our kina removal pilot was a success! 28 volunteers, including 8 scuba divers and 8 freedivers removed the first lot of 3,401 kina from Kau Point.
Tasty and thin kina
June 2022
We’ve been tasting kina from various spots in the project site throughout the year. Kina in barren areas are thin but the ones eating through the seaweed forest are good to eat. While we need to remove kina from the site to allow seaweed to regenerate we will ensure the kina are treated as taonga species and make them available to marae.
Take a dive with Lee
April 2022
Join Lee on a dive in the project area and take a look at how kina turn the kelp forest into a kina barren when there’s a lack of kina predators.
We collected some of the kina eating through the kelp forest for a kina quality check. Watch the video for Lee’s assessment…
Documenting rapid decline
April 2022
How quickly can kina eat through dense seaweed forest? Divers documented the change in the video below. 12 months earlier a dense kelp forest covered these rocks in the project site…
KinaKam to the rescue
March 2022
Divers have deployed a prototype of the Oceansense KinaKam in the project site to document the impact of kina grazing. The camera takes photos every hour over a few weeks and we can look back at the changes. Divers have to check in regularly and clean the window of growth or sea stars! We are looking for funding to deploy the latest camera version.
Wellington's #BigKinaCount
February 2022
The citizen science dive group of the Wellington Underwater Club (WUC) has developed a quick and easy method for scuba divers to participate in monitoring kina. Certified scuba divers join one of the local dive shops or WUC for a dive, count kina for the first 10 minutes of their dive and report back numbers, depth and approximate location. Read more here…
