After the Spill

Are You Sure? Scientists and iwi had questions after an oil spill.

From AFTER THE SPILL by Maria Gill If an oil spill occurred on your local beach, how would it affect you now and in the future? After there was an oil spill in the Bay of Plenty, scientists and ngā iwi o Tauranga Moana Table of contents → – the local iwi in the region – looked at the short- and long-term impact of the MV Rena oil spill and asked, “Where to from here?”

Additional digital content slides for students →

Individual images, text, and multimedia → for download → MV Rena on the Astrolabe Reef / Otaīti

Next → MV RENA GROUNDING SHOCK

ASTROLABE REEF / OTAĪTI 5 OCTOBER 2011

THE NATION The 236-metre-long vessel was on professionals clean up the coastline. its way from Napier to Tauranga They wore protective clothes and gloves WATCHED IN when its bow became wedged on and removed oily waste from the sand HORROR as pictures the reef. The cargo holds on the and water. In addition, they helped showed MV Rena, a ship flooded, and seawater clean oil off the bodies of 409 birds and breached several areas in the hull. collected and disposed of 2410 dead cargo vessel, stuck on A salvage team hurried to pump birds, of which 1448 had oil on them. Astrolabe Reef / Otaīti the oil off the wreck in stormy 12 nautical miles off conditions. They eventually removed over 1350 tonnes but the coast of Tauranga estimate that 350 tonnes of oil were early on the morning released from the Rena’s fuel tanks of 5 October 2011. into the ocean in the first 3 weeks. Around 8000 volunteers took to the beaches to help trained

← Previous 2 Next → The iwi on Matakana Island were What happened next? especially affected by the Life on the Bay of Plenty coastline and offshore islands changed after the disaster. Many people on the Rena grounded on the Astrolabe Reef / Otaīti. Tourists stopped coming, island rely on kaimoana as an fishing boats stopped fishing from Waihī to Pukehina, and locals stopped important source of food. Tests gathering kaimoana. Oil washed ashore from Waihī to Te Kaha. showed that the kaimoana had Local people were left with lots of questions. Would toxins in the oil been tainted. Local iwi placed a affect marine life? How would they know when it would be safe to eat rāhui on people gathering kaimoana again? Scientists agreed to research the impacts on marine life kaimoana. to help find the answers.

Waihī Auckland Rena Key Matakana Tauranga Island Astrolabe Reef / Otaīti heavy Mount Mōtītī Island moderate Maunganui

Tauranga light Wellington

very light Pukehina ← Tauranga coastline affected by the oil spill from the Rena by 1 November 2011 Source: Rena Long-term Environmental Recovery Plan, Ministry for the Environment

← Previous 3 Next → Scientists from the The scientists decided to take a team-based University of Waikato, Bay approach with local iwi. They formed a of Plenty Polytechnic, the research group called Te Māuri Moana. The University of Canterbury, scientists agreed to talk to the local people and Te Whare Wānanga o and ask for their advice at every stage. They Awanuiārangi are working undertook to provide monthly research together as Te Māuri reports to local communities throughout the Moana. region.

Māori perspectives were integrated into the research. The University of Waikato scientist Professor Chris Battershill says, “Since the grounding of the Rena, we have been working very closely with iwi to capture traditional environmental knowledge (mātauranga Māori) and ensure that cultural values are respected.” ↑ Iwi in the region have knowledge about Scientists monitored the local area, which Te Whare Wānanga o kaimoana, such as Awanuiārangi is helping them to share with mussels, to find out when they would be safe to eat. the research team. Working with the local iwi, the scientists rolled up their sleeves, pulled on their gumboots and wetsuits, and went into the field. Their mission was to find out how long ↑ it would take the kaimoana to recover from Chris Battershill is the the toxins in the oil spill. spokesperson for Te Māuri Moana.

← Previous 4 Next → The scientists collected data from thousands of samples of kaimoana from the Bay of Plenty coastline and offshore What did the research team islands. They tested the samples for the presence of polycyclic find? aromatic hydrocarbons, which are present in oil. They tested They found that shellfish and fin fish had been poisoned with crabs, pāua, pipi, and tuatua. “It is important to understand that polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. These chemicals are toxic to we need to process a large amount of data to make a complete marine life when they get into the food web. analysis of the situation,” Professor Battershill explains. The team also found that other pollutants, such as boat paint, diesel from boats in Tauranga harbour, and chemicals from Bay of Plenty factories and farms, were present in the kaimoana.

→ Can you spot the blue bottle? It is covered with oil from the Rena oil spill.

← Previous 5 Next → exhaled water Filter feeding (filtered seawater)

inhaled water (unfiltered seawater) mussel

gill → Food in inhaled water is trapped by the gill filaments. It is then passed into the mussel’s mouth and stomach inside the shell.

plankton and algae gill filaments

Scientists have known for a long time that filter-feeding sieved for marine animals, and the animals, which included marine animals, such as pipi and mussels, can take in toxins some shellfish, had been tested and then preserved in ethanol. quickly. The research team studying the impacts of the Rena oil This information allowed the research team to compare spill was surprised when its data showed that filter-feeding marine “before” and “after” data. Comparing baseline data with data animals got rid of the oil-spill toxins quickly, returning to normal gathered after the oil spill helps scientists to identify problems within a few months. But how did the team know that the caused by the Rena. shellfish were doing this? This data was very useful to local iwi. Tauranga iwi were able The research team was able to compare what it found to to lift the rāhui on gathering kaimoana by late December 2011. baseline data, which was available from research that had taken Using the information, local people were able to plan the best place in the area before the Rena oil spill. This earlier research way to deal with the problem of pollution in the local marine included samples from 75 intertidal sites taken at low tide and environment. from sea-floor sediment core samples. The core samples had been

← Previous 6 Next → Is it over? This research project is not finished. Scientists and local iwi now want to know what the long-term effects will be – 5 years or more after the oil spill. Could toxins from the Rena stop shellfish from reproducing? Might the toxins cause other problems? Together, local iwi and scientists are continuing to monitor shellfish and fin fish as the marine environment in the Bay of Plenty continues to recover. But why did the environment recover so quickly from the oil spill? Scientists believe that it’s partly because of the efforts of the massive group of volunteers, who cleaned the worst ↑ debris – the Marmite-like bunker oil – off the beaches and Volunteers were trained to clean debris from rocks so quickly. beaches and rocky shores. However, a few areas, such as the northern end of Mōtītī Island, keep being re-exposed to oil each time a storm blows through. Scientists and local iwi continue to monitor these places, as well as the Astrolabe Reef / Otaīti, where part of the wreck of the Rena remains.

← Previous 7 Next → Using the Rena research, scientists can now better predict what might happen if oil were swept ashore elsewhere along the New Zealand coastline should a similar disaster happen again. They now know how an oil spill affects New Zealand marine animals and plants, and they are finding out how long it takes for the marine animal and plant life to fully recover. Iwi in other areas will be able to use the Rena research to work out how long to keep a rāhui in place after an oil spill. Iwi could use the data gathered in the Bay of Plenty to estimate when kaimoana might be safe to eat again. There is continuing work for scientists to do though, as scientists and ngā iwi o Tauranga Moana continue to work together to gather data about the long-term impact of the Rena disaster.

Glossary baseline data – food web – an ecosystem in nautical miles – the polycyclic aromatic starting-point data that which each species is the food equivalent of 1 minute of hydrocarbons – or PAHs, you can compare with of the next member in the latitude (or 1.85 are a group of chemicals later data food chain kilometres); a nautical found in fossil fuels, such breached – broke through mātauranga Māori – the mile is slightly longer than as oil a mile as measured on bunker oil – the kind of knowledge base from te ao rāhui – ban land oil that ships use for fuel – Māori tainted – polluted, also called “heavy fuel oil” monitor – observe and check pollutants – substances poisoned that pollute ethanol – the chemical MV – short for “motor vessel” toxins – poisonous name for ethyl alcohol substances

← Previous 8 Next → Additional digital content slides for students

The following slides contain multimedia that supports the article.

← Previous 9 Next → Rāhui video

↑ Find out more about what rāhui are and how they work. You can also view the video on YouTube or download it from Google Drive.

← Previous 10 Next → Penguin rescue video

↑ This video is related to the newspaper “article” on slide 2. You can also view the video on YouTube.

← Previous 11 Next → An interactive food web showing how pollutants enter the food chain at the lowest step and rise up to affect humans

Use the following food web to illustrate your own text and for research.

These images can also be downloaded from Google Drive.

← Previous 12 Next → The food web This food web shows how species in the sea in an environment such as humans the Bay of Plenty can be affected by an oil spill. The black dots represent toxins from the oil. Small animals, such as filter-feeding sea mammals shellfish, absorb these toxins with sharks their food. When one animal eats sea birds another animal in the food web, they also eat the toxins in the body of the other animal. Because each animal eats more than one of its prey, the toxins build up as they fish pāua crayfish move up through the food web. This is called bioaccumulation.

zooplankton kaimoana