Sixty tonnes of live mussels were dropped into Auckland's Hauraki Gulf on Tuesday as part of a major iwi-led restoration mission.
Ngāti Whātua, along with Auckland University and community groups on Tuesday deployed the green-lipped kūtai into Ōkahu Bay.
It's the first major restoration of the Hauraki Gulf, in a bid to revive the sea bed that was once covered in around 500 square kilometres of mussels, which were decimated by dredging last century.
Andrew Jeffs, an Auckland University marine scientist, says the coverage was about the size of “metropolitan Auckland”.
“Last century Aucklanders and New Zealanders ate their way through the whole lot and now there’s hardly any left at all. So that’s what this project here today is all about, trying to put those mussels back.
He says mussels do “all sorts of amazing things” for the environment, which is why the project is so significant.
“Just a single mussel can filter a bathtub full of water a day and so for a swimming beach like this in Ōkahu Bay, that means the water’s clearer we’re getting a lot of the pollutants that we have in the harbour out of the system,” said Jeffs.
“As well as that it forms an amazing habitat which huge numbers of baby fish and other organisms end up living in so you know they’re just the most wonderful creatures.”
Jeffs says there are plans to do more drops around the Hauraki Gulf.
“One of the things we’re testing here is we’ve put down mussels straight onto that sticky mud and we’ve also put mussels down onto areas that have been covered in nice shell material.
“So we’re basically learning how to get these mussels back into this environment, get them established and once they’re established, they’ll start breeding and hopefully their offspring will help return some of those amazing mussel populations that we used to have.”
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