Field Theory by Hadyn Green

I have spent a lot of time at that beach, I got attacked by a dog there as a child, I got stoned in the dunes as a teenager and, well, other things too. I spent eighteen years of my life in that area before moving away for uni, this is my home town

Aw geez, dude. This hadn't really touched me emotionally until that.

I have spent a lot of time at that beach

Me too. Was a lifegueard there for years & have whanau over on Matakana Island still.
This whole situation makes me so angry and sad.

When I was a kid in England people would pack solvent for tar on clothes as part of the standard kit to go to the beach. (this was after the Torrey Canyon wreck, plus ships would pump their bilges and pollute the sea with oil).

That ship had maybe 2000 tonnes of oil. A supertanker has over 500,000 tonnes, and the Deepwater Horizon disaster spilt more than that.

It's kinda ironic that the whole high-carbon beach house/4WD/powerboat lifecycle that many NZers aspire to inevitably fucks up the same environment they're enjoying.

I grew up with black/iron sands on Taranaki beaches, so there us something special about clean, white sand. There are some great beaches of this sort up north, where I am currently.

It’s kinda ironic that the whole high-carbon beach house/4WD/powerboat lifecycle that many NZers aspire to inevitably fucks up the same environment they’re enjoying.

I believe that such a phenomenon is called the tragedy of the commons.

For much the same reasons as above, people thought they could have their own mini-lifestyle block in places like Los Angeles – until lots of other people had the same idea.

And equally ironically, Manhattan looks on paper to be an ecological nightmare, but in practice has the lowest car dependency rate of America, due to its walkability and high usage of public transit.

Aue Hayden!

I am a beach person. I've lived most of my life by/on beaches. North Beach. Moeraki. Okarito. And other beaches are also important - Colac Bay & all those around Rakiura & Otago.

We have rimurapa (bull-kelp) diseased from oceanic pollution in the south. We have proposals to drill for oil in the south...

can we not all get together and make certain another Rena (or much worse!) DOESNT HAPPEN?

Aw geez, dude. This hadn't really touched me emotionally until that.

True. Hadyn put a lot of himself into this, which makes it hit home even harder.

I spent a few summers at Mt Maunganui as a child, so it also has a special place in my heart. Eventually the oil will go away (both through humans and nature), but until that happens, it really really sucks what's happening all along the coast.

Some rather clever person had written huge letters in the sand spelling out “Clean Me”.

Where "huge" = ~24 metres high, impressively neat lettering too! Less impressive the scruffier "NO Mining John" a mere 3-5 metres, ambiguous without a comma of course so I have to feel ambivalent, but perhaps clear enough in the context.

I've been travelling, felt the urge to climb Mauao again for the first time since childhood close to 50 years ago and saw this from the summit last Saturday when the beach was still closed. Rena lurking offshore, stranded as if another flat-topped island inside the horizon, but sinsister, while a similar-sized container ship headed out and north past Mayor Island ...

Moral of the story: be careful what you wish for, because you might actually get it.

I swam from that beach at Christmas, first time in NZ for nearly 5 years. Left with so many happy memories of the girls playing in the sand, exploring, just enjoying a gorgeous sunny beach Christmas holiday. Now my friend is making food to take down to the volunteers and my mum is knitting pj's for the penguins to stop them ingesting oil. Not happy. Not happy at all. Nice to see the owners were recently flush enough to pay a dividend to their shareholders, so maybe they will stump up the cash. Not holding my breath though.

writ (not so) large...

Less impressive the scruffier “NO Mining John” a mere 3-5 metres, ambiguous without a comma of course so I have to feel ambivalent, but perhaps clear enough in the context.

I think this sand tagger might also work doing captions
on the Stuff website:

Debris covered in oil have wash-up at Waihau Bay on the East Cape where Taika Waititi's Boy was filmed.

until lots of other people had the same idea.

Yes I often think of the ol' sayin' Take your sinuses to Arizona. that being of course before people moved there with their flowers.

annexing pollen land…

Take your sinuses to Arizona.

…the perils of a not so good wind…

a little known result of the future Balkanising of America
(where they don’t know sh*t from Sedona ) is that
Arizona will become Aridndristan…

that being of course before people moved there with their flowers.

…a fact not to be sneezed at indeed

Maketu estuary is special to me. I learned to swim there and dived off the board mid-current with the sun on my back. We ate kaimoana from it all year. It's my awa.

I grasped the sadness and anger from locals of that coast as soon as I saw it on the news. There were tears.

Each of us has rich connections to place and past, and feels violated when that's betrayed. We deserve better leaders and respect for knowledge both long-held and new.

I completely agree Sacha, my Iwi is from the Bay of Plenty. I'm particularly worried that containers are washing up at Te Kaha. It's where my Great Nana's family are from. Not many people go there, and if you are familar with the area, you'll know there are so many beautiful little bays all the way around that coast line. Some that are hard to access, some that are Tapu. If containers are making it there, then oil probably is too. These bays have caves, rock pools, they are teeming with life and they really don't get many visitors with only one road around that coast from Opotiki all the way to Gisborne. This coast line feeds many locals. I know there is going to be no way to clean the oil from many of these beautiful bays, and I wonder if many kiwi's will even know. It makes me want to cry.

Local iwi gather alot of very necessary kai moana from there...my rohe.

For clarity, I wasn't born in the Bay and am proudly and supportively Pakeha.

I've been getting reports from my bro-in-law at Maketu, where he's helping with the clean-up. Pretty dispiriting stuff.

The godwits had just arrived back at the estuary a week or so before the Rena ran aground. Among them, the famous E7 (who was tracked a few years ago as the fastest to fly the Alaska-NZ route - nearly 12,000km non-stop in 8 days). She's quite the iconic bird - she's only got one leg these days, which would make it all the harder for her to wade her way to safety if/when the oil washes in.

Funny how we saw a lot of news about Happy Feet, but very little (so far) about this highly symbolic "Sad Foot" and her dotterel pals. The wetlands people & DOC are keeping a close eye and have taken several dozen of the endangered dotterels into protective custody, but the bird sanctuary is really at the mercy of the winds and the tides. And it's nesting season. :-(

The Ohiwa harbour and sandspit is also a very important area for migratory birds. Has your bro-in-law heard how things are there?

I have been to Te Kaha for family holidays and agree. The coastline will make it very difficult to assess the damage, let alone clean it up. The sea life there is so exuberant but it will be hard pressed to resist this.

It's kinda ironic that the whole high-carbon beach house/4WD/powerboat lifecycle that many NZers aspire to inevitably fucks up the same environment they're enjoying.

The shiny X3 charging along a yellow sanded beach in the mid-post advert might not be the best spot BMW could have chosen.

My wife and I came to NZ for our honeymoon in 2002 and have returned 5 times since. We love New Zealand and Mount Mauganui was where we were happiest. From the UK, we hadn't really put two and two together, and were heartbroken when we worked out that Mount Beach had been affected. We feel kind of sick and angry, and sorry for all those suffering in their various ways. Sadly this sort of misery is likely to happen more and more often.