Astrolabe Reef
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Astrolabe Reef
Astrolabe Reef is near Motiti Island, 20 kilometres NE of Tauranga, off the Bay of Plenty coast in New Zealand. The reef, which breaks the water surface at low tide, is a renowned scuba diving spot that drops off to in different parts. The reef was named by Jules Dumont d'Urville after his ship ''Astrolabe'', when it nearly ran aground there on 16 February 1827. Grounding of ''Rena'' On Wednesday, 5 October 2011, the container ship ran aground on the reef. By Sunday, 9 October, a oil-slick threatened wildlife and the area's rich fishing waters. By 13 October the ship had started to list and rock in the waves. Over 88 containers, some containing dangerous chemicals, fell into the sea and some washed ashore. The wreck broke in two during stormy weather on 7 January 2012. An exclusion zone was placed around the wreck during salvage and recovery operations, and this lasted until April 2016, when the reef was re-opened to vessels under . The reef and the unsalvaged remains of ...
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Rena Oil Spill
The ''Rena'' oil spill occurred off the coast of Tauranga, New Zealand in October 2011. The spill was caused by the grounding of on the Astrolabe Reef. The ''Rena'' was a container ship and cargo vessel owned by the Greek shipping company Costamare Inc., through one of its subsidiary companies Daina Shipping. The spill has been described as New Zealand's worst maritime environmental disaster. Sequence of events On Wednesday, 5 October 2011, at 2:20 AM (Tuesday, 4 October 13:20 UTC) while sailing in clear weather from Napier to Tauranga, at a speed of , ''Rena'' ran aground on Astrolabe Reef. The ship was carrying 1,368 containers, eight of which contained hazardous materials, as well as 1,700 tonnes of heavy fuel oil and 200 tonnes of marine diesel oil. Initially the ship listed 11 degrees to port, with the front stuck on the reef. By 9 October, an oil slick long threatened wildlife and the area's rich fishing waters. Oil from ''Rena'' began washing ashore at Mount ...
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Tauranga
Tauranga () is a coastal city in the Bay of Plenty region and the fifth most populous city of New Zealand, with an urban population of , or roughly 3% of the national population. It was settled by Māori late in the 13th century, colonised by Europeans in the early 19th century, and was constituted as a city in 1963. The city lies in the north-western corner of the Bay of Plenty, on the south-eastern edge of Tauranga Harbour. The city extends over an area of , and encompasses the communities of Bethlehem, New Zealand, Bethlehem, on the south-western outskirts of the city; Greerton, on the southern outskirts of the city; Matua, west of the central city overlooking Tauranga Harbour; Maungatapu; Mount Maunganui, located north of the central city across the harbour facing the Bay of Plenty; Otūmoetai; Papamoa, Tauranga's largest suburb, located on the Bay of Plenty; Tauranga City; Tauranga South; and Welcome Bay. Tauranga is one of New Zealand's main centres for business, interna ...
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Bay Of Plenty
The Bay of Plenty ( mi, Te Moana-a-Toi) is a region of New Zealand, situated around a bight of the same name in the northern coast of the North Island. The bight stretches 260 km from the Coromandel Peninsula in the west to Cape Runaway in the east. The Bay of Plenty Region, governed by the Bay of Plenty Regional Council, incorporates several large islands in the bay, in addition to the mainland area. Called ''Te Moana-a-Toi'' (the Sea of Toi) in the Māori language after Toi, an early ancestor, the name 'Bay of Plenty' was bestowed by James Cook in 1769 when he noticed the abundant food supplies at several Māori villages there, in stark contrast to observations he had made earlier in Poverty Bay. History According to local Māori traditions, the Bay of Plenty was the landing point of several migration canoes that brought Māori settlers to New Zealand. These include the ''Mātaatua'', ''Nukutere'', ''Tākitimu'', '' Arawa'' and ''Tainui'' canoes. Many of the de ...
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New Zealand
New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island country by area, covering . New Zealand is about east of Australia across the Tasman Sea and south of the islands of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga. The country's varied topography and sharp mountain peaks, including the Southern Alps, owe much to tectonic uplift and volcanic eruptions. New Zealand's capital city is Wellington, and its most populous city is Auckland. The islands of New Zealand were the last large habitable land to be settled by humans. Between about 1280 and 1350, Polynesians began to settle in the islands and then developed a distinctive Māori culture. In 1642, the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman became the first European to sight and record New Zealand. In 1840, representatives of the United Kingdom and Māori chiefs ...
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Reef
A reef is a ridge or shoal of rock, coral or similar relatively stable material, lying beneath the surface of a natural body of water. Many reefs result from natural, abiotic processes— deposition of sand, wave erosion planing down rock outcrops, etc.—but there are also reefs such as the coral reefs of tropical waters formed by biotic processes dominated by corals and coralline algae, and artificial reefs such as shipwrecks and other anthropogenic underwater structures may occur intentionally or as the result of an accident, and sometimes have a designed role in enhancing the physical complexity of featureless sand bottoms, to attract a more diverse assemblage of organisms. Reefs are often quite near to the surface, but not all definitions require this. Earth's largest coral reef system is the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, at a length of over . Biotic There is a variety of biotic reef types, including oyster reefs and sponge reefs, but the most massive and widely ...
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Scuba Diving
Scuba diving is a mode of underwater diving whereby divers use breathing equipment that is completely independent of a surface air supply. The name "scuba", an acronym for "Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus", was coined by Christian J. Lambertsen in a patent submitted in 1952. Scuba divers carry their own source of breathing gas, usually compressed air, affording them greater independence and movement than surface-supplied divers, and more time underwater than free divers. Although the use of compressed air is common, a gas blend with a higher oxygen content, known as enriched air or nitrox, has become popular due to the reduced nitrogen intake during long and/or repetitive dives. Also, breathing gas diluted with helium may be used to reduce the likelihood and effects of nitrogen narcosis during deeper dives. Open circuit scuba systems discharge the breathing gas into the environment as it is exhaled, and consist of one or more diving cylinders containing breat ...
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Jules Dumont D'Urville
Jules Sébastien César Dumont d'Urville (; 23 May 1790 – 8 May 1842) was a French explorer and naval officer who explored the south and western Pacific, Australia, New Zealand, and Antarctica. As a botanist and cartographer, he gave his name to several seaweeds, plants and shrubs, and places such as d'Urville Island in New Zealand. Childhood Dumont was born at Condé-sur-Noireau in Lower Normandy. His father, Gabriel Charles François Dumont, sieur d’Urville (1728–1796), Bailiff of Condé-sur-Noireau, was, like his ancestors, responsible to the court of Condé. His mother Jeanne Françoise Victoire Julie (1754–1832) came from Croisilles, Calvados, and was a rigid and formal woman from an ancient family of the rural nobility of Lower Normandy. The child was weak and often sickly. After the death of his father when he was six, his mother's brother, the Abbot of Croisilles, played the part of his father and from 1798 took charge of his education. The Abbot taugh ...
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French Ship Astrolabe (1811)
''Astrolabe'' was originally a horse-transport barge converted into an exploration ship of the French Navy. Originally named ''Coquille'', she is famous for her travels with Jules Dumont d'Urville. The name derives from an early navigational instrument, the astrolabe, a precursor to the sextant. Career Voyage under the command of Louis Isidore Duperrey Louis-Isidore Duperrey commanded ''Coquille'' on its circumnavigation of the earth (1822–1825) with Jules Dumont d'Urville as second. René-Primevère Lesson also travelled on ''Coquille'' as a naval doctor and naturalist. On their return in March 1825, Lesson and Dumont brought back to France an imposing collection of animals and plants collected on the Falkland Islands, on the coasts of Chile and Peru, in the archipelagos of the Pacific and New Zealand, New Guinea and Australia. During the voyage the ship spent two weeks in the Bay of Islands in the north of New Zealand in 1824. The vessel arrived in Kosrae where Duperrey ...
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Lists Of Shipwrecks
This is an index of lists of shipwrecks, sorted by different criteria. By location * List of shipwrecks of Africa * List of shipwrecks of Asia * List of shipwrecks of Europe ** List of shipwrecks of France ** List of shipwrecks of the United Kingdom *** List of shipwrecks of England * List of shipwrecks of North America ** List of shipwrecks of Canada ** List of shipwrecks of the United States *** List of shipwrecks of California *** List of shipwrecks of Florida *** List of shipwrecks in the Great Lakes *** List of shipwrecks of Massachusetts *** List of shipwrecks of North Carolina *** List of shipwrecks of Oregon * List of shipwrecks of South America * List of shipwrecks of Oceania ** List of shipwrecks of Australia * List of shipwrecks in international waters ** List of shipwrecks in the Atlantic Ocean ** List of shipwrecks in the Pacific Ocean ** List of shipwrecks in the Indian Ocean By date Before 1914 1914 to 1938 World War I was 1914–1918. 1939 ...
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Landforms Of The Bay Of Plenty Region
A landform is a natural or anthropogenic land feature on the solid surface of the Earth or other planetary body. Landforms together make up a given terrain, and their arrangement in the landscape is known as topography. Landforms include hills, mountains, canyons, and valleys, as well as shoreline features such as bays, peninsulas, and seas, including submerged features such as mid-ocean ridges, volcanoes, and the great ocean basins. Physical characteristics Landforms are categorized by characteristic physical attributes such as elevation, slope, orientation, stratification, rock exposure and soil type. Gross physical features or landforms include intuitive elements such as berms, mounds, hills, ridges, cliffs, valleys, rivers, peninsulas, volcanoes, and numerous other structural and size-scaled (e.g. ponds vs. lakes, hills vs. mountains) elements including various kinds of inland and oceanic waterbodies and sub-surface features. Mountains, hills, plateaux, and plains are the fou ...
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Reefs Of New Zealand
A reef is a ridge or shoal of rock, coral or similar relatively stable material, lying beneath the surface of a natural body of water. Many reefs result from natural, abiotic processes— deposition of sand, wave erosion planing down rock outcrops, etc.—but there are also reefs such as the coral reefs of tropical waters formed by biotic processes dominated by corals and coralline algae, and artificial reefs such as shipwrecks and other anthropogenic underwater structures may occur intentionally or as the result of an accident, and sometimes have a designed role in enhancing the physical complexity of featureless sand bottoms, to attract a more diverse assemblage of organisms. Reefs are often quite near to the surface, but not all definitions require this. Earth's largest coral reef system is the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, at a length of over . Biotic There is a variety of biotic reef types, including oyster reefs and sponge reefs, but the most massive and widely ...
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