Arapaoa Island, formerly known as Arapawa Island, is an

island An island (or isle) is an isolated piece of habitat that is surrounded by a dramatically different habitat, such as water. Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls can be called islets, skerries, cays or keys. An island ...

located in the

Marlborough Sounds The Marlborough Sounds are an extensive network of sea-drowned valleys at the northern end of the South Island of New Zealand. The Marlborough Sounds were created by a combination of land subsidence and rising sea levels. According to Māori ...

, at the north east tip of the South Island of New Zealand. The island has a land area of .

Queen Charlotte Sound / Tōtaranui Queen Charlotte Sound / Tōtaranui is the easternmost of the main sounds of the Marlborough Sounds, in New Zealand's South Island. In 2014, the sound was given the official name of Queen Charlotte Sound / Tōtaranui as part of a Waitangi Tribu ...

defines its western side, while to the south lies Tory Channel / Kura Te Au, which is on the sea route from

Wellington Wellington ( mi, Te Whanganui-a-Tara or ) is the capital city of New Zealand. It is located at the south-western tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Remutaka Range. Wellington is the second-largest city in New Zealand by metr ...

in the North Island to Picton.

Cook Strait Cook Strait ( mi, Te Moana-o-Raukawa) separates the North and South Islands of New Zealand. The strait connects the Tasman Sea on the northwest with the South Pacific Ocean on the southeast. It is wide at its narrowest point,McLintock, A ...

's narrowest point is between Arapaoa Island's Perano Head and

Cape Terawhiti Cape Terawhiti is the southwesternmost point of the North Island of New Zealand. The cape is located 16 kilometres to the west of Wellington, the capital city of New Zealand. Ohau Point, located on the northern tip of Cape Terawhiti and, along ...

in the North Island.

History

According to Māori oral tradition, the island was where the great navigator

Kupe Kupe ( ~1180-1320) was a legendary Polynesian explorer, navigator and great rangatira of Hawaiki, who is said to have been the first human to discover New Zealand. Whether Kupe existed historically is likely but difficult to confirm. He is g ...

killed the octopus

Te Wheke-a-Muturangi In Māori mythology, Te Wheke-a-Muturangi is a monstrous octopus destroyed in Whekenui Bay, Tory Channel or at Patea by Kupe the navigator. The octopus was a pet or familiar of Muturangi, a powerful tohunga of Hawaiki. The wheke was nonet ...

. It was from a hill on Arapaoa Island in 1770 that Captain James Cook first saw the sea passage from the

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the contin ...

to the

Tasman Sea The Tasman Sea ( Māori: ''Te Tai-o-Rēhua'', ) is a marginal sea of the South Pacific Ocean, situated between Australia and New Zealand. It measures about across and about from north to south. The sea was named after the Dutch explorer ...

, which was named

. This discovery banished the fond notion of geographers that there existed a great southern continent,

Terra Australis (Latin: '"Southern Land'") was a hypothetical continent first posited in antiquity and which appeared on maps between the 15th and 18th centuries. Its existence was not based on any survey or direct observation, but rather on the idea that ...

. A monument at Cook's Lookout was erected in 1970. From the late 1820s until the mid-1960s, Arapaoa Island was a base for

whaling Whaling is the process of hunting of whales for their usable products such as meat and blubber, which can be turned into a type of oil that became increasingly important in the Industrial Revolution. It was practiced as an organized industr ...

in the Sounds.

John Guard John 'Jacky' Guard (ca. 1791/92 – 1857) was an English convict sent to Australia who was one of the first European settlers in the South Island of New Zealand, working as a whaler and trader. Early life Guard was born in London in 1791 or 1792 ...

established a shore station at Te Awaiti in 1827, however initially could only salvage baleen until the station was equipped to process

whale oil Whale oil is oil obtained from the blubber of whales. Whale oil from the bowhead whale was sometimes known as train oil, which comes from the Dutch word ''traan'' (" tear" or "drop"). Sperm oil, a special kind of oil obtained from the head ...

from 1830 onwards, targeting

right whales Right whales are three species of large baleen whales of the genus ''Eubalaena'': the North Atlantic right whale (''E. glacialis''), the North Pacific right whale (''E. japonica'') and the Southern right whale (''E. australis''). They are class ...

. Later, the station at Perano Head on the east coast of the island was used to hunt humpback whales from 1911 to 1964 (see

Whaling in New Zealand Commercial whaling in New Zealand waters began late in the 18th century and continued until 1965. It was a major economic activity for Europeans in New Zealand in the first four decades of the 19th century. Nineteenth-century whaling was based on ...

). The houses built by the Perano family are now operated as tourist accommodations. In the 2000s the former whalers from the Perano and Heberley families, who live on Arapawa, joined a

Department of Conservation An environmental ministry is a national or subnational government agency politically responsible for the environment and/or natural resources. Various other names are commonly used to identify such agencies, such as Ministry of the Environment ...

whale spotting programme to assess how the humpback whale population has recovered since the end of whaling. In August 2014, the spelling of the island's name was officially altered from ''Arapawa'' to ''Arapaoa''.

Aircraft accident

The 11,000-volt power lines linking the mainland and Arapaoa Island over

Tory Channel Tory Channel / Kura Te Au is one of the drowned valleys that form the Marlborough Sounds in New Zealand. Inter-island ferries normally use it as the principal channel between Cook Strait and the Marlborough Sounds. Tory Channel / Kura Te Au lies ...

was struck by an Air Albatross

Cessna 402 The Cessna 401 and 402 are a series of 6 to 10 seat, light twin-piston engine aircraft. This line was manufactured by Cessna from 1966 to 1985 under the name Utiliner and Businessliner.Montgomery, MR & Gerald Foster: ''A Field Guide to Airplane ...

commuter aircraft in 1985. The crash was witnessed by many passengers on an inter-island Cook Strait ferry. The ferry immediately stopped to dispatch a rescue lifeboat. Along with the two pilots, one entire family died, and all but a young girl from the other. No bodies were ever found. The sole survivor (Cindy Mosey) was travelling with her family and the other family from Nelson to Wellington to attend a gymnastics competition. The Arapaoa Island crash caused public confidence in Air Albatross to falter, contributing to the company going into liquidation in December of that year.

Conservation

Parts of the island have been heavily cleared of native vegetation in the past through burning and logging, A number of pine forests were planted on the island.

Wilding pines Wilding conifers, also known as wilding pines, are invasive trees in the high country of New Zealand. Millions of dollars are spent on controlling their spread. In the South Island they threaten 210,000 hectares of public land administered by ...

, an invasive species in some parts of New Zealand, are being poisoned on the island to allow the regenerating native vegetation to grow. About at Ruaomoko Point on the south-eastern portion of the island will be killed by drilling holes into the trees and injecting poison. Arapaoa Island is known for the breeds of

pigs The pig (''Sus domesticus''), often called swine, hog, or domestic pig when distinguishing from other members of the genus '' Sus'', is an omnivorous, domesticated, even-toed, hoofed mammal. It is variously considered a subspecies of ''Sus ...

sheep Sheep or domestic sheep (''Ovis aries'') are domesticated, ruminant mammals typically kept as livestock. Although the term ''sheep'' can apply to other species in the genus '' Ovis'', in everyday usage it almost always refers to domesticated ...

and

goats The goat or domestic goat (''Capra hircus'') is a domesticated species of goat-antelope typically kept as livestock. It was domesticated from the wild goat (''C. aegagrus'') of Southwest Asia and Eastern Europe. The goat is a member of th ...

found only on the island. These became established in the 19th century, but the origin of these breeds is uncertain, and a matter of some speculation. Common suggestions are that they are old English breeds introduced by the early whalers, or by Captain Cook or other early explorers. These breeds are now extinct in England, and the goats surviving in a sanctuary on the island are now also bred in other parts of New Zealand and in the northern hemisphere. The small Brothers Islands, which lie off the northeast coast of Arapaoa Island, are a sanctuary for the rare Brothers Island tuatara.

References

External links

{{Tōtaranui / Queen Charlotte Sound, state=collapsed Islands of the Marlborough Sounds Whaling stations in New Zealand Whaling in New Zealand Cook Strait Ferry Populated places in the Marlborough Sounds

History

Aircraft accident

Conservation

See also

References

Further reading

External links