The Mercury Islands are a group of seven

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 ...

s off the northeast coast of

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 count ...

North Island The North Island, also officially named Te Ika-a-Māui, is one of the two main islands of New Zealand, separated from the larger but much less populous South Island by the Cook Strait. The island's area is , making it the world's 14th-largest ...

. They are located off the coast of the

Coromandel Peninsula The Coromandel Peninsula ( mi, Te Tara-O-Te-Ika-A-Māui) on the North Island of New Zealand extends north from the western end of the Bay of Plenty, forming a natural barrier protecting the Hauraki Gulf and the Firth of Thames in the we ...

, and northeast of the town of

Whitianga Whitianga is a town on the Coromandel Peninsula, in the Waikato region of New Zealand's North Island. The town is located on Mercury Bay, on the northeastern coast of the peninsula. The town has a permanent population of as of making it the ...

History

The Ngāti Karaua (a hapu of the

Ngāti Whanaunga Ngāti Whanaunga is a Māori ''iwi'' (tribe) of the Coromandel Peninsula in New Zealand, descended from Whanaunga, the third son of Marutūāhu. It is one of the tribes of the Marutūāhu confederation, the others being Ngāti Maru, Ngāti Ron ...

) and the

Ngāti Hei Ngāti Hei is a Māori iwi of New Zealand. Ngāti Hei is generally recognised as the dominant tribe of the Mercury Bay area. There has always been much speculation as to the origins of Māori people. Historians agree that Māori arrived in Aot ...

inhabited the islands since the 14th century. A settler claimed to have bought Great Mercury Island in 1839.https://www.govt.nz/assets/Documents/OTS/Ngati-Hei/Ngati-Hei-Deed-of-Settlement-17-Aug-2017.pdf Great Mercury (Ahuahu), Kawhitu or Stanley Island and Double Island (Moturehu) where purchased and taken as crown land in 1858–65. These included Whakakapua (7³ acres) and Kowhaka (21 acres) being purchased in January 1865. Despite inhabiting Ahuahu, the Ngati Hei were not consulted about this purchase. A 2017 settlement recognized the

as having a legitimate claim to Great Mercury Island.

Description

The main chain of the Mercury Islands consists of the large Great Mercury Island (also known as ) to the west, Red Mercury Island () to the east, and five much smaller islands between the two (Korapuki, Green, Atiu/Middle, Kawhitu/Stanley and Moturehu/Double Islands). All the islands, except Ahuahu/Great Mercury Island, have statutory protection and are managed by the

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 ...

as highly valuable Nature Reserves where public access prohibited. Ahuahu/Great Mercury Island is privately owned and public access is allowed (excluding residential sites and the planted pine forest). One lone island, Repanga/Cuvier Island, also a protected Nature Reserve, lies to the north of Ahuahu/Great Mercury Island, although this island is not normally considered part of the Mercury Island group. Approximately 18,000 years ago during the

Last Glacial Maximum The Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), also referred to as the Late Glacial Maximum, was the most recent time during the Last Glacial Period that ice sheets were at their greatest extent. Ice sheets covered much of Northern North America, Northern Eur ...

when sea levels were over 100 metres lower than present day levels, the islands were hilly features surrounded by a vast coastal plain. Sea levels began to rise 7,000 years ago, after which the islands separated from the rest of New Zealand. When sea levels were lower, the Opitonui River flowed east to the Pacific Ocean between Cuvier Island and Ahuahu/Great Mercury Island.

Ahuahu / Great Mercury Island

Ahuahu / Great Mercury Island, 1872 ha, is the largest of Mercury Islands and the only one with permanent residents or public access. It is the remnants of a

Pliocene The Pliocene ( ; also Pleiocene) is the epoch in the geologic time scale that extends from 5.333 million to 2.58rhyolitic Rhyolite ( ) is the most silica-rich of volcanic rocks. It is generally glassy or fine-grained (aphanitic) in texture, but may be porphyritic, containing larger mineral crystals (phenocrysts) in an otherwise fine-grained groundmass. The mineral ...

volcano A volcano is a rupture in the crust of a planetary-mass object, such as Earth, that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface. On Earth, volcanoes are most often found where tectonic plates are ...

. In pre-

colonial Colonial or The Colonial may refer to: * Colonial, of, relating to, or characteristic of a colony or colony (biology) Architecture * American colonial architecture * French Colonial * Spanish Colonial architecture Automobiles * Colonial (1920 au ...

times, the island was the location of at least 20 pā, including Matakawau, a pā on the western side of the island where extensive archaeological excavations were undertaken in the 1950s. During the latter 19th century, the island was a location for

kauri gum Kauri gum is resin from kauri trees (''Agathis australis''), which historically had several important industrial uses. It can also be used to make crafts such as jewellery. Kauri forests once covered much of the North Island of New Zealand, be ...

digging. The island is owned by Michael Fay and

David Richwhite David MacKellar Richwhite (born 1948) is a New Zealand investment banker and was a partner in Fay, Richwhite & Company with Sir Michael Fay. Educated at King's College, Auckland and the University of Otago, where he graduated in 1974 with a Bach ...

, two prominent New Zealand businessmen. The private island, which features two luxurious residences, can be hired for around $20,000

NZD The New Zealand dollar ( mi, tāra o Aotearoa; sign: $, NZ$; code: NZD) is the official currency and legal tender of New Zealand, the Cook Islands, Niue, the Ross Dependency, Tokelau, and a British territory, the Pitcairn Islands. Within New ...

per day. U2's lead singer

Bono Paul David Hewson (born 10 May 1960), known by his stage name Bono (), is an Irish singer-songwriter, activist, and philanthropist. He is the lead vocalist and primary lyricist of the rock band U2. Born and raised in Dublin, he attended M ...

and guitarist

The Edge David Howell Evans (born 8 August 1961), better known as the Edge or simply Edge,McCormick (2006), pp. 21, 23–24 is an English-born Irish musician, singer, and songwriter. He is best known as the lead guitarist, keyboardist, and backing voca ...

stayed on the island during U2's

Vertigo Vertigo is a condition where a person has the sensation of movement or of surrounding objects moving when they are not. Often it feels like a spinning or swaying movement. This may be associated with nausea, vomiting, sweating, or difficulties w ...

concerts in

Auckland Auckland (pronounced ) ( mi, Tāmaki Makaurau) is a large metropolitan city in the North Island of New Zealand. The List of New Zealand urban areas by population, most populous urban area in the country and the List of cities in Oceania by po ...

in November 2006. On 30 November 2009, Ahuahu/Great Mercury Island hosted the first successful launch of

Rocket Lab Rocket Lab is a public American aerospace manufacturer and launch service provider, with a New Zealand subsidiary. The company operates lightweight Electron orbital rockets, which provide dedicated launches for small satellites. Rocket Lab also ...

suborbital A sub-orbital spaceflight is a spaceflight in which the spacecraft reaches outer space, but its trajectory intersects the atmosphere or surface of the gravitating body from which it was launched, so that it will not complete one orbital r ...

Atea-1

sounding rocket A sounding rocket or rocketsonde, sometimes called a research rocket or a suborbital rocket, is an instrument-carrying rocket designed to take measurements and perform scientific experiments during its sub-orbital flight. The rockets are used to ...

. In 2014, Fay and Richwhite, in partnership with the

, successfully undertook an eradication program to remove

kiore The Polynesian rat, Pacific rat or little rat (''Rattus exulans''), known to the Māori as ''kiore'', is the third most widespread species of rat in the world behind the brown rat and black rat. The Polynesian rat originated in Southeast Asia, a ...

, ship rats and cats from the island. In 2016, it was declared pest free, making the entire Mercury Island Group free from introduced

mammalian Mammals () are a group of vertebrate animals constituting the class (biology), class Mammalia (), characterized by the presence of mammary glands which in Female#Mammalian female, females produce milk for feeding (nursing) their young, a ...

pests. The island remains open to the public to showcase conservation and provide an accessible pest-free island in the Mercury Island Group.

Whakau / Red Mercury Island

Whakau is the easternmost of the Mercury Islands, and at across is also the second-largest. The entire island is surrounded by reddish cliffs up to high, prompting Captain

James Cook James Cook (7 November 1728 Old Style date: 27 October – 14 February 1779) was a British explorer, navigator, cartographer, and captain in the British Royal Navy, famous for his three voyages between 1768 and 1779 in the Pacific Ocean an ...

to give the island its European name on his exploration of the area in 1769. The island was briefly used by Count

Felix von Luckner Felix Nikolaus Alexander Georg Graf von Luckner (9 June 1881, Dresden – 13 April 1966, Malmö), sometimes called Count Luckner in English, was a German nobleman, naval officer, author, and sailor who earned the epithet ''Der Seeteufel'' (the ...

as a hiding spot during World War One during his attempted escape from New Zealand en route to the

Kermadec Islands The Kermadec Islands ( mi, Rangitāhua) are a subtropical island arc in the South Pacific Ocean northeast of New Zealand's North Island, and a similar distance southwest of Tonga. The islands are part of New Zealand. They are in total are ...

, with a cove on the island's northern coast bearing his name to commemorate this. As with the rest of the Mercury Islands, Whakau is volcanic, with evidence of this history evident around the island's coast.

Other islands

The smaller islands in the group have been identified as an

Important Bird Area An Important Bird and Biodiversity Area (IBA) is an area identified using an internationally agreed set of criteria as being globally important for the conservation of bird populations. IBA was developed and sites are identified by BirdLife Int ...

BirdLife International BirdLife International is a global partnership of non-governmental organizations that strives to conserve birds and their habitats. BirdLife International's priorities include preventing extinction of bird species, identifying and safeguarding ...

because they provide nesting sites for up to 3000 breeding pairs of

Pycroft's petrel Pycroft's petrel (''Pterodroma pycrofti'') is a species of seabird in the petrel and shearwater family Procellariidae. Origin The Pycroft's petrel is a species of gadfly petrel (genus '' Pterodroma''), and is thought to be closely related to th ...

s.BirdLife International. (2012). Important Bird Areas factsheet: Small Mercury Islands. Downloaded from http://www.birdlife.org on 2012-02-02. Moturehu/Double Island and Whakau/Red Mercury are home to the critically endangered Mercury Islands tusked wētā.

References

External links

Geology – New Zealand's Geological History
, from ''An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand'', edited by A. H. McLintock, originally published in 1966. Te Ara – The Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 2006-09-26. Retrieved 2007-04-15. * {{coord, 36, 35, S, 175, 55, E, region:NZ_type:isle, display=title Volcanoes of Waikato Thames-Coromandel District Important Bird Areas of New Zealand Islands of Waikato Volcanic islands of New Zealand Private islands of New Zealand Miocene volcanoes Pliocene volcanoes Pleistocene volcanoes