Leask Bay is a small bay on

Stewart Island Stewart Island ( mi, Rakiura, ' glowing skies', officially Stewart Island / Rakiura) is New Zealand's third-largest island, located south of the South Island, across the Foveaux Strait. It is a roughly triangular island with a total land ar ...

, east of

Oban Oban ( ; ' in Scottish Gaelic meaning ''The Little Bay'') is a resort town within the Argyll and Bute council area of Scotland. Despite its small size, it is the largest town between Helensburgh and Fort William. During the tourist season, th ...

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 ...

History

European settlement of Leask Bay began in the 1840s and 1850s, before

Halfmoon Bay Half Moon Bay is a city in San Mateo County, California Half Moon Bay may also refer to: Australia * Halfmoon Bay (Tasmania), a bay in Tasmania, near * Half Moon Bay (Victoria), a bay in Black Rock, Victoria In Canada * Half Moon Bay (Nunavut) ...

became the main point of settlement.

Leask Family

Leask Bay has been occupied by the Leask family for six or seven generations, after emigrating to Stewart Island from

Orkney Orkney (; sco, Orkney; on, Orkneyjar; nrn, Orknøjar), also known as the Orkney Islands, is an archipelago in the Northern Isles of Scotland, situated off the north coast of the island of Great Britain. Orkney is 10 miles (16 km) north ...

. The Leasks were involved in the early construction of Stewart Island infrastructure: in 1897 Thomas and James Leask built the road from

to Harrold Bay. The Leasks were some of the original boat builders of Stewart Island, and current descendants are still involved in the fishing industry.

Natural environment

In 1933, the skull of the first recorded

Shepherd's beaked whale Shepherd's beaked whale (''Tasmacetus shepherdi''), also commonly called Tasman's beaked whale or simply the Tasman whale, is a cetacean of the family Ziphiidae and the only species in the genus ''Tasmacetus''. The whale has not been studied ex ...

was stored at Leask Bay, before being taken to Southland Museum. In a 1953 publication, it was noted that Leask Bay was an outlier on Stewart Island as it hosted exotic trees when the rest of the Island has only native trees. In the 1980s, an oil seep was discovered in Leask Bay. It is hypothesised that the oil naturally migrated from the

Great South Basin The Great South Basin is an area of mainly sea to the south of the South Island of New Zealand. Starting in the 1960s, the area was explored and drilled for oil deposits by various, mostly international minerals companies — including Hunt Oil ...

into a shallow basin margin in Leask Bay.

Kiore The Polynesian rat, Pacific rat or little rat (''Rattus exulans''), known to the Māori people, 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 Sou ...

, largely not found on the

mainland, have been found at Leask Bay.

References

{{Stewart Island / Rakiura Landforms of Stewart Island Bays of Southland, New Zealand