Mōtītī Island is an island in the

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 Runaw ...

, off the 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 ...

's North Island. It is north-east of Papamoa Beach on the mainland and north-east of

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 ...

. There were 18 homes occupied by 27 people on the island in the

2006 census 6 (six) is the natural number following 5 and preceding 7. It is a composite number and the smallest perfect number. In mathematics Six is the smallest positive integer which is neither a square number nor a prime number; it is the second small ...

.QuickStats About Motiti Island
2006 Census, Statistics New Zealand. Retrieved 29 October 2010.

Geography

A relatively flat island covering some , Mōtītī Island is composed mainly of Miocene volcanic rocks, overlaid with more recent sediments in the south. The principal activity on the island is agriculture, with a developing

avocado The avocado (''Persea americana'') is a medium-sized, evergreen tree in the laurel family ( Lauraceae). It is native to the Americas and was first domesticated by Mesoamerican tribes more than 5,000 years ago. Then as now it was prized for ...

plantation. Most residents and visitors travel to the island by air. There is no public infrastructure (e.g. no public wharf) and the whole island is in private ownership. Access is difficult and expensive.

Bay of Plenty Regional Council Bay of Plenty Regional Council is the administrative body responsible for overseeing regional land use, environmental management and civil defence in the Bay of Plenty Region of New Zealand's North Island. It was founded as part of the 1989 New Ze ...

has regional council responsibility for Mōtītī Island. No

territorial authority Territorial authorities are the second tier of local government in New Zealand, below regional councils. There are 67 territorial authorities: 13 city councils, 53 district councils and the Chatham Islands Council. District councils serve a c ...

council is responsible for it – therefore residents pay no rates and there are no council services. Day-to-day administration is by the

Department of Internal Affairs The Department of Internal Affairs (DIA), or in te reo Māori, is the public service department of New Zealand charged with issuing passports; administering applications for citizenship and lottery grants; enforcing censorship and gambling la ...

History and culture

Pre-colonial history

On 2 November 1769, during his first voyage,

Captain 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 and ...

sailed close inshore to Mōtītī Island, where he reported the most extensive complex of fortified villages he had yet seen. In his journal he refers to it as the "Flat Island".

Recent history

On 5 October 2011 the container ship MV ''Rena'' ran aground on

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 re ...

, seven kilometers north of Mōtītī Island. Oil from the resulting spill, as well as shipping containers and their contents, reached the shore of the island. In October 2013, Mōtītī Island residents rejected an offer by the MV Rena's owners to start a development project for the island, in return for being able to leave the Rena wreckage where it lay. The plan included: * Building a landing point for barges * Creating a one-lane, all-weather road to the airstrip * Installing a new cellphone tower to improve communications * Running an underground cable from the mainland to improve power supply * Putting a permanent beacon on Astrolabe Reef * Building a Rena memorial from the ship's anchor On 9 October 2011, the 45-foot launch M/V ''Excalibur'' ran aground on Mōtītī Island in bad weather. The crew of six was rescued, but the boat was considered a total loss.

Marae

The island has two

marae A ' (in New Zealand Māori, Cook Islands Māori, Tahitian), ' (in Tongan), ' (in Marquesan) or ' (in Samoan) is a communal or sacred place that serves religious and social purposes in Polynesian societies. In all these languages, the term a ...

, belonging to the

Ngāti Awa Ngāti Awa is a Māori iwi (tribe) centred in the eastern Bay of Plenty Region of New Zealand. It is made of 22 hapū (subtribes), with 15,258 people claiming affiliation to the iwi in 2006. The Ngāti Awa people are primarily located in towns ...

hapū In Māori and New Zealand English, a ' ("subtribe", or " clan") functions as "the basic political unit within Māori society". A Māori person can belong to or have links to many hapū. Historically, each hapū had its own chief and normally op ...

of Te Patuwai and Ngati Maumoana: Te Hinga o te Ra or Te Karioi Marae and Te Hinga o te Ra meeting house; and Te Rua Kopiha Marae and Tamatea ki te Huatahi meeting house. In October 2020, the Government committed $4,871,246 from the

Provincial Growth Fund Shane Geoffrey Jones (born 3 September 1959) is a New Zealand politician. He served as a New Zealand First list MP from 2017 to 2020 and was previously a Labour list MP from 2005 to 2014. Jones was a cabinet minister in the Fifth Labour Gove ...

to upgrade a group of 12 marae, including Te Rua Kopiha Marae. The funding was expected to create 23 jobs.

Aerodrome

Sunair operates from Motiti Island to

with

Cessna 172 The Cessna 172 Skyhawk is an American four-seat, single-engine, high wing, fixed-wing aircraft made by the Cessna Aircraft Company.List of islands of New Zealand New Zealand consists of more than six hundred islands, mainly remnants of a larger land mass now beneath the sea. New Zealand is the seventh-largest island nation on earth, and the third-largest located entirely in the Southern Hemisphere. Th ...

References

{{coord, -37.6257, 176.4221, region:NZ-BOP_type:isle, display=title Islands of the Bay of Plenty Region