Te Whanga Lagoon dominates the geography of
Chatham Island
Chatham Island ( ) (Moriori: ''Rēkohu'', 'Misty Sun'; mi, Wharekauri) is by far the largest island of the Chatham Islands group, in the south Pacific Ocean off the eastern coast of New Zealand's South Island. It is said to be "halfway bet ...
, in the South
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 ...
off
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 east coast. It covers .
It is the outflow of several small rivers in the island's hilly south, and drains to the Pacific via gaps in Hanson Bay on the east coast of the island.
It contains many fossilized shark teeth that can be collected from the edges of the lagoon. Over time the lagoon is likely to silt up.
When first described by
Dr E Dieffenbach in 1841, the lagoon was only slightly
brackish
Brackish water, sometimes termed brack water, is water occurring in a natural environment that has more salinity than freshwater, but not as much as seawater. It may result from mixing seawater (salt water) and fresh water together, as in estu ...
and separated from the sea by a low sand bar and was about above high tide.
Gallery
File:Hikurangi Channel, Te Whaanga Lagoon.jpg, Hikurangi Channel, Te Whanga Lagoon. This drainage channel was dug in the 1880s to give more farmland
File:Waikato Point. Cliffs rise to about 30 metres on the west coast of the lagoon.jpg, Waikato Point. Cliffs rise to about on the west coast of the lagoon
File:Te Whanga Lagoon at Blind Jims Creek. 178m Korako is to the left, 149m Rangitihi and 188m Mt Chudleigh to the right.jpg, Te Whanga Lagoon at Blind Jims Creek. 178m Korako is to the left, 149m Rangitihi and 188m Mt Chudleigh to the right.
File:Cattle Point, Te Whanga Lagoon.jpg, Cattle Point, Te Whanga Lagoon
References
Landforms of the Chatham Islands
Lagoons of New Zealand
Chatham Island
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