Ōhiwa Harbour is a natural

harbour A harbor (American English), or harbour (Commonwealth English; see American and British English spelling differences#-our, -or, spelling differences), is a sheltered body of water where ships, boats, and barges can be Mooring, moored. The t ...

New Zealand New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...

. It is located between the settlement of

Ōhope Ōhope is a coastal town situated on the northeastern coast of the Eastern Bay of Plenty in New Zealand's North Island. It is six kilometres east of Whakatāne, and is located between Ōhiwa Harbour to the south and Ōhope Beach to the north ...

in the

Whakatāne District Whakatāne District is a territorial authority district on the North Island of New Zealand. The Whakatāne District Council is headquartered in the largest town, Whakatāne. The district falls within the Bay of Plenty Region. Victor Luca has ...

and

Ōhiwa Ōhiwa is a rural settlement in the Ōpōtiki District and Bay of Plenty Region of New Zealand's North Island. It is on a headland on the eastern side of Ōhiwa Harbour, and on the western side of the Waiotahe River mouth. The New Zealand Ge ...

in the

Ōpōtiki District Ōpōtiki District is a Districts of New Zealand, territorial authority district in the eastern Bay of Plenty Region on the North Island of New Zealand. It stretches from Kutarere and the eastern shore of Ōhiwa Harbour in the west to Cape Runaw ...

of the

Bay of Plenty Region The Bay of Plenty Region is a Regions of New Zealand, local government region in the North Island of New Zealand. Also called just the Bay of Plenty (BOP), it is situated around the Bay of Plenty, marine bight of that same name. The bay was name ...

, New Zealand.

Geography

The Ōhiwa Harbour is a drowned valley system. The bedrock of the Ōhiwa Harbour consists predominantly of

greywacke Greywacke or graywacke ( ) is a variety of sandstone generally characterized by its hardness (6–7 on Mohs scale), dark color, and Sorting (sediment), poorly sorted angular grains of quartz, feldspar, and small rock fragments or sand-size Lith ...

, and dates from the

Late Jurassic The Late Jurassic is the third Epoch (geology), epoch of the Jurassic Period, and it spans the geologic time scale, geologic time from 161.5 ± 1.0 to 143.1 ± 0.8 million years ago (Ma), which is preserved in Upper Jurassic stratum, strata.Owen ...

to the

Late Cretaceous The Late Cretaceous (100.5–66 Ma) is the more recent of two epochs into which the Cretaceous Period is divided in the geologic time scale. Rock strata from this epoch form the Upper Cretaceous Series. The Cretaceous is named after ''cre ...

periods. The overlying deposits date from the

Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( ; referred to colloquially as the ''ice age, Ice Age'') is the geological epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was fin ...

, as well as pumice and volcanic ash from volcanic eruptions from the Rotorua and Taupo volcanic centres. In prehistoric times, the harbour was fed by a river larger than the current tributaries that enter the harbour. The harbour's catchment is a mix of farmland and remnant coastal forest, dominated by

pōhutukawa Pōhutukawa (''Metrosideros excelsa''), also known as the New Zealand Christmas tree, or iron tree, is a coastal evergreen tree in the Myrtus, myrtle family, Myrtaceae, that produces a brilliant display of red (or occasionally orange, yellow o ...

and

pūriri ''Vitex lucens'', commonly known as pūriri, is an evergreen tree endemic to New Zealand. History Pūriri was first collected (by Europeans) at Tolaga Bay by Banks and Solander during Cook's first visit in 1769. The plant was described by S ...

, and features a remnant sea-level stand of an alpine southern beech (''

Nothofagus ''Nothofagus'', also known as the southern beeches, is a genus of 43 species of trees and shrubs native to the Southern Hemisphere, found across southern South America (Chile, Argentina) and east and southeast Australia, New Zealand, New Guin ...

solandri'') exists at the head of the harbour. Onekawa Te Mawhai Regional Park is located on the northeastern shores of the harbour. The Ōhiwa Harbour has two spits on either side of its entrance to the

Bay of Plenty The Bay of Plenty () is a large bight (geography), bight along the northern coast of New Zealand's North Island. It stretches from the Coromandel Peninsula in the west to Cape Runaway in the east. Called ''Te Moana-a-Toitehuatahi'' (the Ocean ...

, an unusual feature of an estuary. Eventually, the harbour will completely fill with sediment and become dry land, a process which has accelerated due to human activities. The Nukuhou River is a major tributary of the Ōhiwa Harbour. Six islands are found within the harbour: Hokianga Island, Motuotu Island, Ohakana Island, Pataua Island, Uretara Island and Whangakopikopiko Island. The Ōhiwa Harbour is the traditional northern extent of

Te Urewera Te Urewera is an area of mostly forested, sparsely populated rugged hill country in the North Island of New Zealand, located inland between the Bay of Plenty and Hawke Bay. Te Urewera is the ''rohe'' (historical home) of Tūhoe, a Māori i ...

Ecology

The harbour is home to shellfish and fish species, as well as wading and migratory birds and

North Island brown kiwi The North Island brown kiwi (''Apteryx mantelli''; ''Apteryx australis'' or ''Apteryx bulleri'' as before 2000, still used in some sources) is a species of kiwi that is widespread in the northern two-thirds of the North Island of New Zealand and ...

. The harbour features large areas of seagrass. The streams which feed into the harbour are a habitat for native freshwater fish, including inanga. Rats and stoats are predators that live near the Ōhiwa Harbour margins, which impact native bird populations.

History

The

Māori Māori or Maori can refer to: Relating to the Māori people * Māori people of New Zealand, or members of that group * Māori language, the language of the Māori people of New Zealand * Māori culture * Cook Islanders, the Māori people of the Co ...

iwi Iwi () are the largest social units in New Zealand Māori society. In Māori, roughly means or , and is often translated as "tribe". The word is both singular and plural in the Māori language, and is typically pluralised as such in English. ...

Whakatōhea Te Whakatōhea is a Māori iwi of the eastern Bay of Plenty region of New Zealand. Their traditional territory extends along the coastline eastwards from Ōhiwa Harbour to Opape, and inland to Mātāwai, and is centred in the area around th ...

are the traditional residents of the Ōhiwa Harbour area. The harbour was traditionally known as Nga Tamāhine a Te Whakatōhea ("Daughter of Te Whakatōhea") because it supplied the iwi with fish and shellfish. It is also known as "the food basket of the peoples", because of the food

Ngāi Tūhoe Ngāi Tūhoe (), often known simply as Tūhoe, is a Māori people, Māori iwi (tribe) of New Zealand. It takes its name from an ancestral figure, Tūhoe-pōtiki. ''Tūhoe'' is a Māori-language word meaning 'steep' or 'high noon'. Tūhoe people a ...

and

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 ...

were able to gather from the area. Early European settlers worked as ship builders at

in the 1840s and 1850s. After the Volkner Incident in 1865 during the

New Zealand Wars The New Zealand Wars () took place from 1845 to 1872 between the Colony of New Zealand, New Zealand colonial government and allied Māori people, Māori on one side, and Māori and Māori-allied settlers on the other. Though the wars were initi ...

, British forces invaded the area. In January 1866, the

Crown A crown is a traditional form of head adornment, or hat, worn by monarchs as a symbol of their power and dignity. A crown is often, by extension, a symbol of the monarch's government or items endorsed by it. The word itself is used, parti ...

announced wide-scale land confuscations of Whakatōhea land and land belonging to surrounding iwi, leading to European settlement of the area. In response, Whakatōhea chief Hira te Popo and Tuhoe chief Eru Tamaikowha used guerilla warfare tactics against the settlers. The Crown established native reserves at Ōhiwa Harbour for Whakatōhea, at Hiwarau and on Hokianga Island. In 1873, the Ferry Hotel was established at the Ōhiwa sandspit, and a ferry service began to operate between Ōhiwa and Ōhope. The settlement grew, but in 1915 much fo the town was destroyed due to erosion of the sandspit. A second attempt to create sections for baches in the 1960s was also lost to erosion in 1978. In 1999, four breeding pairs of North Island brown kiwi were identified living in reserves on the shores of the Ōhiwa Harbour near Ōhope. This led to the Department of Conservation creating a breeding programme, the Whakatane Kiwi Project, which led to more than 300 chicks being raised in or released to reserves bordering the Ōhiwa Harbour. In 2008, the Ōhiwa Harbour Implementation Forum was established as a collaboration between local government bodies and iwi with interests in the Ōhiwa Harbour area, to implement solutions to improve the environment of the harbour. One of the major projects launched by the forum was to re-establish

kuku Kuku may refer to: People * Emir-Usein Kuku (born 1976), Crimean Tatar human rights defender * John Dean Kuku (born 1963), Solomon Islands politician * Kuku people, an ethnic group in South Sudan * Kuku Yulanji, an Aboriginal people of the Dai ...

(New Zealand green-lipped mussels), which had significantly declined in the harbour due to unsustainable growth in '' Coscinasterias calamaria'' (eleven-armed sea stars). The project led an increase in mussel numbers from 80,000 in 2019 to 45 million in 2024.

Gallery

File:Ohiwa Harbour 303.jpg, Western Ōhiwa Harbour File:Nukuhou Salt Marsh.jpg, Nukuhou Salt Marsh near the mouth of the Nukuhou River File:Onekawa.jpg, Onekawa Te Mawhai Regional Park to the northeast of the Ōhiwa Harbour

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ohiwa Harbour Landforms of the Bay of Plenty Region Ōpōtiki District Whakatāne District Ports and harbours of New Zealand