Pataua mussel bed

I went for a snorkel in the Pataua Estuary (North East of Whangarei) to look for a soft sediment intertidal mussel bed seen in 2016. Soft sediment mussel beds are quite interesting as they were a dominant habitat in the Hauraki Gulf but were over fished and are now functionally extinct.

First we asked a local about the mussels. She said they were gone now (cleaned out by school camps who took them when they were quite small) but that we might find some in the channel. We spent hours in the water, mostly because it was so clear (no mud, just sand shell and rock substrate). We investigated the channel from the bridge to the mouth of the estuary. This covered the area they were reported in 2016 which I think is visible in Google Earth (view historical imagery). We just found dead mussel shell but there were a few juveniles growing in coralline (which is interesting) and attached to pebbles.

The estuary is awesome, we saw so much cool stuff (below). We only saw one blue mussel and a few horse mussels. I hope they get the green-lipped mussel bed back, in the meantime the octopus will have to do with pipi.

Posted on January 29, 2018 03:59 AM by shaun-lee