← Love rimurimu field trip videos
How Love Rimurimu began
Andrew
Kia ora, everybody. We're at Moa Point. And this Jorge with Mountains to Sea Wellington.
And Moa Point is an interesting place. It's quite neat, isn't it? We're surrounded by these craggy rocks. I can see a snorkeler over there, maybe collecting a few paua. And lots of rimurimu, lots of seaweed I can see around at the low tide point here.
But, apart from being in the flight path of Wellington Airport, quite a peaceful spot. Jorge, tell us more about Mountains to Sea Wellington.
Jorge
Sure. So Mountains to Sea Wellington is a non-for-profit charitable trust. It's been around since 2017, although the team has been working in the programmes and projects that we deliver for over 15 years. Our kaupapa is to connect people with te taiao through education programmes, through community events, through restoration projects. And just making sure people have the knowledge and the experience to be able to participate in environmental conservation and restoration.
Andrew
Well, it sounds like really worthwhile mahi. And one of those kaupapa is Love Rimurimu.
Jorge
Yep. So Love Rimurimu came about five years ago as an education programme. So, we do deliver a lot of education programmes with the goal of getting those students involved in some sort of environmental action. And we found five years ago a bit of a gap in the knowledge about seaweed around Wellington's coastline.
So, yeah, we developed the Love Rimurimu education programme. It's been delivered for over/around 8 schools in Wellington; over 250 students. But one school that has been coming back every year is Te Kura Kaupapa Māori o Ngā Mokopuna.
Andrew
And we are going to meet a couple of those ākonga, a couple of those students, to learn more about the knowledge that they've gained and what they're doing, more importantly, with that knowledge.
So in a moment we'll go and catch up with them. But thanks so much. Kia ora.
Jorge
No worries. Thank you guys.
Kaingākautia te rimurimu | Cherish the rimurimu
Andrew
Kia ora koutou. Well right now we’re at Worser Bay. And it’s a bit of a blustery ole day here; waves lapping up against the seashore. You can see some rimurimu, some seaweed, that’s been washed up on earlier higher tides.
Behind me is a lovely wee kura next to the sea here, called Te Kura Kaupapa Māori o Ngā Mokopuna. And we are going to go and meet two ākonga who have been involved in the Love Rimurimu kaupapa. And we’re going to hear from them about what their involvement has looked like, what they’ve been doing, and hear a bit more about why this kaupapa is so important to them.
Ngawaierua
Mauri ora! Ko Ngawaierua Campbell tōku ingoa.
He uri tēnei nō Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Awa, Ngāti Kahungunu. He tau tekau au ki te Kura Kaupapa Māori o Ngā Mokopuna, ā, he kura ’kelper’ au.
Rakaipo
Kia ora! Ko Rakaipo Tapiata tōku ingoa.
He uri nō Ngāti Pikiao, Tūhourangi, Ngāti Wāhiao, Ngāti Porou, Te Arawa. He tau waru au ki te Kura Kaupapa Māori o Ngā Mokopuna. He kura ‘kelper’ anō hoki.
Ngawaierua
Ki kōnei ki Te Upoko-o-te-Ika, Te Whanganui-a-Tara, ko ngā kaitiaki o tēnei whanga, ko ngā taniwha e rua, ko Ngake rāua tahi ko Whātaitai. Ko ngā motu e toru ko Matiu, Mākaro, Mokopuna. E kī ana te kōrero, ko Mokopuna ki tai, ko Ngā Mokopuna ki uta. E mea ana ko te motu Mokopuna ki tai, ki kōnei tātou Te Kura Kaupapa Māori o Ngā Mokopuna ki uta.
Our collaboration with Love Rimurimu started back in 2020. It started off as an educational programme; by learning different types of seaweeds and the traditional uses for pōhā, such as preserving food. We also learnt about the human impacts, such as climate change, that is affecting our rimurimu. By learning this, we decided to do something about it. We started to restore our rimurimu forests.
Over the past few years we’ve hosted some wānanga rimurimu, we held some presentations, and worked alongside with NIWA Taihoro Nukurangi, Te Āti Awa, Taranaki Whānui, Te Aho Tū Roa, Te Herenga Waka | Victoria University, and Freedive Aotearoa.
Rakaipo
I te tau rua mano rua tekau mā toru i mahi mātou ko ētahi ākonga i tētahi akoranga ruku hōhonu ki te taha o Freedive Aotearoa. Ko ētahi rautaki, ētahi pūkenga i ako mātou ko te whakataurite, ko ngā tohu haumaru mō te ruku, ko te pupuri te hā mō te wā roa.
Ngawaierua
I roto i ngā tau kua taha me te anamata ko te tūmanako ia ka whakatūria he pāmu ahumoana ki te kura nei, ko tōku hiahia ki te whai i te ara Kaiaro Mātai, Koiora Moana.
Rimurimu whānau and features
Andrew
You've met our two ākonga, Rakaipo and Ngawai, at Te Kura Kaupapa Māori o Ngā Mokopuna. And we're back here at Moa Point, and we're going to put their knowledge to the test. They've been gathering a bit of seaweed from the shoreline here that's been washed up. So, Rakaipo..
Eh, who asked them?
You've got some seaweed in front of us. Tell us about it.
Rakaipo
Okay, so first, there’s three whānau | families of seaweed. There’s kura or whero, which is just red. Then parāone and kākāriki, which is brown and green.
Andrew
Okay, so three groups of seaweed. Āe.
Rakaipo
Yeah. And so first, we’ll look at this one.
Andrew
Some examples. All right. What have we got here?
Rakaipo
So this is rimu kakauroa | giant kelp. It's from the parāone family.
Andrew
What are some of its features?
Rakaipo
So there’s the pūtake, the holdfast, it holds onto the rocks. Then there's the kakau, the stipe. Then the rau, or the blades. Then the pūkorohau, or the air bladder.
Andrew
Right. With the giant kelp, that helps it float to the surface?
Rakaipo
Yeah.
Andrew
Ka pai. What else have you got? And this of course is part of the restoration project. That's the one you are growing and replanting.
Rakaipo
Yeah it is.
Andrew
Ka pai. What else have you got to show us?
Rakaipo
Oh, there's this big leathery-looking one. This is..
Andrew
Rimurapa.
Rakaipo
Rimurapa or bull kelp.
Andrew
Bull kelp.
Traditionally used for making pōhā to preserve or carry food.
Andrew
Right. So, this big part, I think you told me before, is opened up, food is put in there and tied up like that for preservation.
Rakaipo
Yeah.
Andrew
Awesome. Very handy. So.. and this was from what whānau?
Rakaipo
Parāone; so brown.
Andrew
Āe.
Rakaipo
Then there's this. It's rimu kaikai | sea lettuce. It's good to put in salads and stuff.
Andrew
Looks very much like sea lettuce. Something that I got out of my burger the other day, almost eh.
Rakaipo
It's from the green family | kākāriki.
Andrew
Alright.
Rakaipo
And so, lastly, there's this one, which is, it's greenish brown, but it's from the kura, the red family.
And it's good to eat. Would you like to try some?
Andrew
I will, actually, since you offered. What is its name?
Rakaipo
Karengo.
Andrew
Karengo.
Not bad. Not bad at all.
Kia ora. Thanks so much for that!
Ngawai, we’ve learnt about some of the features and the whānau of seaweed, but there’s a bit more to it isn’t there? It’s got some real benefits for the environment.
Ngawai
Yeah, so it's a habitat for the fishes to hide from its predators. It's also food for all the living beings in the ocean. It also absorbs carbon dioxide, which produces oxygen.
Andrew
Well, that's a big one. And, you know, when we consider our own relationship with the environment, it's important for humans, too.
Ngawai
Yeah. So there's a saying that goes: Ko au te moana, ko te moana ko au.
I'm the ocean and the ocean is me.
So that's basically saying, I'm the guardian of the ocean. And, I just got to protect it.
Andrew
Protect it for the future. And that's been a real big driver behind you guys’ involvement in the rimurimu restoration project. And so thinking about, you know, the future and other people maybe getting involved in similar restoration projects, what would you say to them?
Ngawai
Well, there's another saying that goes: Mēnā rānei koe hiahia ngā taonga o te moana me ruku.
If you seek the treasures of the ocean, you got to get wet.
So, nau mai piki, haramai kake. Tō mai ki tō tātou whare whakarauora i te taiao.
Andrew
Kia ora.
Collecting and processing kelp spores
Andrew
Kia ora e te whānau. Ko Joe tēnei. Joe is an Aquaculture Technician for Love Rimurimu. And right now we are in a laboratory, a wet lab – you'll find out why in a minute – at NIWA Taihoro Nukurangi. And this place is a really important part of the Love Rimurimu kaupapa, isn't it Joe?
This is where you bring in seaweed that you've collected from nature to grow more of it! Tell us more about how it works.
Joe
So what that kind of looks like is we go out into the environment and we find some giant kelp. I then dive down to the bottom of that kelp, and I pick off some of the fertile material that you find down there. Things we call the sori.
We're really lucky because I actually have a beach-cast seaweed with me today.
Andrew
This wasn't ripped off the rock. This is something we found, right?
Joe
So this is something we found, yeah, washed up on the shore.
Andrew
That's why it's the wet room.
Joe
This is why it's the wet lab.
So I can kind of show you what it might look like underwater. We've got the whole seaweed itself. All this is the top of that seaweed – the stuff that you'll see floating up near the surface, with the big old air bladders that lifts these blades up so they can photosynthesize.
And then right down the bottom of the seaweed, next to this big old holdfast that's attached to the rock, we have this big bushy bit. And this is where we find the fertile material of the seaweed – what we call the sori. So these blades down here, they'll be a slightly different colour. They'll be a little bit fatter because they're really, like, full of spores.
And yes, slightly thicker. And they'll have, like, a weird, almost like, thick feeling to them. Can you feel that?
Andrew
Feels pretty thick.
Joe
Feels pretty thick compared to the other ones.
Andrew
Yeah, that feels thin.
Joe
So what we do is we go down and we find some that look real good and we'll pick them off.
Andrew
And you only pick a few from each one?
Joe
Only a few, yeah. So about five from each seaweed. We don't wanna take too many from one seaweed. We don't wanna like, you know, put too much pressure on that specific seaweed. We also want a big range of the seaweeds where, like, the spores we're collecting. Because we want that genetic diversity.
Once we have fertile material, we then bring it back to the lab, we back it up, bring it back here, and then we process it.
Joe
Thank you. So what that looks like normally is we get a bit of ethanol, put it onto a paper towel. Thank you. And then we'd rub down the seaweed. What this does is it sterilises it; removes maybe a little bit of those contaminants that might come in with the seaweed from nature. And we want to make sure afterwards that it's nice and dry.
Once we've done that, we're going to cut around that thicker bit, getting rid of all the excess material, all down the sides, so we're just left with that big chunky sori. And we get rid of all the excess bits because all of that will start breaking down overnight. And we are going to leave this overnight.
This thing goes yep..
Andrew
Yep. So you stack them up in there. And then what do you do with this container?
Joe
Yeah. So we’d stack this until we've used up all the material that we brought in. Weʻd layer it in. We don't really want any of them touching each other. We put another paper towel in as we go, just stacking it up. This gets boxed-up and it gets put into a fridge overnight. What that fridge does to the seaweeds is it stresses it out.
When stuff in nature gets stressed, it kind of like kicks it into overdrive and makes it want to, like, you know, push out babies. It wants to reproduce. It wants to survive.
Andrew
Okay.
Joe
We come back the next day, we get that stuff out the fridge. We then chop it up really, really small.
And then we put it into some sterile seawater with some added nutrients. And then we kind of, like, jiggle it around for a while, stir it. And then all the spores start to drop out and it creates what we call a spore-slurry. That slurry will look really dark, it’ll look kind of like slimy and goopy.
And that's how you know that it's full of all those tiny little spores. Because we can't see them with our naked eye.
Andrew
And then you put them somewhere quite special after that?
Joe
We do. Yeah. So we'll put them in one of two places, both special places. When they start developing into gametophytes; so they start rolling through their life cycle. We'll either put them into a white light incubator and have them start to grow, start to settle, start to turn into seaweed. We can scrape that down, blend it up, and then that can go into our seeding tank, or we can put it into our red light incubator.
Andrew
Interesting. Well, let's go and have a look at the incubator.
Joe
Let's do it.
Andrew
Okay.
Andrew
Okay, Joe, this is your red light incubator. Tell us how it works.
Joe
Aē. So we've made our spore slurry. We've extracted those spores from the fertile material. It goes into a white like incubator for, you know, a little while, a few days, up to a week. Starts developing into gametophytes. At that point, it's going to go one of two places.
We're either putting it into our seeding tank over in our nursery or it comes to our red light incubator. Basically, what this does, like I said before, is it pauses that life cycle. So it'll stop them from growing anymore; stop them from, like, rolling through their life cycle.
Andrew
So it's like a bank – you can store it until you need it.
Joe
Yeah, exactly. Exactly that.
So these guys have been in here for over a year now. They are just paused in their life cycle. They will keep growing like biomass, so they'll keep getting bigger, but they won't continue developing into, like, adult seaweeds.
And that's great because it means that we've just got this… Yeah, like you said, a spore bank. Like a whole bank of just genetic diversity of spores, of like… rather gametophytes from different areas around Wellington.
This means that we can come back for them when we need them. God forbid all the giant kelp around Wellington dies. I don't know, hopefully that's not going to happen, but it does mean that we have somewhere to come back to and somewhere to restart.
It also means that at certain times of the year the giant kelp isn’t fertile, which does happen because it is a seasonal; there is a seasonal cycle to its reproduction. We can kind of come back here again, take some of these guys, scrape them out, blend them up. Doesn't hurt them.
Andrew
Going to say, that’s a bit harsh, blending them up.
Joe
But we blend them up, turn them into fragmented gametophytes and then they can go over into our nursery tank, into our seeding tank, which…
Andrew
Which is the nursery, and that is what you are going to show us next.
Joe
Aē, yeah, I'm going to go show you the nursery.
Andrew
Awesome. That's cool. Thanks, Joe. Looking forward to seeing that.
Growing baby seaweeds
Andrew
So, Joe, you've brought us into the nursery, which you can see behind us. But we're in this general aquarium area at NIWA. And it might sound like we're at the beach because you hear all these waves, but it's these tipper buckets with all sorts of other experiments you got going on.
If you have a look over there, you can see some pāua that they're growing. Don’t think they’ll miss a couple eh, Joe? Some tiny little crayfish – to see how fast crayfish grow. Some massive chilly bins here, which would look great on my boat. But behind us, Joe, is this nursery where you're growing seaweed. Tell us about the setup you've got behind us.
Joe
Yeah, so like you said, this is the seaweed nursery, where I spend quite a lot of my life at this point, growing baby seaweeds.
Everything you can see behind me is kind of in service to one of five things that seaweeds need to grow. Stuff that they have in nature, which we're trying to recreate in an artificial setting. You've got rā | light, so you'll see the big grow lights hanging above the tanks behind me. That helps the seaweed photosynthesize.
You've got, waimakariri, so like, cold water. Especially giant kelp, they really like cold water. So we've got a big fridge unit behind the tank set up, which cools the water coming in. Not that we need it right at the moment, it’s pretty cold in Wellington. We've got au moana, so our circulation. That helps break up that water. It helps oxygenate it and it helps circulate those nutrients across the seaweeds.
Andrew
So those are the big tipper buckets?
Joe
Yeah, the big tipper buckets you'll see just dropping water into the tanks.
Talking about those nutrients, they need taiora. They need nutrients, so we artificially add nutrients to the grow tanks, which obviously feeds the seaweed and helps them grow.
Joe
And lastly, we have waiora. So we have clean, clear water. We have mechanical filters just over here. We have a UV filter on the back of the tanks and that filters all the seawater that comes through; removes physical contaminants. And then the UV will kill like little things that get through that. That means the water that's in the tank is free from, like, stuff that's going to outcompete the seaweed, stuff that might eat the seaweed. And it keeps the water nice and clear so the sunlight, our rā, can penetrate and help that photosynthesis.
Andrew
Sounds amazing, recreating nature. Well, let's go and take a closer look at what's growing in the tanks. Come on.
Okay. So here we are next to the seaweed grow tanks. Joe, talk us through the next part of this process.
Joe
Yeah. So, from the last video, where we made our gametophyte culture, our slurry. That slurry is going to go into the seeding tank right at the end of the system.
Seeding tanks are a little bit different. It's cut off from the main system, there's no tipper bucket because we don't want that, like, extra wave motion to kind of tear the baby seaweeds off the rocks. The lights are also a little bit lower. It’s to give the seaweeds a chance to establish and not like bleach really early on in the cycle. From that point, when they are established and they've started to grow, they come to our main grow tanks, which are included in the system.
They have all the things that we talked about before, like the tipper buckets, more intense light, more food. And then after a few months, you'll end up, hopefully, with a bunch of baby seaweed. Now, this stuff's been in here for maybe about three months. Upwards of about, you know, 8 centimetres on some of these blades, maybe 9 centimetres.
And this stuff is ready to go out into the environment.
Andrew
Baby giant kelps!
Joe
Baby giant kelps. But they're not going to go out like this.
Andrew
Right.
Joe
So, what we're going to do is we detach them from that rock. We get right underneath the holdfast, pull it off the rock. We then take that baby sporophyte, that baby seaweed. We get a bit of string. Open it up. Feed the stipe through that string. Tie it up. Tie it nice and tightly to a big old rock. Chuck it into the sort of, like, the holding tank that's next to me. They'll be in there from anywhere to a day, two days, up to a week. Then once they've had a chance to kind of sit there for a minute, we put them into our big containers, we ship them out to site, and then we put them back out into the environment.
Andrew
It's such a cool process, isn't it? You're taking something from its natural environment. Bringing it into a lab, making a whole lot of seaweed, and then putting them back into nature to regrow rimurimu in the harbour. It’s fascinating.
Joe
It's a really cool process to kind of go from that, that whoa to go; just the whole process.
And, I don't know, through that growing and taking them back out, I do get really, really attached. So, you know, seeing those – my babies – out in the environment, growing and thriving is a really rewarding process.
Andrew
Brilliant. Thanks so much, Joe.
Plant outs and community helpers
Andrew
We've come to Worser Bay Boat Club to meet Hannah. Not to go boating. But Hannah is from Mountains to Sea Wellington.
Hannah, we heard from Joe about collecting the giant kelp, parts of the giant kelp, to take back into the lab at NIWA and grow kelp in the lab; in the laboratory. The next phase is obviously planting that kelp.
So tell us about what happens with that, because this is where it first began, right? Just out the front of the boat club.
Hannah
Yeah. So this is our first original site, which we kind of chose because of the boat club being here. It's a nice spot. We know that there's some already existing macrocystis here, and we thought it was quite a nice, sheltered area. So that's kind of how we decide our sites.
It didn't start off as a very successful site. We had a lot of issues with urchins. We had a lot of issues with the current and the wave exposure here. But it was a really good first trial of our first plant out. And we got to figure out a lot of things in the very first year of our project.
The survival rate was around 8%, which was quite low, but it was our first year, so we were learning how things work.
Andrew
Macrocystis. You're obviously using its scientific name. So, just so you know, giant kelp. But what were some of the problems you were facing? Why was it only an 8% success rate?
Hannah
We first started off using a range of different sizes of rocks, with the idea that smaller rocks we could wedge into rocks, into bigger rocks, where the macrocystis holdfast could grow over, so it could establish better.
But we found that because, even though it seems like a sheltered bay, the wave action lifted all of those up and took them out into the harbour. So we found that was probably… we lost a lot of seaweed that way.
Andrew
Well, I guess that’s part of a process? And you've got to try some things and things don't work. So you make improvements. And so, you shifted the spot and you've now got some pretty good success just over there. You got good kelp growing.
Hannah
Yeah so we very much are just learning while doing. This is.. we've kind of filling a gap in restoration work that hasn't been done before. So we're very much trialling different things, making a lot of mistakes, learning from them.
At the moment, we don't have any in our original spot because we learnt that that's not the best spot for them. And we've moved northward. We've moved along this side here and we've seen really, really good success.
This morning we went for a monitor and we saw 70–80%, which is quite a big increase from last year. So it shows that all the little changes we've made have been working well.
Andrew
So how do you know you're getting success with the kelp growing? What do you do to monitor it?
Hannah
Yeah. So this is something we also trialled a lot. We've done lots of different things.
We first started off using lots of… measuring every single baby kelp that we put out, which was very labour intensive. But now we've learned that that's probably not the best, most efficient way. We've also upscaled our project. So we have around 250 babies at the moment in the water. So now we've moved into a survival count.
So just, out of the… we put ten in one quadrat and we count how many out of ten make it; that survive. And then we do a measurement of the largest baby kelp.
Andrew
It's really important when you're measuring the success of things like this is to go through proper scientific process. And it's not just you and Joe. You've got a lot of helpers. Tell us about them.
Hannah
Yeah. So we've been very fortunate that the Wellington community has been very interested in our project. So we have two programmes of “kelpers”, which are people… helpers of kelp. So we call them our Kelpers.
Andrew
I see what you did there.
Hannah
So first we have our Kura Kelpers. So that's with the school down the road and they’ve been helping us every step of the way, from helping us tie the rocks in the lab, to planting the rocks, to monitoring. And they've been really, really valuable in helping us with this project.
We also have our Community Kelpers. And this was just something that we put out to our contacts; people in our Mountains to Sea collective. And we actually spent quite a lot of time training these community monitors up – teaching them freediving skills, the health and safety, all that sort of thing.
Andrew
It's great that you've got that involvement from the community. You're literally turning people away. And it just shows that, you know, people can get involved in science, really.
Hannah
Definitely.
Andrew
You know, so… and what’s the future vision then?
Hannah
Our future vision is one to get the word out about seaweed and how important it is to the ecosystem. As well as, like, services towards humans as well. It's an ecosystem. It's a habitat. It provides a space and shelter for lots of different organisms. So, that's a really big thing we want to kind of let the community know, that macrocystis used to be everywhere in Wellington and it's on the decline and we're trying to combat that.
So just learning all the little steps along the way. And that way our, kind of, vision is we can share this knowledge so we can restore kelp across New Zealand because it's a declining species. And yeah, it's really important for the ecosystem.
Andrew
Fantastic. Well, I wish you all the very best. And, you know, it sounds like you're making great gains with the kelp, so keep up the good mahi, Kia ora.
Hannah
Thank you. Kia ora.
Tihei Rimurimu
Andrew
Well, Kia ora tātou. Ko Maia tēnei.
And Maia has brought us up to the top of this hill with an amazing lookout. And it's an old pā site – Oruaiti Pā. And a beautiful view on such a sunny… stunning day.
Sunny as well. Here in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, looking out over the harbour. And a lot of history in this area, Maia?
Maia
Yep, yep. So yeah, this is Te Whanganui-a-Tara. The harbour behind us is Te Whanganui-a-Tara. So whanga means harbour. Nui means big. And Tara is one of the chiefs that settled here centuries ago.
The son of Whātonga, one of the great chiefs that migrated here from Hawaiki. So this is Tara's harbour, and that name has carried through for centuries. Yeah. And today, mana whenua here is Taranaki Whānui. So I'm here on behalf of Taranaki Whānui, which consists of five different Taranaki iwi: Te Āti Awa, Taranaki, Ngāti Ruanui, Ngāti Tama and Ngāti Mutunga.
And this is one of the old pā sites. Yeah.
Andrew
Kia ora. And so obviously there's a lot of old names that have carried on through history, but there's one or two that, kind of, ring bells in terms of rimurimu.
Maia
Yeah, yeah. Just around the corner we have Ōwhiro Bay and Red Rocks. It's a really famous spot for a lot of divers.
And just around there is also Rimurapa. So, rimurapa is the Māori name for bull kelp. And if you go around there today there's still a large population of bull kelp. And, yeah, it helps us to understand what the area was like when it was being named that. And it's nice to see that it still resembles that name. And there's still a lot of bull kelp there.
But for a lot of other places that were named, descriptively, they've changed a lot. So, yeah, climate change indicators, if you will.
Andrew
Those connections, you know, to the coast through naming is obviously really important. And that mātauranga that you have of this area and different aspects of it is something that you’ve brought into the Love Rimurimu project. And something you'd like to share with us today is about some natural fibres that have been used to attach little kelps to in the kaupapa. Tell us more about what you've got here.
Maia
So, yeah. We wanted to see how we could use natural fibres. Fibres that Māori have used for centuries in all forms of life. So a lot of these fibres, like harakeke, which a lot of people know about. But then also got the muka, the fibre within the harakeke. And I've got pīngao here as well.
So a lot of these fibres were used for making clothes, to eat, to make shelter. So we wanted to see how we could incorporate that mātauranga Māori into the restoration of giant kelp, into macrocystis.
So I've been testing it to see if we can attach the spores, the rimurimu spores, onto it. And they have worked. Some of them have worked.
I tried harakeke first of all. So I used harakeke to weave mats. But that didn't work because there's natural chemical compounds within harakeke that the seaweeds don't like.
And if you're a weaver, you'll know that there's… when you weave and you accidentally touch your face or your mouth, you can taste kind of a bitter flavour. And it's those compounds that occur in here that the seaweeds don't like.
However, muka is the pure fibre found within… extracted out of harakeke. And because it's such a pure fibre, it worked. I was able to attach some spores onto it. And then I thought about trying pīngao as well. And I knew pīngao had colour in it, like harakeke, so I wondered if there might be some chemical compounds. But because pīngao is from the coast, we thought, let's just try it and give it a go. And it worked.
So now in the labs, I have some rimurimu attached to muka rope and pīngao rope, at the moment.
Andrew
You'd look at that and think that you’d coloured that yellow. But it’s just natural.
Maia
Yeah.
Andrew
It's beautiful.
Maia
It's bright. Yeah.
Andrew
So bringing that mātauranga into, you know, a kaupapa like Love Rimurimu, it must be, you know, it must be a good feeling to be able to bring that knowledge and…
Maia
Yeah. Yeah.
Andrew
And utilise it in such a meaningful way?
Maia
Yeah, definitely. It's nice to kind of bring these two worlds of te ao Māori and te ao Pākehā, and Western science, kind of, together for the wider kaupapa of restoring our harbour and our kelp forests.
Andrew
What does it mean to you to try and bring in something like this as opposed to maybe, like, the plastic alternative?
Maia
Yeah, I think it's hugely important for us as kaitiaki. First to be in the restoration space and be involved. A lot of us want to be involved, but we lack capacity and that kind of knowledge about how to do these things. But also realising that we can bring our mātauranga, our old knowledge, into this space and connect, kind of, these two worlds of mātauranga Māori or te ao Māori and Western science, to help us be the kaitiaki that we want to be in restoring our harbour. Yeah.
Andrew
Ka pai. Well, thanks very much Maia for bringing us up here on such a gorgeous day and just sharing a little bit about what you know and enjoy about the work you do with Love Rimurimu.
Maia
Yeah. Thanks, kia ora.
Andrew
Kia ora.
