Sometimes the foam on the beach is brown which may lead us to think there’s pollution around. A Horizons Regional Council PDF explains though that it isn’t pollution but an algal growth: The brown foam seen on our beaches from time to time is surf algae, also known locally as surf scum. Surf algae are always present in the surf-zone but sometimes there is a population explosion. This is when large amounts of unsightly brown foam makes a nuisance of itself in the surf and on the beach.
New spinifex growth around a large piece of driftwood buried in sand. It feels as though there haven’t been so many people lately sawing up big bits of driftwood on the beach. At the same time, it feels as though the beach is developing rapidly: building up, changing shape, and creating little dunes. Shag perched on driftwood in the sea. Are these two things connected? Well, maybe. A bit of searching led me to this interesting (and brief) Department of Conservation report by Walls, G.
One car stuck in water and another hopes to jump start it. The beach is a risky proposition for vehicles. In the last couple of weeks two stuck cars have been towed out by helpful locals. The drowned car from the photo above is still sitting on the side of the road in the village. Meanwhile the entrance off Manga Pirau Street is very variable. At the start of the week it was badly gouged out and rutted.
With very high tides the sea comes right to the base of and into the dunes. South entrance off Reay Mackay Grove in 2018. The interactive Climate Central | Coastal Risk Screening Tool is extremely interesting and well worth your time to explore if you own a property at Waikawa Beach. For example, if we choose a best-case scenario with a combination of low sea level rise, immediate sweeping cuts to pollutants such as CO2 and good luck then we can see that in 2030 (less than a decade away now) the coastal ends of Manga Pirau Street and James Street are liable to fall below the tideline.
The just-released Ōtaki Beach coastal hazards report is an interesting read. While Ōtaki Beach is not Waikawa Beach, nevertheless it is our next door neighbour and a boundary line on a map doesn’t mean a clear demarcation in physical processes. It would be reasonable to think that the comments about Ōtaki Beach could well apply to Waikawa Beach too.
Surely at the very least, the following paragraph could be generalised to Waikawa Beach too:
Wobbly wooden boardwalk onto the beach. August 2013, north track off Reay Mackay Grove. This boardwalk is now buried below a couple of metres of sand. In spring each year Horowhenua District Council provides spinifex and pīngao plants and over a morning Council staff and volunteers from the community plant them to help build and stabilise the dunes.
Most or all planting has taken place around where the north track off Reay Mackay Grove exits onto the beach.
In November 2021 Arthur Nelson, Property and Parks Manager • Tumu Rawa, Papa Rēhia, Horowhenua District Council emailed about a petition they received on the topic of access for vehicles to the beach at Waikawa: We have a 160 signature petition from Waikawa Beach Residents asking Council to establish a vehicle track on the public land adjacent to the existing access [at 10 Reay Mackay Grove]. Clearly if Council is to consider this it will need a resource consent from Horizons to undertake some land formation works in the coastal dunes.
24 February 2018 looking towards the vehicle entrance. Unfortunately, back in February 2018, Ex Tropical Cyclone Gita moved the river right up to the vehicle entrance and took away swathes of the seaward side of the dunes. That left us with a metre or two of drop between the end of the access track and the water and no way for vehicles to get on to the beach. Particularly frustrating is that the Committee has been actively trying to work with Horizons District Council and Horowhenua District Council for several years now to sort out river control, erosion prevention and vehicle access.
By the time Gita reached us it had lost its Tropical Cyclone status. That didn't stop it from hammering Taranaki, the top and middle of the South Island and the West Coast. Low tide at Waikawa Beach on 21 February 2018 was around 8 am. The river was running strong and full, and very close to the bank of the property at the end of Manga Pirau Street. The river and tide carved out a step about 50 cm high at the vehicle entrance and seem to have eaten into yet more of the Miratana block to the south of the entrance.
Minke whale on Waikawa Beach. From Stuff. On the morning of Tuesday 09 June 2015 local resident Phillip Just discovered this 7.4 metre long minke whale on the Waikawa Beach. An article on Stuff says: Measured at 7.4 metres and rolling in chest deep waves, the baleen whale could not be fully examined until scientists could get to the flippers and blowhole and take more measurements. However, its size and white baleen — its filter feeding mechanism — indicated it could be a Minke.