On The Up: Artificial reefs in Tauranga Harbour aim to restore marine life
'The rest is the circle of life,' Tua said.
Deep Dive Division is a Hamilton-based company specialising in commercial and scientific diving services across Aotearoa.
It is believed to be the only Māori and Pacific-owned dive company in New Zealand, combining Māori perspectives with environmental science and advanced technology.
The nine reefs, situated 13m deep in Tauranga Harbour, were collectively named Peara, meaning 'pearl' in te reo Māori and symbolising the nucleus of change, growth and life, Tua said.
The artificial reefs were also given another name, 'social housing for crayfish', and use natural fibres and marine-grade concrete along with proven techniques in how to deploy and rig them to the ocean floor.
The artificial reef systems have been deployed in the water to biomimic the habitats of our natural marine ecosystems and restore and protect biodiverse native marine life.
Six of the structures were manufactured at Hynds Pipe Systems Ltd under the leadership of Hynds Holdings director and R&D director Aaron Hynds.
The remaining three were constructed using a 3D concrete-printing technique.
The project was a collaboration between Deep Dive Division, the University of Waikato, local iwi, Hynds Pipe Systems Ltd and the Port of Tauranga.
The trial is scheduled to run for an initial period of 24 to 36 months.
The effects of the artificial reefs on marine life are plain to see and happen fast, Tua said.
Tua said when they started installing the second part of the reef, he saw that crayfish were already crawling on the first part.
'It went straight to the hole that was designed for it.'
Projects like Peara were a push into the 'blue economy' and the beginning push into aquaculture, he said.
'We embrace this industry because there will be jobs for local people.'
It was a purpose-driven project, starting with surveying the water and marine life and understanding the situation in Tauranga Harbour in real time, Courntey Karalus said.
There was also a purposeful New Zealand-led and based approach to creating these artificial reefs, she said.
'Many reef systems going in New Zealand are being bought in from Australia.'
Deep Dive Division recognised the strong cultural identity New Zealand has regarding the ocean and freshwater, Courtney said.
'We've got a marine heritage that we need to acknowledge.'
Deep Dive was established in 2018 and was involved with urban ocean agriculture structures, with a more real-world approach to environmental science.
She said the idea for the artificial reef followed the initial meeting with their partners in Tauranga Harbour.
'We were sitting at our home office whiteboard and sketching something up.'
University of Waikato professor Chris Battershill and Professor David Schiel, from the University of Canterbury, have led Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment -funded research to assess marine life loss in the Eastern Bay of Plenty.
Battershill has worked closely on the development of Peara, providing scientific guidance on the conditions needed for marine ecosystems to regenerate.
The Peara reefs were designed to support the growth of seaweed and shellfish, act as a wave break, and attract marine life.
Inbuilt harmonics also helped deter whales and reduce the risk of beaching.
By introducing hard substrates, such as natural marine rock or engineered structures like Peara, the reefs provided essential footholds for marine life to grow in sandy or silty environments that typically lacked structure.
Reef structures and their acoustic properties were designed using mātauranga Māori to support the colonisation of native marine species in harbours, Battershill said.
'These native colonisers help resist the spread of invasive species.'
Native kelps such as Ecklonia and Carpophyllum forest species, along with mats of turfing red seaweeds, provided habitat for important taonga like crayfish, kina and other invertebrates that also served as food for fish, Battershill said.
'These reef outcrops offer refuge for marine biodiversity that is now rare or absent in the harbour.'
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According to a Post review of government statements, court records and news reports, authorities in at least 15 gold-rich countries have brought cases against Chinese nationals and companies over illicit gold mining since the start of 2024. – In Ghana, Africa's top gold-exporting country, officials say Chinese syndicates have laid waste to swathes of Ghana's west and south, and are now moving to the country's north. 'The Chinese Government is doing nothing about it,' said Ghanaian lawmaker Tiah Abdul-Kabiru Mahama, calling the Chinese Communist Party 'complicit' in the destruction. Hundreds of Chinese nationals have been arrested just in recent months. Ghana has tried seeking the help of Chinese authorities, but to little avail, Lands and Natural Resources Minister Emmanuel Armah-Kofi Buah said in an interview. Miners who are deported are routinely able to find their way back into the country, Buah said, adding, 'It has been tough'. – In Indonesia, Asia's biggest gold producer after China, officials at the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources say they receive reports almost daily of illegal gold mines across the country's sprawling archipelago, the biggest of which are linked to Chinese nationals, based on preliminary investigations. In one high-profile case last year, Indonesian authorities asked the Chinese Embassy to help identify its citizens and assist with the probe. 'They were not co-operative,' said an Indonesian official. The Chinese suspects fled Indonesia, the official added. - In French Guiana, an overseas department of France in South America, Chinese investors form a 'crucial logistical chain' in an illicit gold market that the French military spends tens of millions of dollars annually to combat, said the Foundation for Strategic Research (FRS), a defence think-tank funded in part by the French Government, in a 2023 report. 'The involvement of Chinese players,' FRS said, 'is part of a global context of resource capture and predation, encouraged or facilitated by the Chinese government.' Mystery holdings China has been among the world's biggest buyers of gold for over a decade, according to data from the World Gold Council, a trade association. But it's a mystery, analysts say, as to how much gold it actually has – and where it comes from. The Chinese Communist Party is heavily involved in acquiring gold for the state, whether through the People's Bank of China, brokers or via industrial policies that have encouraged retail buying and incentivised gold mining abroad, gold and financial analysts say. In 2017, Song Xin, then president of the China Gold Association, said the Belt and Road Initiative, China's US$1 trillion ($1.68t) global infrastructure programme, is 'also a golden road'. From 2000 to 2024, Chinese state-owned creditors inked 85 loan commitments for gold extraction and processing projects across the Global South, according to data provided to the Post by AidData, a research lab at William and Mary in Virginia. It's now easier for Chinese miners to find work outside China than at home, said Zeng Shanyue, a Chinese gold-mining investor based in Indonesia. Many of those going abroad originate from the southern province of Guangxi, which has a long tradition of mining. But businessmen from elsewhere in China, like his province of Zhejiang, are also moving in. 'Everyone,' Zeng said, 'is mining'. A ute carries gold ore for processing at an illegal gold mine in eastern Indonesia. Photo / Muhammad Fadli, The Washington Post To China's strategic thinkers, it is not enough. 'China's gold reserves are still insufficient and should be increased further,' said Liu Ping, a senior CCP official, in March at the annual meeting of China's top political advisory body. Gold is 'a crucial tool' for the country's national security, said Zhang Zhigang, another party official. While many countries are not fully transparent with their gold holdings, there are exceptionally large discrepancies between what Chinese authorities say they have and independent assessments from trade groups and banks. In a September 2024 research document, Goldman Sachs said its estimates of the Chinese central bank's gold purchases have been in certain months as much as 60 tonnes higher than the central bank declared. Over the course of 2024, said gold analyst Jan Nieuwenhuijs at Money Metals, the People's Bank of China covertly bought 570 tonnes of gold, and it has now accumulated more than twice the gold it says it has. The scale of China's acquisitions is changing the gold market, Nieuwenhuijs told the Post. 'And the reason is that they really see the gold as an alternative to the dollar,' he said. The People's Bank of China did not respond to requests for comment. In a statement, China's General Administration of Customs said it follows 'international conventions' on compiling and publishing information. 'China's gold import and export data is open and transparent,' it said. Given gold's strategic value, it's natural for China's holdings to be 'classified', said Zhao Qingming, an adjunct professor at the School of Finance of the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing. 'No country openly discloses whether its gold reserves are acquired domestically or internationally, or how much is sourced from each channel,' Zhao said. The problem, researchers say, is that this lack of transparency increasingly conceals large quantities of gold that was mined illegally. Martin, a local gold miner in the village of Taliwang on Sumbawa, said he has watched warily as Chinese mining operators spread in nearby communities. 'If they enter here, we can't compete,' he said. Photo / Muhammad Fadli, The Washington Post Conservative estimates place the value of the illicit gold sector at more than US$30 billion or 400 tonnes a year. A study released in 2024 by the non-profit Swissaid found that gold smuggling out of Africa doubled between 2012 and 2022. Individually, unsanctioned mines may be smaller than legal ones. But aggregated over a country, over multiple countries – 'it's a massive, massive amount', said Pete Chirico, associate director of the US Geological Survey's Florence Bascom Geoscience Centre, which provides scientific assessments of resource extraction to the US government. Once smelted, illegal gold is virtually impossible to differentiate from legal gold – and equally as valuable to the world's biggest buyer. 'If you have a strategic interest in gold, you don't want to just rely on the industrial gold-mining sector,' Chirico said. 'You're trying to mop up gold wherever it is.' 'People's mining' Lalu Adimiyat, 40, looked out the window of a muddied Toyota SUV as it bumped along the pockmarked slopes of his village in eastern Indonesia. Stepping out into blustering winds, he caught the eye of a few local men peeking out from tented shafts. He nodded stiffly and turned away. It wasn't safe to stay long, he muttered. Chinese gold-mining investors began arriving here on Lombok island, an hour's boat ride from the holiday destination of Bali, in 2022, said Lalu, a community activist. In his village of Sekotong, locals had mined small amounts of gold for years, scaling the hills on motorbikes and using hand tools to scoop out gold-mottled ores that they sold to traders in the valleys. Indonesian workers move gold ore on the island of Sumbawa, where Chinese mining operators are becoming dominant. Photo / Muhammad Fadli, The Washington Post Indonesian authorities allowed this as long as it remained small-scale, providing permits to citizens for what is called in Indonesian 'tambang rakyat', or 'people's mining'. When Chinese investors came, however, they came with excavators, crushers and pumps that stunned local miners, Lalu recalled. The Chinese built their own processing facilities at the top of hills, installing sprinkler systems to douse ore with cyanide – a chemical that local miners had never used before. They brought in towering Chinese-made mills with rollers that spun 160 times a minute. Soon, Chinese investors were moving quantities of gold in a single day that would take locals months or even years to extract, Lalu said. 'We felt defeated,' he recalled. After several clashes, hostilities boiled over in August 2024 when villagers set a dormitory for Chinese miners on fire. National authorities arrived to find one of the biggest illegal gold mines ever uncovered in Indonesia – an operation that spread across the size of 184 American football fields, producing gold with an estimated market value of US$5.5 million per month. 'I never expected that,' remembered Dian Patria, 58, who inspected the site in October. A plain-speaking, moustachioed bureaucrat in Indonesia's anti-corruption commission, Dian said he has watched Chinese illicit networks spread across Indonesia, corrupting offices from village councils to national ministries, amid a broader expansion in Chinese investment. In the country's far-flung eastern provinces, which he oversees and where mineral deposits are concentrated, the most coveted prize has been gold. 'They are robbing us,' Dian lamented from his office in Jakarta. 'Openly.' Indonesian officials say they are aware of dozens of large-scale illegal gold-mining operations on Sumbawa. Photo / Muhammad Fadli, The Washington Post In previous decades, when American companies such as Newmont dominated gold mining in Indonesia, authorities could rely partly on US and international anti-corruption regulations, such as the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention, to stave off excessive graft. Not so with Chinese operators, who face few barriers to engaging in corruption abroad, Dian said. Indonesia has stepped up efforts to find and prosecute illegal mining syndicates, earlier this year opening a law enforcement arm within its minerals ministry and increasing enforcement against cyanide smuggling rings. The bribing of officials, however, means that even when regulators believe they have found damning evidence, their superiors may not be inclined to prosecute, Dian said. Indonesian authorities have reported major illicit gold operations run by Chinese networks in at least four provinces over the past year. None have led to convictions. In one case in Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of the island of Borneo, authorities found a mine that stretched over 1.5km and employed as many as 80 people. Chinese nationals were brought to trial but then abruptly acquitted – a decision that the Indonesian Judicial Commission later said was marred by ethical breaches and misconduct by judges. In June, one of the Chinese defendants still in Indonesia was retried and given a sentence of three years in prison and a fine of US$1.8m. Haruki Agustina, director of climate change mitigation at the Indonesian Environment Ministry, said she thought the punishment was insufficient given the mine's damage to the environment, particularly with regard to the unregulated use of cyanide. 'Way, way too low,' she said in an interview. Villagers have long fished on Lake Lebo in Taliwang. Now, they say it is becoming contaminated with chemicals like mercury and cyanide from illegal gold mines. Photo / Muhammad Fadli, The Washington Post On Lombok, internal Indonesian government documents obtained by the Post say the illegal mine in Sekotong encroached into protected forest area, and operations were carried out by three companies – two led by Chinese nationals and one by Indonesians – none of which had the requisite permits. In addition, the documents say, there are dozens more illicit mines on Lombok and its neighbouring islands that the Government is aware of. The Sekotong investigation, which was handed over to police last year, has stalled, said a senior official at the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources, adding that the reasons have not been shared with the ministry. The police did not respond to requests for comment. When Post reporters visited Sekotong in May, the police lines set up last year had been torn down. Trucks brimming with gold ore trundled along cliff edges, and the mines appeared operational. Lalu sucked his teeth as he raised his phone to take a video. 'No, no, no accountability,' he said. Beijing's 'plundering' In January, hundreds of people in the Democratic Republic of Congo demonstrated against what they called the 'plundering' of the country's gold by Chinese operators. Asked about the demonstrations, Guo Jiakun, a spokesperson for China's Foreign Ministry, said, 'The Chinese Government always asks Chinese citizens and companies overseas to strictly observe local laws and regulations.' Officials in gold-rich countries, however, say Beijing has done little to enforce that sentiment. Chinese authorities have been unco-operative in efforts to identify and deter Chinese nationals responsible for illicit gold mining, according to international investigators and officials in Ghana and Indonesia. Chinese authorities have also withheld data that could help quantify and track illicit gold flows, and are noticeably absent from multilateral discussions on the topic, researchers say. In May, for example, at the 2025 OECD conference on responsible mineral supply chains in Paris – widely seen as the most important annual forum on the topic – a small Chinese delegation spoke about industrial mining but did not participate in discussions on illicit flows, attendees said. In these conversations, 'China is the missing elephant in the room', said Guillaume de Brier, a researcher at the International Peace Information Service, a Belgium-based institute focused on mining in the African Great Lakes region. 'We talk about them,' he said. 'They are not there.' Futile resistance Indonesian villagers on Sumbawa have done artisanal mining for decades, using hand tools to extract and refine gold. Photo / Muhammad Fadli, The Washington Post Artisanal mining in the village of Lantung dates back decades, locals say. But large-scale mining only began three years ago, when a middle-aged Chinese man known to villagers as 'Mr Xi' began striking deals with smallholders to dig on their land. He promised compensation that did not materialise, villagers said. But attempts to protest have had little effect. Runoff from the gaping pits on the mountaintops is killing crops. Every week, it seems, cattle downstream of the mine's cyanide pools drop dead, locals say. 'Everything you see here, that hill and that hill and that one. … Everything you see that is stripped land is the Chinese,' said Sabuddin, a local villager. Wearing a long-sleeved shirt that hung loose on his scrawny frame, Sabuddin, 49, who like many Indonesians goes by only one name, stood perched on a jagged bluff. He said he did 'rakyat' mining, working with a hammer and pickax. He dug sometimes in areas like this one, which Chinese operators had excavated and then abandoned, Sabuddin said. But he had never mined for the Chinese. 'They work illegally,' he explained. 'I don't want to be involved in all that.' Yet, looking across the jungles he'd trekked through as a boy, he sometimes felt a sense of awe at the scale of the Chinese operation, he said. He pointed out a building with zinc roofs on the opposing crag – a dormitory for workers who guard the illicit mine. Even when night falls, the lights in those buildings don't turn off, he said. The crushers keep whirring; the excavators keep inching forward. Locals couldn't run an operation like this, Sabuddin said. 'No,' he continued. 'Only the Chinese.'
RNZ News
6 minutes ago
- RNZ News
A boom in businesses going bust
Dragonboat restaurant opened in the 1990s, and is now going into liquidation, owing at least 1.4 million dollars to creditors. Photo: RNZ / Yiting Lin New Zealand is riding its highest wave of company liquidations in more than a decade, with thousands of businesses folding and countless livelihoods caught in the crossfire. Many more are holding on, but just. In the first half of this year alone, 1270 businesses have shut their doors - a 12 percent increase on this time year. It's now anticipated that the total number of liquidations for the year will surpass 2024's 10-year high, when 2500 companies folded. That was an increase of nearly 700 compared to 2023. The numbers have been soaring since the pandemic. Deloitte partner Rob Campbell, who specialises in business restructuring, turnaround and cost transformation, tells The Detail the country "is getting closer to the peak but there is still a bit to play out". "There is no sector that's immune, no business too big or too small to fail," he said. "And [the debt] can be as simple as a few thousand dollars through to several million dollars." Newsroom business reporter Alice Peacock told The Detail that construction and hospitality are the worst-affected industries. "Small businesses have been hit harder from what I have seen in liquidation lists ... I think that's because for that size of company, it's harder for them to recover those costs and move on financially. "Probably what we are seeing hit the headlines doesn't fully represent what's actually happening. "Hospitality businesses ... are consumer-facing, they are the company names that people know, so they're more likely to be reported on than the smaller, local, maybe family-run scaffolding companies or your local roofer." One of those hospitality businesses is Auckland's Dragonboat Restaurant, which announced this week that it is going into liquidation. Opened in the 1990s, it now owes at least 1.4 million dollars to creditors. And it's these sorts of debts that can leave suppliers and subcontractors chasing unpaid invoices, triggering further closures, Campbell said. And this domino effect can be devastating. "It also has flow-on impacts to affected suppliers; they're out of pocket, that impacts their own business," he said. "They might be going through a period of stress as well, and the last thing they need is to, one, lose a customer and also have that customer not pay them as well. "So it can have a bit of a spiral effect." The cost of living crisis, rising unemployment, high interest rates, and a lingering Covid-19 impact are behind the increase in businesses folding. "Some of this feels like it was playing out two or three years ago, and there is a real lag effect from when stress is first experienced by a business to when it may become ultimately insolvent," Campbell said. But he and Peacock believe there is hope on the horizon. "Businesses are closing down, but businesses are also opening up," Peacock said. "I was at a hospitality conference a couple of months back in Wellington, and there were some really amazing stories to come out of that. "No-one was trying to pretend that it hadn't been a tough few years but there was one lead speaker who mentioned the number of liquidations but then was also trying to debunk a perception about the industry that it was all doom and gloom... and pointed to numbers that show... company incorporations, so those cafe and restaurant businesses that are opening, have also risen. "I don't think anyone would say the economy is clearly in a recovery phase yet. But there definitely do seem to be signs that things are improving... people have been speaking of better times on the horizon." Check out how to listen to and follow The Detail here . You can also stay up-to-date by liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter .
