1 (TRANQUIL MUSIC) New Zealand, deep in the South Pacific, is comprised of three main islands, which altogether add up to some 15,000km of coastline. Rich in history and positively alive with geology. Coast is back for a brand-new season, continuing to tap the wild and wonderful narrative of this young nation by the sea and of the sea. (MAJESTIC MUSIC) (GASPS) Oh, there's one! Oh, yep. Yep. Oh my goodness. How fantastic is that? You have such a special job. Oh, that's so wrong. This new series will take us around Aotearoa, from pristine Stewart Island in the south to Christchurch and beautiful Banks Peninsula, up through Hawke's Bay, around the verdant Coromandel Peninsula, into the shadow of majestic Mt Taranaki. And we begin our expedition on the West Coast. (DRAMATIC MUSIC) It gives a whole new meaning to wild, wild west. It's a long, thin stretch, never more than 70km across, trapped between the brutal, pounding Tasman Sea on the one side and the almost impenetrable Southern Alps on the other. The people who carve a life here are famously robust, isolated by geography and tempered by extreme weather. It's an exciting adventure, and our team of experts is back for more. In this opening episode, geologist Dr Hamish Campbell probes the blood, sweat and engineering of black gold. Looks quite alarming, looking down there. (CHUCKLES) It just seems to drop away. Marine biologist Jacky Geurts asks how to sustain a cherished tradition. You can even figure out their birthday, so the day they hatched as a larvae in the river. (CHUCKLES) So, yeah. Marine archaeologist Matt Carter takes on wild waters. That's pretty major. The direction of the wind and the swell and stuff like, it's more` more difficult. And writer Riria Hotere beachcombs for a true Kiwi treasure. I can see you're really chuffed. Yeah, I feel pleased. (LAUGHS) Yeah, I can see you're really... And so you should be. We're on the West Coast, and this is Coast New Zealand. ('COAST' THEME) Captions by Julie Taylor. Edited by Ashlee Scholefield. www.able.co.nz Captions were made possible with funding from NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2017 Our journey along the West Coast moves through Greymouth, up to Charleston, Westport and Granity, to finish at a river somewhere near Mokihinui. New Zealand tells the world that it's the home of a last vestige of nature in the raw. Well, I'm on my way to meet a couple of guys who tell me that if I follow their lead, I'll be able to reach out and touch something wild, something pure. In Charleston, on the giddy edge of a cliff, New Zealand roars at you in a kind of immense, natural haka. President of the West Coast Alpine Club Jason Blair has offered up his time and considerable skill so that I can join him and his mate Troy for a walk on the wild side. Good. So this is where you come to do this? This is where we come. This is the spot. What I notice against the` the` the little bit of climbing that I've done is that this one drops straight into the water, into the sea. Yeah. That really, um, is a` is a key feature of` of climbing here at Charleston. The` The cliffs dropping straight into the sea gives you a real sense of the exposure and` and adventurousness of the whole thing. Today, we're maybe gonna climb part of a climb called Shark's Breakfast, which (CHUCKLES) is a nice intimidating name. Oh great (!) And it's named that because you traverse out over a surge pool, and swells come crashing in, so having that proximity to the sea and` and potentially getting wet ` the rock can` can stay wet. Um, at any tide, in any swell, you'll get a rogue wave, and that presents a unique danger. New Zealand, as I understand it, sells itself as offering the pure and the wild ` the natural experience. Is that true here? Yeah, I think so. I moved here specifically for that kind of feeling ` that adventurous wildness, um, the freshness, the isolation, and this spot to climb in, um, really is the pinnacle of that, uh, experience. If I get into trouble here, can you get me out of it? I'll get you out, no problem. These are snug. Is that good? That's a good thing, yeah, yeah. It's all about power. Now, we want that nice and high, uh, above your hips, and then nice and snug, so that if you should... Well, you go ahead and tighten. For some unknown reason, if you should turn upside down, we` we don't want you slipping out. I beg your pardon? (BOTH CHUCKLE) With shoes a size too small, designed to grip the sheer surface, a harness that attaches me to the ropes, and my trusty helmet, I'm as ready as I'll ever be. All right, so, how are you feeling, Neil? Well, I can confidently report that every part of my body's uncomfortable. Perfect. That means you're ready to go. Yeah, some of it's even sore. Good. (MAJESTIC MUSIC) All right. Hey, mate. Head straight down on to that ledge. Beautiful. And then kinda walk across the ledge to me. Do I look like I know what I'm doing? Absolutely. (LAUGHS) Cos I'm` Cos I'm bluffing. All right, just hold there, and just kind of walk your way across. I'm gonna grab on to you when you get close enough. Yeah, that's awesome. You feeling secure? I am. Little bit nervous? Always. Always. (CHUCKLES) I mean, what immediately strikes me, compared to any, uh` I've only done a little bit of rock climbing, a little bit of abseiling. But it's the presence of the sea ` it's that booming presence. Is that part of the magic, do you think? Absolutely part of the magic. Yeah, that's` I think that's a big part of what makes Charleston special and distinct from climbing anywhere else in New Zealand, quite frankly. I mean, here you've got the` the surge pool directly below you, uh, blowholes blowing, uh, waves crashing. It really has atmosphere. Am I OK to go? Yeah. Yeah? You're away laughin'. (MAJESTIC MUSIC) You know, here in Charleston, on the wild west coast of the South Island, hanging on for grim life, I can't help picturing where I am in the world. You know, I live in Scotland, up in the northern hemisphere, so my mind is filled with an image of myself hanging off of the very bottom edge of the world. If you're gonna do something so precarious ` here, it's worth it. (MAJESTIC MUSIC CONTINUES) I'd recommend a nice, high step here. It's all about the leg. It's gonna do all the work for ya. That's it. Magic. Oh, the things you find yourself doing. I don't want to prematurely congratulate you, but well done. Thank you. We've got a wee bit to go to get up the top. Spectacular. MAN: Well done. (LAUGHS) These are moments that you get from time to time, where someone like me ` you know, I'm not a climber, I'm not an adrenaline junkie, so I only get the occasional glimpse ` but when you do something like this, when you have those times when your life depends on what you're actually doing moment by moment, you do feel present. You feel fully conscious. And then you get to the top, and you look out, and it's... it's just a wonder. It's just a natural wonder. And you get to be a tiny, infinitesimal speck in amongst it all. (MAJESTIC MUSIC) Up next ` they called it the eighth wonder of the world. It was gold that lured the first Europeans here in the 1860s, but by 1880, it was black gold. 1 (SERENE MUSIC) What is it that drives humanity to the farthest reaches of the Earth? Well, a spirit of adventure, which usually becomes a land grab, or as the movies had it, 'There's gold in them thar hills.' And just up the coast from Westport, there were not hills, but literally mountains of a different cut of gold. Hamish Campbell takes on Denniston's unforgiving terrain to dig up a little history on what's known here as the eighth wonder of the world. It was gold that lured the first Europeans here in the 1860s, but by 1880, it was black gold ` coal ` driving ambition, driving the economy. It was described as the best coal in New Zealand, and the best of the best was up here on the Denniston Plateau, 600m above the coast. Dense seams of bituminous coal ` or soft black coal ` a vital ingredient for making steel. But this was no easy mining feat. I want to know how they got coal from the clouds ` from up here ` to down there. But first, I'm asking local exploration geologist Stu Henley ` how and why is coal found up here? What have we got here? Cos here we are at 500m, 600m above sea level. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This was formed close to sea level 44 million years ago, and now it's up here at 500m, so it's been brought up as New Zealand, I suppose, has come out of the sea in the last two million years, and it's been faulted up here, relative to the coast. Right. It's... Yeah. So it's actually... I mean, it's here because of plate collision, I guess. Basically. It was 19th century explorer and geologist Julius von Haast who first identified the region's rich coal seams. Haast first found the coal seam up here in 1860, took a sample away, and soon thought, 'This is really great coal,' and at that time, New Zealand was importing, you know, over 100,000 tons of coal from Newcastle, Australia. So this must've kick-started the New Zealand economy, in many ways? Oh, great` great demand, uh, with the, um` this coal from here, which had, you know, high, very high calorific value, so great for steaming. We had so many steam ships, a lot of freezing works, railways, town gas. Yeah, so it was in huge demand. Then came the issue of transport ` how to shift the coal down to the coast and on to trains and ships. This must've been a very significant engineering feat in its day. Getting coal from here at 550m down to 50m at Conns Creek, where the trains came to... Right. A 500m drop? Yeah, 500m drop and a grad` overall gradient of 1 in 3. Which means for every 3m horizontal, there's a 1m drop vertically. Stu, here we are at the top of the incline. It looks quite alarming looking down there. (CHUCKLES) It just seems to drop away. Carved out of a dramatically steep mountainside, diving down 1.7km in two sections to the coast, this was the Denniston Incline ` a self-acting rail system that hauled the coal down, while also returning empty wagons to the top. With a wagon load of 12 tons, and accelerating up to 80km/h, dangerous would surely top the job description. Mining began in 1862, peaking in 1914 with nearly 1.4 million tons extracted by 2500 workers. And while the men hauled coal all day and night, their families weren't necessarily enjoying life on the plateau. With a notorious climate and bleak conditions, they lived on the edge as a hard-won, close-knit community. Quite a challenge, particularly for the families. The womenfolk and the children had to come up this` the incline to get up here. They must've had to cope with isolation? Yes. That` That must've been really hard. Even getting down to Westport for some shopping was` would've been quite a` quite a trip. Well, there was only probably about a thousand people in Westport at that time as well. The advent of hydroelectricity and diesel fuel eventually closed the incline in 1967, but the aerial ropeway, built in 1953, continues the plateau's pioneering marvel of engineering, shunting coal down from Stockton's giant opencast mine 5km north-east of Denniston. The original question was how do you get coal from the clouds down to this magnificent coast here? And the answer quite simply is technology ` technology over nature. And one has to admire the sheer tenacity of the West Coasters who have made this happen, and still are. (MYSTERIOUS MUSIC) There's an enchanting part of this coastline that few people can get to. The rock stacks of Motukiekie are visible from the main highway that snakes around the coast, but it's just about impossible to get down to them through the steep, bush-covered bluffs. And the narrow tidal zone waits for no one. Motukiekie is a marine wonderland. Towering cliffs draped in all manner of vegetation, sculpted sea stacks, huge boulders scattered around as though strewn by a giant's hand. And in amongst the rock pools, I've come in search of one of this coastline's more mysterious characters ` the starfish. Third-generation West Coaster Leon Dalziel's property overlooks this secluded strip of coast, and he comes down most days to lose himself in Neptune's middle earth. Motukiekie is also known as Starfish Bay. At low tide, the foreshore shrugs off the waves and turns on a dazzling display, as a brightly coloured colony emerges. So, they're a` they're a reef starfish. OK. Um, we just happen to have a lot of them around here in these little channels. Why are they so drawn to this geology? Is it because of what they eat? Yeah. They love mussels. They tend to feed on mussels, and that's what attracted them to here. So, basically, it sits over the top of the mussel and dissolve and eat it away from underneath. Oh, it's quite horrifying. It is a little bit. They're like the facehuggers from the Alien films. Absolutely. Yeah. They clamp on. Do you think you can pick one up? We'll have a` We'll have a go here, Neil. This one's sitting nicely. (CHUCKLES) It's like the veritable limpet. We're absolutely... Oh wow. He is really stuck on there well. Goodness me. But there we are. Right. Look at that. So, that's the mouth parts in there, presumably? Yeah, that's right. Oh, look, these bits are moving. Yeah, the whole thing moves. He suckers himself on to the rocks... Right. ...and grabs on. And there's actually little crabs here. Yeah. Ooh gosh! There's a tiny little crab there, and there's another one there. So why are they on the underside of a starfish? They've probably been seeking shelter, or they may actually be getting eaten, more likely. Ah! Oh, nightmares. Looks like that one's still kind of living, but this one looks as though he's actually been eaten. Oh, so he's been jellified. It has. It's all soft there, and there's another little crab over there as well. Oh, it's being turned into seafood chowder while we watch. (CHUCKLES) It has. So, we'll put this` this wee fella back, and he'll grip back on to the rock like nothing had happened. OK. We'll leave him to it. Motukiekie rock stack photos appear in tourist brochures and websites, but their location is always omitted. There's a good reason for this ` not only are the limestone rocks unstable, but the beach can only be accessed an hour either side of low tide, so if you stray beyond that, you'll be swept away into the blue beyond. What's pulled you and held you here? Um, I think the wildness of the landscape and, um, the coast and the bush and the sea. I, uh` I get a bit, um... a bit toey when I'm away from the coast for too long, away from the sea air and the sea breeze. There's a sense of the primordial here, with the forest there, it looks as though nothing as changed for it in the last... That's right. Yeah. ...however long. And it's so close too, you know. The bush is` really just starts, um, just at the beach here. These amazing, dramatic cliffs. Um, yeah, it is ` it's an amazing little spot. I'm loath to go, but I'll have to. Absolutely. I'll leave you here in paradise. Great to meet you. You too, Leon. All the best. Next ` There must've been a lot of ships that came to grief here. There was eight ships lost there lives here. Eight ships? Eight ships. 1 (MAJESTIC MUSIC) The West Coast is isolated for a reason. Historically, this wild and unforgiving sea has repelled even the most experienced of mariners. But by 1860, the promise of riches from gold, and then coal, was too tempting to ignore any more. Matt Carter has trekked down to the ghost town of Charleston to investigate the legacy of hard men and the sea. Thanks to the Southern Alps, access to the West Coast by both land and sea was extremely challenging. Small bays like this were the only ways of getting miners and supplies in. It's a perfect storm of geography. Steep rivers rush down from the nearby alps, hurling sediment into surging ocean currents churned by furious gales. In the 1860s, Charleston was deemed vital to service the gold rush. Skippers would sail here, with grim determination, to breach this small raging gap in the coastline. Max Dowell is a local legend of surf and marine rescue, and keeper of many a story of the West Coast. Max. Yeah. Hello. Hello. Nice to meet you. Just looking out there today, I mean, it's` its amazingly rough. They must've been terrified of` of coming in here, but they would have to because of the money. They'd have to, because they` they would get no money from anywhere unless they came in to discharge their cargoes or their passengers. So they took risks. Can you describe how they would've actually got the ships through the mouth here? The ships would've come in` Originally, they tried to sail straight in, but then they put ringbolts into the sides of the cliff, and the crew would row ashore with the lifeboat, and put ropes into them, and on to the ship, to guide the ship and hold it amidship in the channel. During this would happen, they'd leave their anchor out there, and the anchor was then used to get the boat back out through the entrance when they were ready to go again. There must've been a lot of ships that came to grief here. There was eight ships lost their lives here. Eight ships? Eight ships. The first one was the Emerald Isle. The Emerald Isle had come in and successfully unloaded here, and on her way back out again, she hit a rock out there and, uh, lost with all hands. Even with no jetty, Charleston became a boomtown. Accounts of hundreds of vessels forging the so-called 'hole in the wall' were tempered by wrecks and surf boat disasters. In 1874, Addison's Flat road was cut through, and the port trade began to languish. Once, this town had up to 80 hotels and a thriving merchant class. Now it's returning to bush. 20 minutes north, Westport is the big town at the top of the West Coast. It too owes it's beginnings to gold prospecting. Then came wealth from coal and cement exports. Yeah, gidday, Matt. How are you? Harbour master Mike Graham explains the competing currents and air pressure that beset the port's entrance. That's what makes it such a notorious port, really, is the` is the actual` the bar itself. It's actually getting across the bar. It's only a small area. You know, it's just really from the entrance here, out to about half a mile. So this is where we get all the movement. Because we get the shallow water, we tend to get the tidal set. We can either have an easterly set, which is pushing us to the east; westerly set pushing it that way. So then you have the wind and the waves` uh, the waves and the swell, which may get you on the beam, so they can turn you over. Because the water is shallower here than there, this is where we get all the action. These are some of the most treacherous waters in the world. Westport shares the ominous distinction with Greymouth to the south of being the most difficult ports to navigate in New Zealand, and today, we're going to attempt an outing over the notoriously shifting sandbar. What's it gonna be like? Well, you've picked a particularly, um, dull and dreary day in Westport. It's not always like this, I can assure you. Uh, the bar itself is not very good today. Um, there is quite a good sea and swell, so it will be quite uncomfortable, but that's what bars are all about, so, um, hopefully you'll enjoy it. It's a menacing run, which skipper Trevor James doesn't trifle with. As you can see, it's not very nice out there today. It's, um... As far as working in small boats, it's getting up to its limit, you know. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's looking pretty sloppy out there. I can't say I've been through anything quite like that before. (LAUGHS) They're not nice places to be when they get ugly, you know, because you don't get too many chances. You've gotta sorta have your wits about you and be on the case. So we're starting to feel a few rollers coming in through now. Yep. Is that just the direction of the wind or...? Well, the` the Buller River faces north, and we've got a northerly, north-westerly type, uh, wind and swell today, so this is probably the worst of the weather for us, because it's coming straight down the river, so that's what's causing us to` to start to pitch like this. And you can get 4 to 6 knots pushing you bodily across, so you've gotta` you've gotta alter to keep out of the shallow water. So that` that shallow point, I mean, how quickly can that change? It changes overnight here. I mean, we've had situations where we've taken soundings on one day, and the following day, we've lost a metre. We'll go and stick our nose out, I think. Excellent. Give it a shot. Yeah, give it a shot. So, we'll` we'll just go out to the half mark, Curly, huh? Yeah. If we're gonna go, everyone'll have to hang on, that's all. (CHUCKLES) And so how far do we have to go to get through? Oh, a couple or 300m. (THUD!) Bit of excitement. Whoa. (THUD!) That's pretty major. Eh? That's pretty... (CHUCKLES) I seen a wee Hector dolphin there then. (CHUCKLES) Is that because we've turned into a submarine? (CHUCKLES) The direction of the wind and the swell and stuff like that ` it's more` more difficult. It's pretty good now. It's flattening off now. Yeah, we've got` we've got 3.2 fathoms under us. I like how the way you guys were saying it wasn't too bad, but I'm glad I've got two handles, that's for sure. (LAUGHS) If it's OK with everybody, we'll head back in. We're just surfing down the wave on that? Yeah. Just the` the waves just pick you up, and... And, like, you're talking about a little boat here that's 15 ton, and I` you know, you've got a big wave. You've got a lot of tonnage of water. In a situation like that, if you turn round and put yourself beam to sea, then you can see why you have the incidents that you have. Yeah, so just side on, you're... Because you're gonna turn over. Yeah, you're just gonna turn over, yeah. We've now negotiated the bar, and from here on in, she's all good going up the river. So you're saying I can let go of the handles now? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can prob` You can probably hang on. (BOTH CHUCKLE) Coming up ` myth, magic and making jewels from stones. OK, so it's there somewhere. Can you see it? 1 (SERENE MUSIC) To be sure, in the mountains and rivers that cut and shape the West Coast, all that glitters is not gold. In fact, there's something here that's far more valuable. It's of the Earth, yet carries spiritual significance beyond its natural strength and beauty. According to the Maori, the taniwha is a supernatural creature. He's usually depicted as a serpent, lurking in a watery lair. He can either be a benign presence or a malevolent one. Poutini, the taniwha that swims up and down the West Coast, is a protector of both the Ngai Tahu people and also of their highly prized natural treasure ` pounamu, or greenstone. The story goes that Poutini abducted a beautiful young woman, Waitaiki, in the North Island, and fled south, with her enraged husband in hot pursuit. Determined not to give her up, Poutini turned her into pounamu and laid her in the Arahura riverbed, ensuring that from that day, this river would be a rich source of the desirable jade-hued stone. That said, Maori profess pounamu is never found, it reveals itself, as author Riria Hotere is hoping, as she steps into the ethereal realm of greenstone. On a beach near Greymouth, I'm hoping to happen upon some pounamu of my own, with the help of artist Ian Boustridge, who shares a reverence for greenstone. What I can see are just sand, pebbles, ocean... How do I distinguish pounamu? It could look like a piece of broken glass, right, that has been water polished. Like, when you walk on the beach and sometimes find a piece of bottle that's been... so it's green and translucent. Or you will see a green leaf on the beach, and it's bright green. Uh, so that's what you're looking for. Ian has devoted 40 years to understanding and working the stone to reveal it in a variety of unique ways. There are many types of pounamu. Each is given an identity that corresponds with the world around it, named after native birds, fish and plants. OK, so it's there somewhere. Can you see it? See it? Is that it there? Yes, that's it. That's it. Wow. It really does look different, eh? The texture of it. Yeah. Yeah, and it feels very smooth, so, it's got that, uh... Feels like skin. It feels like skin, right? (LAUGHS) Yeah. It really does. And then if you hold it up to the light... It's sort of like a yellow glow on the edge, on the tip. Yeah, that's a` Yeah, it's a` a bluey` bluey, greeny, yellow glow. (CHUCKLES) Yeah. So, um, it's a piece of inanga, so it's the whitebait jade. So, it's whitebait season. You're pretty lucky to find a whitebait. Why is it called inanga? Why is it called after whitebait? Well, because the colour is a beautiful pale blue colour, same colour as whitebait in a bucket. And when I see it, I see there's little stripes. That's also part of it. They kind of look like... They kind of look like whitebait. Yeah. (CHUCKLES) I can see you're really chuffed. Yeah, I feel pleased. (LAUGHS) Yeah, I can see you're really... And so you should be. That's` That's great. In part, the value of pounamu comes from the many hours needed to shape it into tools or ornaments. Like steel, the stone must be worked over weeks or months, consuming the life of its creator. Uh, the characteristic of pounamu is its hardness and toughness, and the toughness comes from the fibre. That actually looks like wet cardboard. Well, it's called actinolite, and this fibre also looks like fibreglass. And so, you know, it's this fibre, compressed by the tectonic forces associated with the alpine fault that alter this mineral into pounamu. So heat plus pressure gives us pounamu? Gives pounamu from this mineral. On a scale of one to 10, uh, how tough is pounamu? It's about six to six and a half. Is that good? It makes it harder than steel, harder than tungsten, but not as hard as diamond, which is 10, of course. Wow. (DRILL WHIRRS) (REFLECTIVE MUSIC) Like greenstone in a riverbed, from all this clutter, there is a certain magic that transforms the unremarkable and massive into the lustrous and exquisite. Born of the mountains, and carried by river to the coast, greenstone is a South Island phenomenon. What are we gonna do with this little guy? Well, we'll put it on a cord... So I get to take it home? You get to take it home. You weren't kidding? No, I wasn't kidding. So it's gone from being just another stone on the beach, lost in the landscape, you've found it, and now you can take it home, and wear it. And look at that. Wow. Thank you, Ian. They say that diamonds are a girl's best friend, (CHUCKLES) but not this girl. This girl prefers pounamu. It brings together technology, tectonic forces and tangata whenua into a taonga ` a treasure. (ACOUSTIC GUITAR MUSIC) Squeezed on to a sliver of land between an ever-shifting alpine fault and a tempestuous Tasman Sea, Granity is a small town with an existential issue. The hazards are all too real here. Hamish Campbell goes in search of the local school that's been engaged in a long battle with the sea, which it looks unlikely to win. What is the worth of a sea view? For most, it's just a dream, but not here in Granity, where you can have your own bit of coast, or it can have you. This is a living example of what nature gives, but it can also take. In the case of this tiny town, what's being taken is quite literally the ground beneath their feet, swallowed by coastal erosion. Coastal erosion is caused by waves, tidal currents and wind wearing away the land. The sand and gravel that's stripped away is then carried to other beaches by ocean currents in a process known as accretion. Some beaches alternate between erosion and accretion. (BELL DINGS) The land on which Granity School stands is eroding, so it's an unrivalled but devastating sea view. Hello, Megan. Oh, hello, Hamish. Megan Rich is school principal. I love the sound of the sea. It's just roaring away. This must be the closest school to any part of the New Zealand coast. I would say so. It's, uh` It's just lovely. We arrive at school... the kids arrive at school, you walk up on the veranda and you can see the waves rolling in. Great. Yeah. Are you able to take us and show us what's happened in terms of the coast in recent years? Well, I` I can show you. I can't show you the old tennis courts that used to be out there. Why? Where is it? It's, uh` (CHUCKLES) It's been swallowed up. But, um, I can take you and show you the remains of our, um` our once glorious pool. OK, so this is the perimeter fence that's replacing the one that got taken out by a king tide. So, here's the pool. Let's say 10m, 15m away. Yep. And we've actually got rocks in the pool. That's what actually, um, decommissioned the pool, was the rocks being thrown into the, um` into the pool. I see. Right. So this has been out of commission for just over five years. Yep. Yep. Something like that. You can see their predicament clearly from higher up. The school's sea wall juts out further than all other beach properties. (CHILDREN CHATTER) Leading with its jaw, that rocky perimeter has been repaired three times by the government at a cost of more than $200,000. ALL CHANT: Go, Blue. Go, Blue. Go, Blue. Go, Blue. Before the final bell, the kids take to the field for a game of ki-o-rahi ` (CHILDREN LAUGH) unique and agile, just like this community. Thinking about the big picture, uh, what's the future? What does the future hold? Well, if we can hold the sea back,... Yeah. ...we stay, and while there's a heartbeat ` and there's a, you know` there's a real strong heartbeat in this community ` I think that it should stay open. and if we have to relocate and move to higher ground, then that's` that's what I think we should do. One of the things I was really impressed by, talking to the children, they didn't regard the erosion here as a special problem. Not really. No. And I... It just struck me, 'Wow, this is` this is typical West Coast resilience.' We don't see these as insurmountable problems, so, yeah. So this school will go on forever. We will. Come what may. We will. Next ` a spoonful of science makes the whitebait go down. Oh! First go. I got it. (CHUCKLES) Whoo-hoo! (CHUCKLES) 1 (SOFT MUSIC) Travelling north, and the little villages and hamlets that cling to the rugged coastline fade away. But come September, even the most remote river mouth attracts a particular crowd. It's whitebait season, and marine biologist Jacky Geurts is at Mokihinui River to investigate how science can help prolong a cherished Kiwi ritual. Whitebait are fingerlings that hatch upriver, are carried out to sea, and after about a year, they return to swim upstream, grow into adults, and begin the cycle again. These tiny, transparent juveniles are the young of some of New Zealand's precious native fish. What I want to know is how you balance supply and demand with the call of tradition. We know about declining fish stocks, and so with all things fishing these days, there are rules ` on nets, location and season ` from the start of September until mid-November. And although it's tempting to profit, recreational whitebaiters are only supposed to catch enough for personal consumption. At $100 a kilo, this white gold has to be sustainable. Local accounts about the seasonal catch vary, so science needs to provide hard data on the ebb and flow of whitebait along this coastline. Eimear Egan is a PhD student at the University of Canterbury. Most people don't actually realise there are five different whitebait species, because you look in the bucket, and they all look quite similar, and sometimes it's hard to tell. So what do you need to do to understand their life cycle? Because they're very small when they hatch ` they're only about 7mm ` and they` they literally get swept straight out to sea, there's no opportunity for us to put a tagging device on them or a GPS to track them at sea. (LAUGHS) It would weigh them down. Yeah. Yeah. It's... We're technologically constrained. So I have to use an alternative technique, and that is to look at their ear bone, or their otolith. And an otolith is often referred to as a fish's diary, because they lay down a ring on the ear bone every single day of their life. So they must be tiny little ear bones. They're less than half a millimetre. Do you have one you can show me? Yeah, I can do one here for you now, if you want. So this one here is an inanga. So what I do is put him under the microscope. Mm-hm. So the otolith actually sits behind his eyes. You kind of just feel around in this cavity. They are a hard structure, so you can actually feel them on the forceps. And here. Oh! First go. I got it. (CHUCKLES) Whoo-hoo! (LAUGHS) Oh, I can see it. Can you see it? Yeah, it's just a tiny, tiny speck of sand, type... Yep. So, I take it back to the laboratory, and then I use a very high-powered microscope to take photographs of the growth rings, and then those images are later used for the data analysis. This is a retrospective, um, technique. So we're looking back in time to try and figure out where they have been, how fast they have grown, how long they spent out there, and you can even figure out their birthday. So the day they hatched as a larvae in the river. So, yeah. (LAUGHS) Who would've thought so much information would come from, like, a tiny little ear bone? I know, I didn't either, but they're absolutely critical, and this information will go to the policy makers, and then they will assess the situation and decide if something needs to change. Eimear's studies will be crucial in our understanding of these species about which we know so little. What we do know is that the national appetite for this pricey delicacy is definitely not in decline. Best fished from those quaint little stands that line many a river in New Zealand, the bottom line is whitebait fritters. Yeah, yeah. So, you're master chef for today? Well, I don't know about the master chef. But, yeah, we'll give it a go. We'll just chuck a bit of coal on here. Get that heated up. Just chuck a couple of eggs in here. There's a bit over a pound in there. So who taught you how to do this recipe? Oh, I just picked it up from me mum, over the years, yeah. Yup. So this whitebaiting tradition has been in your family for a few generations? Yeah. I've most probably had` Oh... I suppose I was on here when I was 5 year old, or something like that, so it's over... well, 60 years now. Yes. So what makes your whitebait better than anywhere else? There's no pollution on the river. You know, there's just the one dairy farm above us, and it's a fairly big river, and we're into the wilderness, then, yeah. Have you noticed any decline over the years? Well, it's hard to judge, cos the seasons are different, you know? We had bad years back in the '50s, you know, and they thought that we were gonna have to stop whitebaiting, and... Yeah, the last three or four years here have been quite exceptional. With recipes handed down through the generations and stands fiercely guarded by families for decades, getting real numbers here would be akin to tales of the one that got away. Hopefully with new science working together with the community, it will ensure that whitebaiting stays a part of the West Coast's cultural identity for years to come. (REFLECTIVE MUSIC) (MAJESTIC MUSIC) The West Coast has always been sparsely populated. Estimates of the pre-European Maori population put the numbers in the hundreds rather than the thousands. And when the white men, the Pakeha, arrived, they generally gave the place a wide berth, put off my the pounding seas and the impenetrable alps. But, eventually, they too were seduced by the wealth in timber and coal and gold. And when you get here, when you see this strip of territory between the mountains and the untamed sea, you understand why the people who made a home here don't just live in it ` they love it.