Napier - Sea Walls - Ready

 One of the sea's simple pleasures as a way of illustrating them coming under threat

The next morning, after we wandered the Art Deco district, we headed out of town on our way to Rotorua. However, before we left town we took a detour into Ahuriri, a suburb to the north of town home to the port along with residences, parks, and some interesting-looking restaurants to view some of the works created in the last two years as part of the “Sea Walls: Artists for Oceans”. Fifty international artists have come to town creating large scale murals addressing some of the issues plaguing today’s oceans. We had noticed some of these in the CBD (Central Business District) and took our time driving through Ahuriri, much to the chagrin of a few cars following our missteps as we searched the area. We hope you enjoy the pictures we took to give you a sense of our experience. While wandering this area, we also came across a Maori festival that included at least 75 canoes traveling up the coast. We weren’t able to find out what it was about, but they did have a full park and some streets blocked off for the event.

A Ghost Net trapping and killing sea life

The Black Shag,
one of New Zealand's endangered sea birds

A local Maori myth about Pania, a sea fairy, and Moremore,
her shape-shifting hammerhead shark son, whose appearance
is an omen of things to come.

Plastic pollution filling the lonely whale

Overfishing

Highlighting sustainable fishing practices

The New Zealand storm petrel,
another of New Zealand's endangered sea birds

A shark coming to take revenge for being finned