| Tamatea / Dusky Sound | |
|---|---|
| Tamatea (Māori) | |
 Tamatea / Dusky Sound | |
  Tamatea / Dusky Sound Location in New Zealand | |
| Location | Tasman Sea |
| Coordinates | 45°44′57″S166°47′12″E / 45.7492°S 166.7866°E |
| River sources | Mike River, Seaforth River, Shag River |
| Basin countries | New Zealand |
| Max. length | 40 km (25 mi) |
| Max. width | 8 km (5.0 mi) |
| Islands | Anchor Island, Cooper Island, Indian Island, Long Island. |
Tamatea / Dusky Sound is a fiord on the southwest corner of New Zealand, in Fiordland National Park.
One of the most complex of the many fiords on this coast, it is also the largest at 40 kilometres in length and eight kilometres wide at its widest point. To the north of its mouth is the large Resolution Island, whose Five Fingers Peninsula shelters the mouth of the sound from the northwest; along the east coast of the island, Acheron Passage connects Dusky Sound with Breaksea Sound, to the north.
Several large islands lie in the sound, notably Anchor Island, Long Island, and Cooper Island. The upper reaches of the sound are steep-sided, and the high precipitation of the region leads to hundreds of waterfalls cascading into the sound during the rainy season. Seals and dolphins are often sighted in the sound's waters and occasionally visited by whales where the area especially nearby Preservation Inlet was one of earliest shore-based whaling ground for southern right whales, while humpback whales show sudden increases. [1] [2] The Seaforth River is the largest of many small rivers and creeks which flow into the sound.
At its mouth, the sound is wide, and is bordered by the Five Fingers Peninsula to the north and by South Cape and Fannin Bay in the south. The south Island's westernmost point, West Cape lies less than 10 kilometres south of the sound's mouth. Immediately inside the sound's mouth lies the large Anchor Island and numerous small islets, among them the Seal, Petrel, and Many Island groups. To the north of Anchor Island lies Resolution Island, and here its coast in indented by a large triangular cove which separates the Five Fingers Peninsula from the rest of the island. A number of small coves punctuate this coast, including Goose Cove and Earshell Cove. Immediately to the southeast of Anchor Island lies the smaller Indian Island.
To the east of Anchor Island, the sound narrows to about five kilometres and splits into two broad channels, separated by the aptly named Long Island, which stretches for some 15 kilometres in length but is only around 2000 metres wide at its widest point. The narrower of the two channels, Cook Channel, lies to the south of Long Island; Bowen Channel lies to the north. Bowen Channel links with Acheron Passage, a north–south channel which separates Resolution Island from the mainland and links with Breaksea Sound to the north.
Inland from Long Island lies Cooper Island, about eight kilometres long and up to five kilometres wide. Dusky Sound narrows to the east of Cooper Island, reaching its end in two small coves, Shark Cove and Supper Cove. The Seaforth River flows into the eastern end of Supper Cove.
The sound has been identified as an Important Bird Area by BirdLife International because it is a breeding site for Fiordland penguins. [3]
It is believed that Māori occasionally camped by the sound's waters while hunting moa in pre-European times.
The inlet was first sighted by Europeans and Captain Cook noted its entrance during his first voyage to New Zealand in 1770. He named it Dusky Bay. On his second expedition he spent two months exploring the sound in March and April of 1773, [4] and used it as a harbour, establishing workshops and an observatory. It is believed his crew brewed the first beer in New Zealand during his stay. He encountered some Māori with whom he had friendly relations. Later they seemed to have disappeared and it was speculated their countrymen had killed them, perhaps for the presents Cook gave them. [5]
A large battle between Ngati Moi Moi (the lost tribe) and Ngai Tahu. It is said that Ngati Moi Moi took their last stand on the beach but were killed.
Cook saw the place as a good harbour for ships entering the Pacific from Europe by the shortest route, highlighting its maritime significance and overlooking its land-locked character. This gave it an unusual prominence in earliest European visits which disappeared as Europeans became more familiar with New Zealand's geography.
Dusky Sound was consequently used as a harbour by other European navigators and merchant ships in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. From 1792 it became a favoured site for seal hunters. Men landed by Captain William Raven from the Britannia in that year built the first European house in New Zealand and the first ship in Australasia, and the first European woman known to have been in New Zealand was recorded as a visitor in 1793. [6] A group of 244 Europeans was stranded in Dusky Sound in 1795, which included two women, Elizabeth Bason and Ann Carey, the first known to have lived ashore. The last of this group left in 1797. [7] The attention of the sealers moved to Bass Strait from 1798 but returned to New Zealand, at Dusky Sound, from 1802. In that year Captain Charles Bishop and George Bass in the Venus spent 14 days in Dusky Sound stripping iron from the hulk of Captain Brampton's old ship the Endeavour. [8] The blacksmith converted the iron into axes which they then used in Tahiti to trade for pork before returning to Sydney by November 1802. [9] Following this, in January 1803, George Bass asked Governor King of New South Wales for a fishing monopoly, from a line bisecting New Zealand from Dusky Sound to Otago Harbour extending south to include the subantarctic Islands. It was not granted, but it indicates the sealers' area of interest and Dusky Sound's place in it. [10] The Matilda under Captain Fowler was on this part of the coast in 1814 when six of his lascar (Indian) seamen absconded in an open boat. It seems it was at Dusky Sound they were set upon by Maori when three were killed and eaten and the others enslaved. One or more of them later lived in what is now the Dunedin district. [11] Sealers continued to visit until the late 1820s when the second sealing boom faded. [12]
An attempt was made in 1903 to construct a road from Dusky Sound to Lake Manapouri, but it was never completed, terminating abruptly at Bishop Burn, on the western side of Loch Maree. [13]
In December 2019, the name of the fiord was officially altered to Tamatea / Dusky Sound. [14]
Access to the sound is by sea or air only, with no roads reaching the coast at this point. However, the Dusky Track stretches to the upper reaches of the sound, at Supper Cove, from lakes Manapouri and Hauroko. [13]
Cook Strait separates the North and South Islands of New Zealand. The strait connects the Tasman Sea on the northwest with the South Pacific Ocean on the southeast. It is 22 kilometres (14 mi) wide at its narrowest point, and is considered one of the most dangerous and unpredictable waters in the world. Regular ferry services run across the strait between Picton in the Marlborough Sounds and Wellington.
Milford Sound is a fiord in the south west of New Zealand's South Island within Fiordland National Park, Piopiotahi Marine Reserve, and the Te Wahipounamu World Heritage site. It has been judged the world's top travel destination in an international survey and is acclaimed as New Zealand's most famous tourist destination. Rudyard Kipling called it the eighth Wonder of the World. The fiord is most commonly accessed via road by tour coach, with the road terminating at a small village also called Milford Sound.
Fiordland is a geographical region of New Zealand in the south-western corner of the South Island, comprising the westernmost third of Southland. Most of Fiordland is dominated by the steep sides of the snow-capped Southern Alps, deep lakes, and its steep, glacier-carved and now ocean-flooded western valleys. The name "Fiordland" comes from a variant spelling of the Scandinavian word for this type of steep valley, "fjord". The area of Fiordland is dominated by, and very roughly coterminous with, Fiordland National Park, New Zealand's largest National Park.
The Otago Peninsula is a long, hilly indented finger of land that forms the easternmost part of Dunedin, New Zealand. Volcanic in origin, it forms one wall of the eroded valley that now forms Otago Harbour. The peninsula lies south-east of Otago Harbour and runs parallel to the mainland for 20 km, with a maximum width of 9 km. It is joined to the mainland at the south-west end by a narrow isthmus about 1.5 km wide.
Fiordland National Park is a national park in the south-west corner of South Island of New Zealand. It is the largest of the 13 national parks in New Zealand, with an area covering 12,607 km2 (4,868 sq mi), and a major part of the Te Wāhipounamu a UNESCO World Heritage Site established in 1990. The park is administered by the Department of Conservation. The southern ranges of the Southern Alps cover most of Fiordland National Park, combined with the deep glacier-carved valleys.
Otago Harbour is the natural harbour of Dunedin, New Zealand, consisting of a long, much-indented stretch of generally navigable water separating the Otago Peninsula from the mainland. They join at its southwest end, 21 km (13 mi) from the harbour mouth. It is home to Dunedin's two port facilities, Port Chalmers and at Dunedin's wharf. The harbour has been of significant economic importance for approximately 700 years, as a sheltered harbour and fishery, then deep water port.
Doubtful Sound / Patea is a fiord in Fiordland, in the far south west of New Zealand. It is located in the same region as the smaller but more famous and accessible Milford Sound / Piopiotahi. It took second place after Milford Sound as New Zealand's most famous tourism destination.
Resolution Island or Tau Moana (Māori) is the largest island in the Fiordland region of southwest New Zealand, covering a total of 208 km2 (80 sq mi). It is the country's seventh largest island, and the second largest uninhabited island. Resolution Island is separated from the mainland of the South Island by Tamatea / Dusky Sound, Te Puaitaha / Breaksea Sound, and Acheron Passage. The island is part of the Fiordland National Park.
Ruapuke Island is one of the southernmost islands in New Zealand's main chain of islands. It lies 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) to the southeast of Bluff and 32 kilometres (20 mi) northeast of Oban on Stewart Island/Rakiura. It was named "Bench Island" upon its discovery by Captain James Cook in 1770, but has rarely been known by any other name than its Māori name, which means "two hills". Ruapuke Island was called Goulburn Island by Captain John Kent, named after Frederick Goulburn, a Government official in New South Wales, but the whalers generally called it Long Island, or Robuck. The island covers an area of about 16 km2 (6 sq mi). It guards the eastern end of Foveaux Strait.
Chalky Island or Te Kākahu-o-Tamatea is an island in the southwest of New Zealand, and is part of Fiordland National Park. It lies at the entrance to Taiari / Chalky Inlet, next to Rakituma / Preservation Inlet, at the southwestern tip of the South Island, 10 kilometres (6 mi) northwest of Puysegur Point, 15 kilometres (9 mi) southeast of West Cape, and 140 kilometres (87 mi) west of Invercargill.
Taiaroa Head is a headland at the end of the Otago Peninsula in New Zealand, overlooking the mouth of the Otago Harbour. It lies within the city limits of Dunedin. The nearest settlement, Otakou, lies three kilometres to the south.
William Tucker was a British convict, a sealer, a trader in human heads, an Otago settler, and New Zealand’s first art dealer.
The Weller brothers, Englishmen of Sydney, Australia, and Otago, New Zealand, were the founders of a whaling station on Otago Harbour and New Zealand's most substantial merchant traders in the 1830s.
Rakituma / Preservation Inlet is the southernmost fiord in Fiordland National Park and lies on the southwest corner of the South Island of New Zealand. With an area of 93 square kilometres (36 sq mi), it is the fourth largest fiord in New Zealand, after Tamatea / Dusky Sound, Doubtful Sound / Patea, and the neighbouring Taiari / Chalky Inlet to the north. Rakituma was briefly the site of an attempted fishing and gold mining settlement at Cromarty during the 19th century, however this was quickly abandoned once the level of gold declined in relation to more promising fields elsewhere.
The Sealers' War (1810–1821) in southern New Zealand, also known as the "War of the Shirt", was a series of often indiscriminate attacks and reprisals between Māori and European sealers. Initially minor misunderstandings between the two peoples quickly led to armed conflict. This resulted in a period of mistrust and animosity between Māori and sealers fueling several conflicts, leading to the deaths of about 74 people and the burning of the village of Otakou on the Otago Peninsula. Records exist from both sides of the conflict but not from any impartial observers.
Thompson Sound is a fiord of the South Island of New Zealand. It is one of the fiords that form the coast of Fiordland.
Hinenui / Nancy Sound is a fiord on the South Island of New Zealand. It is one of the fiords that form the coast of Fiordland.
Taiari / Chalky Inlet is one of the southernmost fiords in Fiordland, in the southwestern corner of New Zealand's South Island and part of Fiordland National Park. As with the neighbouring fiords of Tamatea / Dusky Sound to the north and Rakituma / Preservation Inlet to the south, Taiari / Chalky Inlet is a complex fiord with many channels and islands along its roughly 28 km (17 mi) length. Most notably, this includes the sections Moana-whenua-pōuri / Edwardson Sound and Te Korowhakaunu / Kanáris Sound, which split at Divide Head in the middle of Taiari and each extend for roughly 10 km (6.2 mi) inland in a V-shape.
Taumoana Marine Reserve is a marine reserve covering an area of 464 hectares in Fiordland on New Zealand's South Island. It was established in 2005 and is administered by the Department of Conservation. It is located next to the Five Fingers Peninsula, at the entrance to Tamatea / Dusky Sound.
Te Awaatu Channel Marine Reserve is a marine reserve covering an area of 93 hectares in Fiordland on New Zealand's South Island. It was established in 1993 and is administered by the Department of Conservation.