Arapaoa Island (formerly spelled Arapawa Island) is the second-largest island in the

Marlborough Sounds The Marlborough Sounds (Māori language, te reo Māori: ''Te Tauihu-o-te-Waka'') are an extensive network of ria, sea-drowned valleys at the northern end of the South Island of New Zealand. The Marlborough Sounds were created by a combination ...

, at the north-east tip of the

South Island The South Island ( , 'the waters of Pounamu, Greenstone') is the largest of the three major islands of New Zealand by surface area, the others being the smaller but more populous North Island and Stewart Island. It is bordered to the north by ...

of New Zealand. The island has a land area of . Queen Charlotte Sound defines its western side, while to the south lies

Tory Channel Tory Channel (officially Tory Channel / Kura Te Au) is one of the drowned valleys that form the Marlborough Sounds in New Zealand. Inter-island ferry, ferries normally use it as the principal channel between Cook Strait and the Marlborough Sound ...

, which is on the sea route between

Wellington Wellington is the capital city of New Zealand. It is located at the south-western tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Remutaka Range. Wellington is the third-largest city in New Zealand (second largest in the North Island ...

in the

North Island The North Island ( , 'the fish of Māui', historically New Ulster) is one of the two main islands of New Zealand, islands of New Zealand, separated from the larger but less populous South Island by Cook Strait. With an area of , it is the List ...

to Picton.

Cook Strait Cook Strait () is a strait that separates the North Island, 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 wide at its narrowest point,McLintock, ...

's narrowest point is between Arapaoa Island's Perano Head and Cape Terawhiti in the North Island.

History

According to Māori oral tradition, the island was where the great navigator

Kupe Kupe was a legendary Polynesian explorer who, according to Māori oral history, was the first person to discover New Zealand. He is generally held to have been born to a father from Rarotonga and a mother from Raiatea, and probably spoke a ...

killed the octopus

Te Wheke-a-Muturangi In Māori mythology, Te Wheke-a-Muturangi is a monstrous octopus destroyed in Whekenui Bay, Tory Channel or at Patea by Kupe the navigator. The octopus was a pet or familiar of Muturangi, a powerful tohunga of Hawaiki. The wheke was n ...

. It was from a hill on Arapaoa Island in 1770 that Captain

James Cook Captain (Royal Navy), Captain James Cook (7 November 1728 – 14 February 1779) was a British Royal Navy officer, explorer, and cartographer famous for his three voyages of exploration to the Pacific and Southern Oceans, conducted between 176 ...

first saw the sea passage from the

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five Borders of the oceans, oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean, or, depending on the definition, to Antarctica in the south, and is ...

to the

Tasman Sea The Tasman Sea is a marginal sea of the South Pacific Ocean, situated between Australia and New Zealand. It measures about across and about from north to south. The sea was named after the Dutch explorer Abel Janszoon Tasman, who in 1642 wa ...

, and confirmed that what the indigenous people had told him was correct –

Aotearoa ''Aotearoa'' () is the Māori name for New Zealand. The name was originally used by Māori in reference only to the North Island, with the whole country being referred to as ''Aotearoa me Te Waipounamu'' – where ''Te Ika-a-Māui'' means N ...

is composed of two main islands. Cook is not known for naming places after himself, and it is speculated that

Joseph Banks Sir Joseph Banks, 1st Baronet, (19 June 1820) was an English Natural history, naturalist, botanist, and patron of the natural sciences. Banks made his name on the European and American voyages of scientific exploration, 1766 natural-history ...

bestowed the name

. This discovery banished the fond notion of geographers that there existed a great southern continent,

Terra Australis (Latin for ) was a hypothetical continent first posited in antiquity and which appeared on maps between the 15th and 18th centuries. Its existence was not based on any survey or direct observation, but rather on the idea that continental l ...

. A monument at Cook's Lookout was erected in 1970. From the late 1820s until the mid-1960s, Arapaoa Island was a base for

whaling Whaling is the hunting of whales for their products such as meat and blubber, which can be turned into a type of oil that was important in the Industrial Revolution. Whaling was practiced as an organized industry as early as 875 AD. By the 16t ...

in the Sounds.

John Guard John Guard ( 1791/92 – 1857) was an English convict sent to Australia who was one of the first European settlers in the South Island of New Zealand, working as a whaler and trader. Early life Guard was born in London in 1791 or 1792. On 17 M ...

established a shore station at Te Awaiti in 1827, however initially could only salvage

baleen Baleen is a filter feeder, filter-feeding system inside the mouths of baleen whales. To use baleen, the whale first opens its mouth underwater to take in water. The whale then pushes the water out, and animals such as krill are filtered by th ...

until the station was equipped to process

whale oil Whale oil is oil obtained from the blubber of whales. Oil from the bowhead whale was sometimes known as train-oil, which comes from the Dutch word ''traan'' ("tear drop"). Sperm oil, a special kind of oil used in the cavities of sperm whales, ...

from 1830 onwards, targeting

right whales Right whales are three species of large baleen whales of the genus ''Eubalaena'': the North Atlantic right whale (''E. glacialis''), the North Pacific right whale (''E. japonica'') and the southern right whale (''E. australis''). They are class ...

. Later, the station at Perano Head on the east coast of the island was used to hunt

humpback whales The humpback whale (''Megaptera novaeangliae'') is a species of baleen whale. It is a rorqual (a member of the family Balaenopteridae) and is the monotypic taxon, only species in the genus ''Megaptera''. Adults range in length from and weigh u ...

from 1911 to 1964 (see

Whaling in New Zealand Commercial whaling in New Zealand waters began late in the 18th century and continued until 1965. It was a major economic activity for Europeans in New Zealand in the first four decades of the 19th century. Nineteenth-century whaling was based o ...

). The houses built by the Perano family are now operated as tourist accommodation. In the 2000s the former whalers from the Perano and Heberley families, who live on Arapawa, joined a

Department of Conservation Department may refer to: * Departmentalization, division of a larger organization into parts with specific responsibility Government and military *Department (administrative division), a geographical and administrative division within a country, ...

whale spotting programme to assess how the humpback whale population has recovered since the end of whaling. An Air Albatross

Cessna 402 The Cessna 401 and 402 are a series of 6 to 10 seat, light twin-piston engine aircraft.Montgomery, MR & Gerald Foster: ''A Field Guide to Airplanes, Second Edition'', page 108. Houghton Mifflin Company, 1992. All seats are easily removable so ...

commuter aircraft struck the 11,000-volt power lines linking the island and the mainland over

in 1985. The crash was witnessed by many passengers on an inter-island Cook Strait ferry. The ferry immediately stopped to dispatch a rescue lifeboat. Along with the two pilots, one entire family died, and all but a young girl from the other. No bodies were ever found. The sole survivor (Cindy Mosey) was travelling with her family and the other family from Nelson to Wellington to attend a gymnastics competition. The Arapaoa Island crash caused public confidence in Air Albatross to falter, contributing to the company going into liquidation in December of that year. In August 2014, the spelling of the island's name was officially changed from ''Arapawa'' to ''Arapaoa''.

Conservation

Parts of the island have been heavily cleared of native vegetation in the past through burning and logging, A number of pine forests were planted on the island. Wilding pines, an

invasive species An invasive species is an introduced species that harms its new environment. Invasive species adversely affect habitats and bioregions, causing ecological, environmental, and/or economic damage. The term can also be used for native spec ...

in some parts of New Zealand, are being poisoned on the island to allow the regenerating native vegetation to grow. About at Ruaomoko Point on the south-eastern portion of the island will be killed by drilling holes into the trees and injecting poison. Arapaoa Island is known for the breeds of domestic animals found only on the island – the Arapawa pig, Arapawa sheep and Arapawa goat. They became established in the 19th century, but the origin of the breeds is uncertain, and a matter of some speculation. Common suggestions are that they are old English breeds introduced by the early whalers, or by Captain Cook or other early explorers. These breeds are now extinct in England, and the goats surviving in a sanctuary on the island are now also bred in other parts of New Zealand and in the northern hemisphere. The small Brothers Islands, which lie off the northeast coast of Arapaoa Island, are a sanctuary for the rare Brothers Island tuatara.

History

Conservation

See also

References

Further reading