Tory Channel / Kura Te Au is one of the drowned valleys that form the

Marlborough Sounds The Marlborough Sounds are an extensive network of sea-drowned valleys at the northern end of the South Island of New Zealand. The Marlborough Sounds were created by a combination of land subsidence and rising sea levels. According to Māori ...

in New Zealand. Inter-island

ferries A ferry is a ship, watercraft or amphibious vehicle used to carry passengers, and sometimes vehicles and cargo, across a body of water. A passenger ferry with many stops, such as in Venice, Italy, is sometimes called a water bus or water taxi ...

normally use it as the principal channel between Cook Strait and the Marlborough Sounds. Tory Channel / Kura Te Au lies to the south of

Arapaoa Island Arapaoa Island, formerly known as Arapawa Island, is an island located in the Marlborough Sounds, at the north east tip of the South Island of New Zealand. The island has a land area of . Queen Charlotte Sound / Tōtaranui defines its western sid ...

, separating it from the mainland. At its western end it joins the larger Queen Charlotte Sound, which it meets halfway along the latter's length. Its eastern end meets Cook Strait close to the strait's narrowest point. The Channel is long, averages in width, and is up to deep, with an average channel depth of . Tory Channel / Kura Te Au forms a substantial part of the ferry route between Wellington and Picton. Erosion attributed to the wake from the ferries, particularly the new faster ones (now discontinued), has resulted in speed restrictions. One of the two candidates for the easternmost point in the South Island (along with Cape Campbell) lies at the entrance of Tory Channel. It is called West Head.

History

James Cook anchored several times nearby in Ship Cove. He sighted the Tory Channel in an excursion on the pinnace from his ship HMS ''Resolution'' on 5 November 1774.

John Guard John 'Jacky' Guard (ca. 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 17 ...

established the first permanent whaling station on

in 1827, targeting whales in the Tory Channel for their

baleen Baleen is a 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 the baleen and ...

and

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

. Tory Channel was accurately surveyed in 1840 and named after the

New Zealand Company The New Zealand Company, chartered in the United Kingdom, was a company that existed in the first half of the 19th century on a business model focused on the systematic colonisation of New Zealand. The company was formed to carry out the principl ...

ship ''

Tory A Tory () is a person who holds a political philosophy known as Toryism, based on a British version of traditionalism and conservatism, which upholds the supremacy of social order as it has evolved in the English culture throughout history. The ...

'', a pioneer ship that brought British colonists to

Wellington Wellington ( mi, Te Whanganui-a-Tara or ) 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 second-largest city in New Zealand by m ...

. Around this time, whaling stations were already operating in Te Awaiti Bay. Between 1911 and 1964, the Perano family hunted whales from Whekenui Bay.

Humpback whale The humpback whale (''Megaptera novaeangliae'') is a species of baleen whale. It is a rorqual (a member of the family Balaenopteridae) and is the only species in the genus ''Megaptera''. Adults range in length from and weigh up to . The hum ...

s were spotted from the hills at the Tory Channel entrance during their migration through Cook Strait. The Perano Whaling Station was the last whaling operation in New Zealand and closed in 1964. The name of Tory Channel was officially altered to Tory Channel / Kura Te Au in August 2014.

Tidal power

Energy Pacifica planned to install up to ten underwater tidal stream turbines, each able to produce up to 1.2 MW, near the Cook Strait entrance to Tory Channel. They claimed Tory Channel had tidal flows of with good

bathymetry Bathymetry (; ) is the study of underwater depth of seabed, ocean floors (''seabed topography''), lake floors, or river floors. In other words, bathymetry is the underwater equivalent to hypsometry or topography. The first recorded evidence of w ...

and access to the electricity network.Benign tides
Energy NZ No.6, Spring 2008. Contrafed Publishing. Other designs envisaged up to 50 turbines, but there are uncertainties about flow rates, the area is about from the

HVDC Inter-Island The HVDC Inter-Island link is a long, 1200 MW high-voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission system connecting the electricity networks of the North Island and South Island of New Zealand together. It is commonly referred to as the Cook Stra ...

transmission station at Fighting Bay (Ōraumoa) and a calculation in 2013 suggested that an economic return was unlikely.

References

{{Marlborough Region, state=collapsed Landforms of the Marlborough Region Straits of New Zealand Sounds of the Marlborough Sounds Cook Strait Ferry