Kaimoana!

Last week we had an awesome opportunity to learn from Craig Petherick, a fisheries officer, Nanny Sophie and Nanny Rae, about the importance of looking after all the kaimoana found around Mahia.

This week we got to go and harvest some of this delicious kaimoana, and sample it ourselves.

First we headed down to the beach opposite the golf club to look for some yummy tuatua. We found a few before we had to dash off quickly to the pipi beds at Oraka, before the tide changed.

Tamariki had so much fun digging their toes in to find pipi.

Once we had found plenty of pipi we hopped back into the bus and met Nanny Rae at the beach in front of her house, where she had some pupu. While hunting for pupu Uncle Jason popped up out of the water with some crayfish! How lucky we were to be able to see some live crayfish.

By this stage we were all very hungry so we were lucky it was time to head to Tuahuru to begin prepping the kai.

We are very lucky that we had a lot of support from a lot of whanau who had provided us with Paua, eel and some beautiful kingfish, to eat alongside the kaimoana we had already gathered.

Tamariki had a blast learning about how to prepare some of the kaimoana, and had even more fun consuming it. While they were preparing the kaimoana we also had a visit from Moana Cooper, our local fisheries officer, who was impressed with the tamariki's knowledge on the legal gathering of kaimoana.

It was a very enjoyable day, and one where the tamariki learnt a lot about the amazing environment that they live in.

Quiz our tamariki when you see them next about their awesome knowledge of kaimoana harvesting and preparing.

Mrs Hitchy and Room 3