2 Nov 2015

Rising seas: the New Zealand and Pacific reality

From Nine To Noon, 11:48 am on 2 November 2015

Outdoorsman and adventurer Kennedy Warne has concurrent stories on sea-level rise in the November issues of National Geographic and New Zealand Geographic. He discusses what he has seen and learned about this climate hazard in the Pacific and around New Zealand.

Parts of Beach Road, between Oamaru and Kakanui, are now more beach than road. Some locals want the road to be restored and maintained. Council says that's throwing good money after bad, and on an eroding coastline the smart option is to retreat.

One of the areas of areas most vulnerable to coastal hazards is the Cape Kidnappers coast, east of Napier. At Haumoana the sea is picking off baches one by one, leaving the beach strewn with the rubble of failed defences.

A drop in land elevation during the Christchurch earthquakes has mimicked the expected rise in sea levels over the coming century, leaving suburbs like Southshore, beside the Avon-Heathcote Estuary, vulnerable to inundation from the sea.

South Dunedin has been battling the sea since the 1800s. At Middle Beach, near St Clair, coastal defences have crumbled into the sea, along with parking areas. A row of piles in the distance is all that is left of a groyne built in 1919.

The lucky horseshoe on the windowsill of this Haumoana bach couldn't ward off the intruding ocean.

This bach at Haumoana lost the fight against the sea.