Pātea reef project spawns mural, sculptures, film in South Taranaki town

Project Reef Life lead Karen Pratt and mural artist Phil Jones are pictured with Jones' main street Pātea mural. Photo / Supplied

A procession of sea-related images now leads from the South Taranaki town of Pātea down Egmont St and toward the sea at Mana Bay.

They tell a story and will engage the curiosity of passersby, Project Reef Life lead Karen Pratt hopes.

The Pātea Pou were blessed on July 3 and installed on July 4 as reminders of the hidden underwater life offshore.

Project Reef Life is a citizen science project that started in 2015 and has been funded by the TSB Community Trust, grants and many volunteer hours. It studies life in a reef 11km offshore from Pātea and 23m underwater, using a battery-powered camera and a hydrophone to record sound.

"It's incredibly raucous out there," Pratt said.

Divers from the South Taranaki Underwater Club visit the reef when conditions in the turbulent bight permit.

Life on a South Taranaki reef is colourful and prolific. Photo / Supplied

The reason the bight is so rich in marine life is its upwelling of nutrient-rich water from the South Island, Pratt said. Filter feeders thrive there.

The project is one of just a few long-term studies of New Zealand marine life being undertaken outside a marine reserve.

It involves the club, two secondary schools and two South Taranaki iwi. There are visits to the schools where students get to dissect the contents of fish stomachs or count the rings in fish ear bones.

The project has won four awards since 2016.

The cliffs and grey sand of the South Taranaki coast can look drab but life on the reef is colourful and exciting, the study found. Its camera has recorded moki coming to a feeding station every morning to be cleaned by scarlet wrasse.

To bring some of the colour and excitement onshore, Pratt teamed up with South Taranaki District Council arts co-ordinator Michaela Stoneman.

In 2018 New Plymouth artist Phil Jones was commissioned to paint a mural of reef life in Pātea's main street. In 2019 Pratt's film director daughter Rebecca made an eight-minute documentary, Reef Revolution, about the project.

It has been shown all over the world at film festivals, and can be found online at https://vimeo.com/377409222.

Stingrays are shown on one of the pou. Photo / Supplied

This year's addition to the project is the Pātea Pou - seven steel panels showing undersea life, mounted on poles that march down to the beach. The images are stylised canoe paddles, a diver, fish, a whale fluke.

Their completion blessing will be held towards the end of July.

Information on the reef project is on its website and Facebook page, uploaded to the iNaturalist NZ website and will soon be in a permanent exhibition at Puke Ariki in New Plymouth.

The project has been presented at schools and rest homes, and Taranaki Regional Council wants to make the reef an area of outstanding natural character in its coastal plan.