Health Check for Hamanatua

Today some of our older children from the Envirogroup headed down to our awa - Hamanatua to do some water testing.  At the stream to help us out were Amy Hardy and Murray Palmer from...

Nga Mahi Te Taiao

Environment and Natural Resources

First, we collected information about the salinity (how salty the water was), the PH level, the temperature, clarity and the conductivity of the water.  Overall the results were good!  The water had a clarity level of 75 - the clearest of water would score 100 - not bad Hamanatua! Salinity, PH and temperature all came out at levels that would be expected at the site.  The only high reading was the conductivity which is something we need to do a little more research about.

We compared the results with the testing we did two years ago and things have stayed stable.

After we had collected our test information, we then got busy collecting samples of bug and fish life in the water.  Shaking our nets under logs and the grassy bank we collected lots of different types of tiny creatures and even two little fish (named by the catchers - Frankie and Bob).  Finding the creature was lots of fun and confirmed that the water in Hamanatua is pretty healthy.

On such a lovely sunny day, it was hard to leave the stream and head back to school, but hunger got the better of us in the end so we said goodbye to Frankie and Bob and strolled back to school to share our results.

Thanks to Amy and Murray for sharing your knowledge and expertise with us.  We learnt loads and had heaps of fun! We now feel like qualified water testers and have some ideas on going and testing at other sites around Gisborne so we can make some more comparisons to our Hamanatua.