Otago Harbour
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| Missing image Otagoharbour.jpg Looking across Port Chalmers and the Otago Harbour to the Otago Peninsula |
| Missing image Otago_harbour_landsat.jpg NASA satellite photo of Otago Harbour |
Otago Harbour consists of a long, much-indented stretch of generally navigable water separating Otago Peninsula from the main urban areas of Dunedin, New Zealand. They join at its southwest end.
The harbour was formed from the drowned remnants of a giant shield volcano, centred close to what is now the town of Port Chalmers. The remains of this violent origin can be seen in the basalt of the surrounding hills. The last eruptive phase ended some ten million years ago.
Substantial container port facilities exist at Port Chalmers, halfway along the western shore of the harbour. A channel along the western side of the harbour is regular dredged, allowing fairly large ships to sail all the way to the heart of Dunedin, where New Zealand's frozen meat export trade began in the nineteenth century. The dredging of this channel, the Victoria Channel, was a major technological undertaking for the fledgling settlement of Dunedin in the mid 18th century. The eastern side of the harbour is shallow, with large sandbanks exposed at low tide.
Two islands form a line between Port Chalmers and Portobello in the lower harbour - Goat Island and Saint Martin Island/Quarantine Island. A smaller island known as Puddingstone Rock lies close to the Peninsula shore and is connected to it by a causeway at low tide.
Near the mouth of the harbour lies the partly-forested sandspit of Aramoana (Maori for "pathway to the sea"), infamous for a massacre of 13 people by a deranged gunman, David Gray, in November 1990.
Adjacent to Aramoana stands the site that was proposed for New Zealand's second aluminium smelter. The proposal, in the late 1970s, was abandoned after major public protests. This area is an important habitat for many species of wading birds. Other wildlife to frequent the waters of the harbour include penguins, sea lions, and seals, and Taiaroa Head, at the tip of the Otago Peninsula, is home to a colony of Royal Albatrosses, the only such colony close to a major human urban area in the world.
The harbour is tidal, but as it is shallow it is seldom rough, and as such is popular for such water sports as yachting and windsurfing.
Settlements by the harbour include (in order from the mouth of the harbour):
- On the western shore:
- Aramoana
- Careys Bay
- Port Chalmers
- Sawyers Bay (with a tannery)
- Roseneath
- Saint Leonards
- Ravensbourne (with a fertiliser works)
- On the eastern shore:
- Otakou
- Harwood
- Portobello (with its marine research station)
- Broad Bay
- Macandrew Bay
- Anderson's Bay
External links
- Otago Harbour map (http://www.orc.govt.nz/html/details.html?details=4&articleID=45)