Mountains To Sea Wellington
Mountains To Sea Wellington (MTSW) is a not-for-profit environmental trust based in Wellington, New Zealand. Their mission is to inspire kaitiakitanga (guardianship) for rivers, harbours, and coasts and motivate people to make positive environmental changes. The organisation’s skill sets build collaborative working relationships and provide science, education, environmental expertise, and outreach experiences.
The Trust’s work includes environmental education for sustainability programmes around freshwater and marine environments with young people and students across the Greater Wellington region.
In 2021/2022, the Eurofins Foundation supported the “Love Rimurimu Restoration project”, a collaborative effort to pilot the regeneration of rimurimu (seaweed) forests in Whanganui-a-tara, New Zealand.
Due to anthropogenic activities and global changes, temperate kelp forests are declining, particularly on urbanised coasts.
In Wellington Harbour, kelp forests provide vital ecosystem services. They also have significant cultural and social values for Māori and the wider community. However, these forests have been degraded due to various stressors and are reducing in range and diversity of species present.
The Mountains To Sea Wellington Trust initiated the project, supported by science expertise and local government, industry, community and mana whenua interests. This initiative will trial effective seaweed regenerative methodologies, learn from and share the outcomes, and engage widely with the community.
The Eurofins Foundation’s funding supported the collection of critical baseline data to help begin to ascertain the extent of seaweed cover loss in the Wellington harbour, and build understanding of where MTSW could focus its regeneration efforts.
With the funding, MTSW engaged the Victoria University Coastal Ecology Lab to undertake 6 monitoring surveys measuring the cover of seaweed species and associated biota.
The funding also supported research into marine heat wave simulations in the lab. The ability of seaweeds to be resilient in the face of warming seas will be crucial. The information collected, alongside a building body of knowledge will help further research into this area.
In addition to Eurofins Foundation’ support, Eurofins New-Zealand was involved in the project, providing a good sounding board for local laboratory techniques and opportunities.
In 2022/2023, the Eurofins Foundation renews its support to this initiative, focusing on Education, Community Outreach and Internships. Funding will contribute to support a marine education role, a part-time internship/traineeship and community engagement events and resources, including seaweed regeneration tool-kits and training.
This project contributes to the following United Nations' Sustainable Development Goal
