Day 20- Beaches Field Trip day 1

Today was a fabulous day. I decided that I love my Coastal and Marine Geography class, just because today was so much fun. I didn’t go for a run because when I got up at 6 it was still dark out and I didn’t want to run around a dark city by myself. We took a convoy of 12 person vans out to the first beach, called Omaha, which is about an hour and a half north of Auckland. It was a beautiful white sandy beach with big waves. We used Dumpy levels to measure the elevation of certain parts of the beach (for more on what a dumpy measure is, go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumpy_level). It’s pretty neat; you look through basically one binocular that has a cross in the center of it and match up the cross in the lens with the corresponding height on a really long pole with centimeter markings on it that someone else is holding down the beach. It’s a great way to measure sand dune height, whether the beach “steps” down as you move out to where the waves break, etc.

We also measured sand grain sizes and calculated falling velocity by dropping a handful of sand into a measured amount of saltwater in a graduated cylinder. The last thing we did was go out to where the waves break and figure out their breaking height, how many waves pass by in a minute, and the width of the break zone. I never knew that there was so much science to a beach. In this class we’re learning about different types of waves and the difference between deep water and shallow water waves, and I’m supposed to be learning equations that deal with wave energy, among other things. We also went to Jones Bay, which has beautiful tumbled dark rocks and Orewa, which is a sandy beach popular with the retirement community of New Zealand. Both were amazing. We ended up all going for a real swim at Jones Bay, because the waves were really small, it was hot and sunny out, and the gravelly beach dropped off very quickly. The visibility is also amazing, so that you can even open your eyes underwater briefly. I’d go back to any of the three beaches we visited today in a heartbeat.

Another really enjoyable part about today was just driving around the countryside. I realized today that most of New Zealand is hills, because the roads constantly twist and turn and go over huge hills, many of which were lined with barbed wire fence on either side, home to sheep, geese, goats, and cows. It’s complete farm country once you either move out of the city or away from the coast. New Zealand really is amazingly green and beautiful!

Best part about today: I get to do it again tomorrow! We’re surveying two beaches on the west coast tomorrow, where supposedly the waves are so big and the currents so strong that there’s a local show called “Rescue Piha” where they rescue swimmers at one of the two beaches we’re going to tomorrow.