Sir Peter Blake Marine Education and Recreation Centre

The school Holidays are less than 2 weeks away 🤯 Do you have your kids' adventure sorted? We have programmes for 7 to 18 year olds ready to keep them safe, smiling and adventuring, even through winter! Book now @ Enrolmy.com/merc 🎒🏕️ 🛶 🏊‍♀️ 🐟

🐴 𝐂𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐅𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞: 𝐋𝐚𝐫𝐠𝐞-𝐁𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐞𝐝 𝐒𝐞𝐚𝐡𝐨𝐫𝐬𝐞
The large-bellied seahorse (Hippocampus abdominalis) is the world’s largest known seahorse species, growing up to 35 cm in length.
Native to New Zealand and southern Australia, this species is commonly found in shallow coastal waters, where it uses its prehensile tail to anchor itself to seagrass, kelp, or other marine structures. Like all seahorses, males carry the eggs in a brood pouch until they hatch.
Healthy coastal habitats are essential for the survival of species like the large-bellied seahorse — making habitat protection a key part of marine conservation.

Here's what you can expect at our Matariki Weekend Family Camp! ⭐️🔭🌌

This camp is a unique opportunity to invest in time with your loved ones, bring everyone closer together and get the Māori New Year off to a positive, grounded start.

To learn more about the weekend and buy tickets, visit https://events.humanitix.com/matariki-weekend-camp-2yw4k9tj?utm_source=fb_page&utm_medium=Sir+Peter+Blake+Marine+Education+and+Recreation+Centre&utm_campaign=publer

It's a stunning evening at the Tor! Come and join us for a sunset tidepooling adventure! Come see what you can spot and learn about how special this habitat is and why they are important to care for it and the species that live there.

We had a blast at Army Bay on Thursday afternoon. It was a delight being able to guide some enthusiastic explorers from the community around the rockpools of Army Bay. We love bringing rockpool ecosystems to life and sharing knowledge with the lens we bring. Based on the feedback, many hadn’t seen this wide range of species before and were stoked to have us make it special because everyone was able to ask questions and learn something new! We were excited to be able to be in a place that is protected through the new 186a. We saw nudibranchs, snapping shrimp, lots of snails, crabs, ambush sea stars and even an ornate side-gilled slug! These are all documented by the community through the iNaturalist app, which will be beneficial for long-term monitoring of the 186a and add to the body of work We are Ngāti Manuhiri have done and are doing in this space.

Thank you so much to New World Long Bay and Out and About Auckland - Tāmaki Makaurau for making Tidepool Discovery Week events possible. And thank you to the Army Bay locals for coming out to explore and learn with us.

It's a beautiful day and a great low tide at Army Bay Beach. MERC guides will be at the beach from 2 to 5 drop in and explore a unique habitat and see some cool animals!
Meet us at Army Bay Beach!

We took advantage of the low tides today to bring the tamariki from Mountain View School out on the rocky shore! And what an amazing time we had! We saw many species of sea stars, lots of nudibranch and sea hares, shrimp, heaps of kina and some kids even spotted and got to interact with a wheke!

🌊Creature Feature of the Week🌊
We find a lot of Kina across our rocky shore here at Long Bay and they are awesome creatures. They have tube feet on their spines that help them move and pick things up. You may notice kina holding onto items like shells and seaweed. This is called hatting and it’s to camouflage themselves from predators. When they die, they lose all their spines, and you may find the remains of their green shells on the beach. Look inside and you will see it’s got 5 equal sections to the kina this is called radial symmetrical.
Common Name - Sea Urchins
Scientific Name - Evechinus Chloroticus
Te Reo Name - Kina
Phylum - Echinodermata

What an awesome day at Takapuna reef on Sunday. It was a delight being able to guide over 100 people from a diverse range of cultures, backgrounds and ages to explore and learn about the importance of biodiversity in the tidepools. We saw nudibranchs, snapping shrimp, limpets, crabs, so many sea stars and even juvenile scallops! It was also a privilege to chat with a family who were out there collecting and introduce them to a new lens to view tidepools as a rich biodiverse ecosystem.

Thank you so much to New World Long Bay and Out and About Auckland - Tāmaki Makaurau for making this and Long Bay's Tidepool Discovery events possible.

We had a blast delivering this, and we hope the community did too.