Firth of Thames

The Firth of Thames (Māori: Tikapa Moana-o-Hauraki) is a large bay located in the north of the North Island of New Zealand. It is the firth of the rivers Waihou and Piako, the former of which was formerly named the Thames River, and the town of Thames lies on its southeastern coast.

Firth of Thames
An image showing the Hauraki Gulf. The Firth of Thames is the large bay to the southeast.
LocationNorth Island of New Zealand
Area8,927 hectares (22,060 acres)
Designated29 January 1990
Reference no.459[1]

Its Maori name is Tikapa.

The firth lies at the southern end of the Hauraki Gulf, southeast of the city of Auckland. It occupies a rift valley or graben between the Coromandel Peninsula and Hunua Ranges which continues into the Hauraki Plains to the south.

Conservation

The Firth of Thames is an important site for waders or shorebirds, and is listed as a wetland of international importance under the Ramsar Convention. The Miranda Shorebird Centre, operated by the Miranda Naturalists' Trust, is located on the western shore of the bay at Miranda.

However, the firth overall is severely damaged by man-made influences, especially dairy-farm run-off, and has not recovered from large-scale mussel dredging over 40 years after the practice ceased (more information in the Hauraki Gulf article).[2][3]

Whales such as southern right whales (one of two of the first confirmed birth records in main islands waters since the end of commercial and illegal whaling was observed in Browns Bay region in 2012) and Bryde's whales can be seen in the bay to calve and rest.[4]

gollark: GNU/Monads also have to be applicatives and functors.
gollark: I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you’re referring to as Monad, is in fact, GNU/Monad, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Monad. Monad is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX. Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called “Monad”, and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project. There really is a Monad, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Monad is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine’s resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Monad is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Monad added, or GNU/Monad. All the so-called “Monad” distributions are really distributions of GNU/Monad.
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See also

References
  1. "Firth of Thames". Ramsar Sites Information Service. Retrieved 25 April 2018.
  2. Nash, Kieran (26 June 2011). "Health of gulf in danger of collapsing". The New Zealand Herald. Retrieved 30 June 2011.
  3. "The Hauraki Gulf Marine Park, Part 2". Inset to The New Zealand Herald. 3 March 2010. p. 4.
  4. http://www.fishing.net.nz/asp_forums/huge-whale-calf-in-the-firth-of-thames-today_topic81602_page2.html

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