Waiotahe Pipi Beds (Bay of Plenty) Traditional Cache
Ymana: I am no longer caching so have archived and removed this cache
Waiotahe Pipi Beds (Bay of Plenty)
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Size: 
(small)
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I have always found this an interesting spot with lots of local significance. You can make this a day trip by coming at low tide and joining the locals gathering pipi or you can just do a quick drive by. I recommend the former - there is nothing better then gathering kai moana on a warm summer day and eating it fresh.
Cache is small camo green plastic, screw top container.
Paphies australis, or pipi in the Maori language, is a bivalve mollusc of the family Mesodesmatidae, endemic to New Zealand.
Pipi (a member of the clam family) are the seafood of our childhood and summer holidays. New Zealanders have great memories of burrowing down in the sand with their big toe or spade and quickly filling a bucket of pipi to cook back at the bach or camping ground.
But just because we’re all grown up doesn’t mean we shouldn’t enjoy pipi these days too. Pipi are a great little seafood and you can do lots with them. Show your children your pipi-gathering technique, but remember to only take what you need for a meal.
Pipi has a delicate cream meat with a low oil content, and make a lovely seafood chowder or the other NZ favourite pipi fritters. Remember to soak your pipi in a bucket of clean seawater overnight to eliminate grittiness before you cook them.
Pipi are common all around New Zealand and the Chatham Islands and available year-round. They are often found on silty sandbars or sandy beaches just inside harbor entrances, especially in areas where there is freshwater seepage.
Pipi and Tuatua are also referred to as clams – you might see them in the shops marketed under their Maori name, but they may just be called “clams”. You might also see other rather round-shelled shellfish marketed as clams as well – these have probably been harvested with a dredge rather than hand-gathered like pipi and tuatua.
Always make sure that you harvest pipi on the outgoing tide (ideally just before reaching low tide) because this is when the pipi are not feeding. At the Waiotahe Pipi beds you will see people out in the water knee deep bent over gathering at low or out going tide. Pipi feed on the incoming tide and this is when their siphons are open and they are collecting a lot of sand and grit along with their planktonic food.
The harvest limit is 150 per person per day, and although a minimum size is not stipulated in the regulations, only larger pipi should be taken. For Maori, pipi are a traditional food resource, and in earlier times were gathered in specific flax baskets. Smaller specimens would fall between the woven strips and back into the beds as the basket was gently swirled through the water.Maximum length is 83 mm, and height 51 mm.
Shellfish have been an important part of the Maori diet since the first peoples arrived in New Zealand. Harvesting was a seasonal occupation, part of the cycle of food-growing and gathering essential to the community. The harvest was gathered and prepared for three purposes – immediate need, ceremonial occasions such as hui (meetings) and hakari (feasts), and provisions to store for the winter.
Middens (ancient rubbish sites) give us an insight into the range of shellfish that were available. While tuatua, pipi, paua, pupu, mussel, cockles, oysters, scallops and mud snails are familiar species still, archaeologists have found the shells of numerous other species in middens. Look at the shell deposits along the banks of the river near the cache site to see the range of shell fish collected from this abundant area.
Sometimes the harvest was cooked in the umu (earth oven). The tuwhatu method involved piling the shellfish in a heap, then burning dry fern on top, or enclosing it with a circle of fire. In the kohue method, shellfish were placed in a hue (gourd) among hot stones. The shells opened and the liquid that came out was used as a medicine.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Lbh pbhyq hfr guvf gb znxr lbhe tngurevat onfxrg.
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