The Great Flounder Expedition

WOW what a blast it was to go out on our very own tamaki estuary to catch baby flounders. Why are we catching baby flounders you ask? Well the fish population is decreasing because more and more greedy people seem to catch fish and put them in stores to sell or even just take it home with them and cook it. But the flounder team and I weren't doing that, we were catching baby flounders to put them into our school fish tank. We saw that the fish numbers were decreasing so by catching fish and putting them into our tank, they will have a better chance of surviving.

How long will we be keeping them for? We will be keeping the flounders up until the are and adult and then we can release them, then they will have a better chance of surviving. How many did we catch? Well we caught more than 50 baby flounders but we could only keep 12 in our tank and the rest were put back into the ocean, but 9 had been given to Kauri Flats school because they only had caught 4. How did we feel before, during and after? Before we went out into the water we had did a karakia (Prayer) we all felt excited and amazing that we had the chance to go out and save the fish. During while we were pulling the net along the surface the whole of Pt England had walked down to watch us for a bit and sing a waiata/himene and while they were singing I felt the energy come from them and all the blessings and thoughts that were going on. The aftermath was incredible because we caught so much flounders, a bit of sardines, crabs and a lot of rocks and shells.

 Who were involved? Well there was Roimata, Aysha, Aliyah, Daniella, Lyi Sorn, Angel, John Armour, Justus, Angelo, Isaac, Hosea, Whaea Saf, Tyson, Peter, Sarah, Mr Vogt, Mr Somerville, Mr Jacobsen and myself (Danielle). What did we do with the fish? Well we took the fish back to school and chose the decent sized ones and put them into our tank, and the rest went back into the awa (River) and some went to Kauri Flats school. How did you feel at the end of the day? I felt exhausted and so did everyone else because pulling the net was heavy and a bit difficult because we were sinking into the sand.

Also on behalf of the flounder team we would like to say a massive thanks to all the helpers and mostly to peter for flying all the way to Auckland (NZ) just to help us with our expedition and also lending us your fishing net (He only had 2 hours of sleep because of his flight here, that's why he is amazing. If you don't know who Peter is he is a professional at fish (which means he knows a lot about fish, how to catch them and lots of interesting facts about all the different types of fish there are. So that was our wonderful adventure and everyone needs to keep our awa clean and not be so greedy for fish and other sea animals/creatures.