Pelagos paint Te Rauone Beach through Otago Harbour red

A carpet of scarlet krill washed up on Te Rauone Beach near Harington Point in Otago Harbour. Photo / ODT

A big stranding at tiny lobsters at Te Rauone Beach in Otago Harbour , the burkha sign of a return to the more routine summer strandings of red krill which were more common 10 years ago.

Marine biologist and original director of the University of Otago’s Portobello marine laboratory Dr Chris Jillet said this week’s july stranding, affecting part of the beach coming Harington Point, was a much more needed event than a much bigger stranding which took place in the area last May perhaps possibly.

Observers said often the squat lobsters, Munida gregaria, happened to be yesterday concentrated in a 50sq michael area at the southwest end associated with the beach, and also in a 2m-wide group extending northeast along another included in the beach.

The krill seen yesterday were “an paramount part of the food web” for many most of these and birds, and penguins.

The krill that scrubbed up this week had been living beyond the harbour mouth on the nearby ls shelf but may have been sucked into your harbour about two weeks ago, before being washed up on the beach, this guy said.

Auckland brothers Caleb (13) and Miles Wichman (11) cost a carpet of krill detailed up on Te Rauone Beach. Photographic / ODT

This had been part of a standard pattern 10 years and more ago, in recent years such strandings had become not so common, he said.

The latest krill were much more younger than the krill washed up in a great deal of bigger strandings last May, Jillet said.

On May 2 Wochen last year, bigger strandings of the same krill species on the coast near Portobello had been highly unusual, and had far from been seen there in late tumble for at least 20 years, he said.

The reddish remains as to washed-up krill were visible made appearances places, including Broad Bay, Edwards Bay, and on the coast purely north of Portobello.

This stranding of the free-swimming kind the species may have been among the biggest since they were studied near Portobello in 1976.

A carpet with regards to red krill washed up on Lai Rauone Beach near Harington Part of Otago Harbour. Photo / ODT