fear the sandmining could destroy the seabed<\/a> and change the environment so that humpback whales, seals, stingrays and dolphins won\u2019t return.<\/p>\n![\"Michele]()
Michele Adams says she feels grateful for the humpback whale encounter, and glad she could capture it.<\/p>\n
McCallum Bros says on its website that sand extraction can be done in an environmentally responsible manner.<\/p>\n
An assessment of environmental effects on marine mammals found the waters around the extraction site are used by about 30 marine mammal species for foraging, resting and breeding.<\/p>\n
However, it found each of these species, except bottlenose dolphins, had large home ranges, so the proposed sand extraction site would represent only a small part of their overall distribution.<\/p>\n
The assessment, by SLR Consulting, recommends McCallum Bros take further measures to reduce underwater noise, ship strike, marine debris and entanglement, with a management plan resulting in either a low impact on, or an improvement to, marine mammals.<\/p>\n
An expert consenting panel will consider the sandmining application before a final decision is made about its fast-track consent.<\/p>\n
Denise Piper is a news reporter<\/a> for the Northern Advocate, focusing on health and business. She has more than 20 years in journalism and is passionate about covering stories that make a difference.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cHe was jumping out of the water and flapping his fins all over the place; he was showing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":158577,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[1561,2756,11586,803,104650,19056,29434,97757,1445,209,2883,32042,78,111,139,1067,24926,69,147,59684,104651,9863,26010,28975,406,1533,102],"class_list":["post-158576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-bay","tag-bream","tag-coast","tag-continue","tag-delights","tag-encounter","tag-enormous","tag-fishers","tag-friends","tag-group","tag-hope","tag-humpback","tag-in","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-northland","tag-northlands","tag-nz","tag-science","tag-sighting","tag-unforgettable","tag-visit","tag-whale","tag-whales","tag-wildlife","tag-will","tag-with"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=158576"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158576\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/158577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}