$75,000 Raised As Kiwis Take Mid-Winter Dip For Ocean Health
Generate, a leading KiwiSaver provider and long-time supporter of the Live Ocean Foundation, marked its sixth year backing the annual event – and in 2025, opened the challenge up to its members for the very first time.
The result? A tidal wave of support, with participants taking the plunge from Tutukaka Coast to Lake Wānaka, helping Generate reach its goal and donate the full $75,000 to Live Ocean Foundation.
'The ocean is our greatest ally in the fight for a healthy planet,' says Generate Co-Founder and CEO Sam Goldwater. 'We're proud to support the critical work Live Ocean is doing to help protect and restore Aotearoa's marine environment — and it was incredible to see so many Kiwis jump in and back the cause.'
Founded by champion sailors Blair Tuke and Peter Burling, Live Ocean champions marine science, innovation and public awareness. Right now, one of their focus areas is on securing greater protection for the Hauraki Gulf / Tīkapa Moana, calling on decision makers to progress the Hauraki Gulf Marine Protection Bill.
The Live Ocean Winter Dip campaign also saw a wave of well-known New Zealanders dive in, including:
Blair Tuke
Dame Lisa Carrington
Dom Harvey
Nathan King
Seamus Marten
Brodie Kane (and her mum!)
Swims were reported across the country at Mission Bay, Waiheke, Raglan, Kapiti Coast, Mathesons Bay, and along rivers like the Kaipara and Waikato, as well as lakes Taupō, Tekapo, and Wakatipu. Even a Kiwi scientist in Antarctica joined in — taking a dip through a hole cut in the ice inside his research hut.
'This is our biggest Winter Dip yet — and the first time we've brought our members into it,' says Goldwater. 'It shows how much New Zealanders care about protecting our ocean and leaving something better behind.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
NZ Herald
a day ago
- NZ Herald
Kea Kids News: Drones make Matariki even brighter in Rotorua
Twinkle twinkle little drone! Reporter Kanoa is in Rotorua, where the Aronui Arts Festival and 300 of its best drone friends take to the skies to tell magical Matariki stories.
Scoop
a day ago
- Scoop
Brett Graham Speaks About The Loss Of His Dad - The Artist Fred Graham
The winter season of Matariki is a time to remember those who passed away over the past year and one of those was the artist, Fred Graham, who died last month at the age of 96. Just a week before, he had attended the unveiling of his sculpture Te Manu Rangimaarie, at Taupiri in the Waikato and his exhibition Toi Whakaata / Reflections, opened at Christchurch Art Gallery on 31 May. Matua Fred was also just days away from receiving the New Zealand Order of Merit after being named in the 2025 New Year's Honours list and he'd been chosen as one of Aotearoa's artists at this year's Venice Biennale international exhibition. His son Brett Graham is a prominent artist in his own right whose sculpture 'Wastelands' featured at last year's Venice Biennale. Speaking to RNZ's Matariki programme Brett said one of the sub themes of the Biennale was family relationships, so the head curator wanted Brett and his father's work to be shown. Fred Graham never actually made it to the Biennale that year but Brett said it was fantastic to see his father's work on display. "The works in that show we had grown up with as children. Whiti te Rā, it's quite a joyous piece, a celebration of the haka, and the colours that he used as a child always fascinated me. "Actually I got in trouble with the curator because I talked about these works being massive, like 2 or 3 metres big, because that's my childhood memory of them and then of course when we unpacked them, they were a metre." Brett said people often talk about living up to the legacy of his parents, but rather than try to break away from the previous generation and create something new as is the nature of western art, for Māori artists it's about absorbing the past and moving forward. "We had such a great relationship, there was never any tension there or pressure at all. "I never sort of struggled with that legacy it was always just a natural path and dad was very generous." In fact, he said it was his mother who encouraged both him and his and his sister into the arts. "Dad loved to tell the story about he'd made a work so high, he called it Growth it's in his exhibition in Christchurch, and he always used to love to tell the story about how I was so brainwashed I'd drag it round the house as a Teddy Bear until he had his first exhibition and he had no qualms selling the thing." Brett said when his father saw that he told his mother 'I hate to break to you but I think your son is going to be an artist.' "I never wanted to be anything else but an artist, or probably not capable of being anything else," Brett said. He said growing up he was surrounded by Māori artists like Selwyn Muru and Kāterina Mataira so art came very naturally. Brett said his father's generation of artists were so interesting especially the carvers, because they loved the work of British sculptors. "When I started to use whakairo patterns, pākati and haehae and so on, he'd say to me 'nice carving, what do you want to do all that old stuff for?' That's the irony of Maoridom the arts scene now, the core group of Waikato carvers for example they're all in their 20s and then the so called 'contemporary artists' people like dad were in their 90s and 80s."
Newsroom
2 days ago
- Newsroom
The Sunday Poem, by Brian Turner
Note from ReadingRoom literary editor Steve Braunias: Victor Billot is taking a leave of absence from his Sunday Ode to pursue his political destiny at the local body elections. In his place, for the next three months, ReadingRoom invites new and established poems to email their work for consideration to stephen11@ Brian Turner begins the series with an epic poem. New Zealanders, a Definition Born here, buggered it up Taken with kind permission from Brian Turner: Selected Poems (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $35), available in bookstores nationwide.
