Immediately after the eruption of mount Tarawera in 1886,
as you might imagine, the landscape was completely and utterly changed.
The eruption came up underneath Lake Rotomahana
and there was mad and debris and ash spread all over the countryside.
So the landscape as people knew it was
completely and utterly devoid of anything
they thought they could recognise from before the eruption.
During our expedition on lake Rotomahana,
we set out to see what had become of the
Pink and White Terraces geothermal system
after it had been drowned by the lake rising around 100 meters.
we also wanted to see if we could find any vestiges of the pre 1886 shoreline
that we could recognise by mapping the lake floor today in extreme detail.
Why it was key to try and find some part of the pre 1886 lake shore that we could recognize
was it means that we could then marry the data that we have today of the lake floor
with that of the maps that existed prior to the eruption of 1886.
What we were able to do that previous people weren't
is to map the lake floor and a far greater resolution.
what that meant is that we saw detail that had not been seen before
and in particular what we found was this arcuate promontory of land
that previously used to stick out from the lake shore
just north of the Pink Terraces.
So we knew where to go to look if were going to find them at all.
When we take the data that we collected and we render it into a 3d model,
you can see this arcuate shaped promontory we're talking about
jutting out into the bottom of the lake floor today.
immediately south of that, you can see this ramp
where we believe the pink terraces were situated in the past.
We then applied side-scan sonar and this
was looking for very hard objects or materials sitting on the lake floor.
And lo and behold, in each one of these images if you look closely
you can see the arcuate shape, you can see the overlapping terraces,
and in some cases you can see what were probably pools on top of the terraces,
now filled by sediments and that's why they're black.
The money shot of was when we put the camera down on top of these Terraces
which we found through the side-scan sonar,
and we found what we believe to be the buttresses of one of the terraces themselves
by the end of the expedition we were extremely excited and very happy
that we had found what we believe to be remnants of the Pink Terraces.
But unbeknownst to us we had a little secret still in store.
In the last couple of days gathering data from the White Terraces region,
we never actually got to process for a couple of months
because of there were so many other expeditions we had to deal with at the time.
When we finally got around to looking at that data, we were completely gobsmacked
because there, staring us right in the face, were what we believe
to be the bottom terrace or two from the White Terraces, exactly in the right place.
So at the end of the day it looks like we found
quite a few of the terraces from the pinks, and there may be more,
and possibly we found the bottom tier or two of the whites.
I think what's remarkable to me
is that there's been a hundred and twenty-five years of mystery
about what happened to the Pink and White Terraces.
Most people thought they had been destroyed, and why not.
There was this huge incredible eruption which devastated the landscape
and tens of meters of mud splattered as far as the eye could see.
So why wouldn't they be destroyed?
What is truly remarkable is that we've shown that they haven't gone anywhere,
particularly the pinks and possibly the whites,
and they've been sitting there on the bottom of Lake Rotomahana
for well over 100 years since they were drowned and they have gone anywhere!
So I think that this is New Zealand's Titanic, and we found it.
And we brought this wonderful iconic thing back to the people
and that means a lot to many people, particularly iwi,
and they know that whilst of course it was dreadful and there was a lot of loss of life,
and devastation on the countryside and disbursement of the iwi throughout that region,
these great iconic Terraces that people revered, are still there.
They just happen to be at the bottom of the lake.