Bay of Plenty

The Bay of Plenty is a large indentation in the northern coast of New Zealand's North Island. It stretches from the Coromandel Peninsula in the west to Cape Runaway in the east, a wide stretch of some 259 km of open coastline. The Bay of Plenty Region is situated around this body of water, also incorporating several large islands in the bay. The Bay of Plenty was the first part of New Zealand to be settled by the Māori. The name "Bay of Plenty" originated with James Cook during his 1769–70 exploration of New Zealand, who noted the abundant resources in the area. The Māori name for the bay is Te Moana-a-Toi ("the sea of Toi"), a reference to the ancestral explorer Toi-te-huatahi. In the 1830s, Europeans began to settle in the area. On 5...