Waitomo Glowworm Caves
Interesting facts
- The glowworm larvae can sense each other's light and adjust their output to glow in sync with their neighbours, intensifying the shared display.
- Unlike a firefly, the New Zealand glowworm makes its light with its own distinct luciferin and enzyme, an entirely separate evolutionary invention.
- The light shines from modified excretory organs, the Malpighian tubules, at the tail end of each larva.
- Each larva can let down as many as 30 sticky silk threads, and when prey is caught it reels the line in by eating it.
- Adult glowworm gnats are poor fliers and live only a few days, females up to about 76 hours and males up to about 96.
- Monitoring between 2009 and 2013 showed the cave's glowworms follow a 24-hour rhythm, glowing most intensely in the late afternoon.
- The name Waitomo joins the Mฤori words wai, water, and tomo, hole or shaft.
- Electric lighting was installed in 1926; before that, visitors found their way by candles, hurricane lamps, acetylene torches or magnesium flares.
- The government took the cave from its Mฤori owners in 1905 for ยฃ625 after reports of vandalism, including graffiti on its most delicate formations.
- The visitor centre's roof of crisscrossing timber and ETFE air cushions evokes a traditional Mฤori eel trap and won the New Zealand Architecture Medal in 2011.
Why it is worth it
The Waitomo Glowworm Cave, officially just Waitomo Cave, is in the North Island of New Zealand. Its roof is lit by thousands of tiny blue-green lights. They are the larvae of Arachnocampa luminosa, a fungus gnat found only in New Zealand. Each larva hangs from the rock in a mucus tube and lets down curtains of silk threads beaded with sticky droplets. Its glow lures midges that hatch from the stream below, and they get caught in the threads. The best place to see this is the Glowworm Grotto, a chamber about 30 metres long at the lowest level of the cave. Visitors drift through it in silence in a small boat on the Waitomo Stream.
The cave is formed in Oligocene limestone, laid down under the sea about 30 million years ago from shells, corals and other marine life. It has about 1,300 metres of passages on two levels, joined by a 16-metre shaft called the Tomo. On the upper, drier level are the Blanket, a stalactite sheet so thin that light shows through it, and the Cathedral, the largest chamber, 13 metres high with fine acoustics. The opera singer Malvina Major performed there in 1998 while scientists measured the effect of the audience on the cave's air. The Banquet Chamber is named after the dinner that the Mฤori owners of the cave served there to a government party in 1889; the ceiling is still darkened by their candles.
Mฤori had known the cave for about a century when, in December 1887, a local Mฤori man, Tane Tinorau, and the surveyor Fred Mace built a raft and floated in on the stream by candlelight. Tinorau later found the upper entrance used today. By 1889 he and his wife Huti were guiding paying visitors. The Crown took over the cave in 1905, but in 1989 the land and cave were returned to the original owners. Descendants of Tinorau and Huti now make up many of the staff and share in the revenue. A scientific advisory group watches carbon dioxide, temperature and humidity, and it decides how many people may enter each day. When the glowworms declined in 1979, the cave closed for months until they recovered.
Getting there
The cave is at Waitomo Caves village. Hamilton is about 55 km away as the crow flies, and Hamilton Airport (HLZ) about 48 km.
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From the encyclopaedia
The Waitomo Glowworm Cave is a cave with several large chambers at Waitomo in the North Island of New Zealand. The cave is a tourist attraction known for its population of Arachnocampa luminosa, a glowworm species found only in New Zealand. In 2013 it was stated that the Waitomo Glowworm Cave was "the most visited glowworm display in the world". The attraction has a modern visitor centre at the entrance, largely designed in wood. There are organized tours that include a boat ride under the glowworms.
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