Bay of Plenty local Māori traditions, the Bay of Plenty was the landing point of several migration canoes that brought Māori settlers to New Zealand. These include the "Mataatua", "Nukutere", "Tākitimu", "Arawa" and "Tainui" canoes. Many of the descendent iwi maintain their traditional homelands ("rohe") in the region, including Te Whānau-ā-Apanui, Te Whakatōhea, Ngāi Tai, Ngāi Tūhoe, Ngāti Awa, Ngāti Tūwharetoa ki Kawerau, Te Arawa, Ngāi Te Rangi, Ngāti Ranginui and Ngāti Pūkenga. Early Māori settlement gave rise to many of the town and city names used today. The first recorded European contact came when James Cook sailed through the Bay of Plenty
Countries dependent on the Bay of Bengal platform, which opened in 1994, was shut down in 2013. India's Reliance Industries began production in an offshore block near India's coast in 2009. The BIMSTEC countries view the Bay of Bengal as a common security space. The first conference of national security chiefs in the region was held in 2017. The Bay of Bengal has non-traditional security challenges of piracy, human trafficking, terrorist networks and drug smuggling, which has led to greater cooperation between the navies of Bangladesh, India, the United States and Thailand. The Bay of Bengal is a prime zone of strategic competition between two of Asia's