Police are yet to identify the human remains found in a Porirua walkway on Wednesday.
The remains were found near the Whitireia Park walkway in Titahi Bay and extricated from the scene last night, Detective Senior Sergeant Hamish Blackburn said.
A forensic postmortem is due to take place in the coming days.
Local iwi have been consulted and a blessing of the scene will also take place soon.
“Our priority is to identify the deceased and determine how they came to rest where they were located. However, it may take some time before we are in a position to confirm who the deceased is,” Blackburn said.
“A scene examination will continue in the Whitireia Park area today.”
Police are yet to give an indication of how far back the remains date to, or whether the deceased is believed to have died in recent times.
Source of the "really unpleasant" noise has been identified, but a fix is some time away.