Pandemic. Climate chaos. A cost-of-living crisis, houses laughably far out of reach, beaches too dirty to swim at—it’s exhausting being an adult in 2023. How do our teens manage?
Adults have complained about teenagers since the dawn of time, but it turns out evolution has good reasons for giving adolescents deep-seated social insecurity and a propensity to take silly risks. Just like humans, animals go through ‘wildhood’—a time of experimentation, creativity, danger and learning.
In November 2017, this magazine reported a study of subterranean meshworks of fungi in northern hemisphere forests. The study, from the University of British Columbia, claimed that trees were exchanging resources across these so-called common mycorrhizal networks (CMNs), and that mature trees were using them to extend a helping hand—and chemical warnings—to surrounding seedlings. The notion that trees talk and co-operate with one another—dubbed the ‘wood-wide web’—was snapped up by storytellers (including me: see The Wood-Wide Web, Issue 148), and soon graced shows like Avatar and The Last of Us. But a recent review, published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, now says that study was flawed: “The claim that mature trees preferentially send resources and defence signals to offspring through CMNs has no peer-reviewed, published evidence.” The reviewers point out that many other field studies never found CMNs: “With current technology, it is difficult to confirm that continuous, non-transient mycelial connections exist between trees in the field.” Reviewers also castigated the original study for ‘citation bias’, in which researchers preferentially reference only other studies, including their own, that support their conclusions. Such bias can snowball: “The number of unsupported claims regarding mycorrhizal networks has doubled in the past 25 years in the scientific literature,” noted the reviewers. It’s a timely reminder—if any were needed—that life doesn’t imitate Avatar.
What would lockdown have been like when you were a teen? In trying to fathom the gap between today’s adolescents and all who have gone before, it’s a useful thought experiment. For me, a Hawke’s Bay teen in the late 90s, I suspect a lockdown would have been extremely chill. Lots of books and baking and runs around the orchard with our dog. I guess there would have been homework? Posted-out worksheets or something? But no smartphone, no TikTok or Instagram or chaotic class Zooms, or streamed TV to hand 24/7. My brothers and I would have fought over the landline, made eel traps and played cricket on the lawn. I’d have spent a lot of afternoons up trees. Also: COVID would have been pretty much the only hard thing we had to deal with. I don’t think lockdown circa 2020/2021 felt like that for our kids, or for many teens in New Zealand. Our young people are now part of the pressure cooker. They exist in this busy, uncertain world with us—but they’re also online, and in that world the sun never sets. Lockdown at our place, in Auckland with two working parents and two young kids, meant that every moment from 5am was parcelled out, consumed by either childcare or work. My husband and I were both working in digital journalism so even when we weren’t technically on shift we were still responding to Slack messages and tweets. There was no way around it and no way to hide it from the kids. By necessity, they had their own screens: the TV in the lounge, streaming endless Bluey and Octonauts while I tapped away on the laptop beside them. The iPad stuffed with e-books and primary-school maths programs. We got outside when we could. Hunted for fungi, walked endlessly around the block, planted silverbeet. But on the whole it sucked, for everyone. I still worry about what those months did to our kids—and the fact that their future will likely be full of similar, extraordinarily anxious times. What will the world be like in 10 years, 15, 20? My three-year-old is obsessed with babies. She chatters with happy certainty about having a real one of her own. She will teach her baby to make kawakawa tea, to swim at the beach, turn over stones to look for pinchy crabs. It has recently become an act of self-preservation to smile and slam a door on the thoughts that bloom when she talks like this. Our parents can’t help us parent in this moment. Nothing they faced compares. Their experience of thinking about their kids’ futures is so far removed from our own that sometimes when I broach the topic, I come away feeling slightly unhinged. But then another news story drops into my feed: an Antarctic ice shelf sets melt records. Millions of dead fish clog an Australian river. This morning, economists updated their predictions of recession—it will be twice as deep as first thought. In grappling with all this, I think it’s helpful to acknowledge that the gap between teens and adults today is more like a gulf, a parallel universe—in a world in flux every adolescence, from now on, will be profoundly out of whack with our own. It already is. Yet we never hear from teenagers—they exist on different platforms, they don’t get to vote, they’re often ignored in data collection, and too often what they say in public is misunderstood or disregarded. So this edition of New Zealand Geographic is a special one. With funding from NZ On Air, we’ve spent nearly a year documenting nine teenagers from all around Aotearoa. We want to know what the world looks like from their perspective. What it feels like. How they cope. This project is not about chronicling the quirks of youth or the evils of screens, or how to be a better parent. There is no tutting or throwing-up of hands. It is simply an exercise in listening. If you’re a teen reading this magazine, we hope you see something of yourself in it.
It’s a teenager’s life for young sea lions in the Auckland Islands: not yet battling over mates, they’re free to wrestle, snooze—and accost photographers.
Nō hea koe? Where are you from? In te ao Māori, it’s the first and most important question to ask—because your place, and the place of your people, shapes who you are.
In her last years of high school, Cadence Chung wrote a book of poems, a musical, and a high-profile complaint to the New Zealand Qualifications Authority. Two years on, she’s also told the backstory.
Fifteen years ago, a crisis loomed for search and rescue. Two-thirds of volunteers were men over 40, and as the years ticked by, they were going to struggle with the gnarly climbs, river crossings and long days so often required to find those who are lost. But would young people be altruistic enough to step up?
When northern chiefs learned that harakeke did not grow in England, they were astonished. How was it possible to live without it? Harakeke will grow almost anywhere in the country, from brackish coastal swamps to dry, windswept hillsides up to nearly 1500 metres in altitude. It’s not a true flax but a lily, and a close relative of tī kōuka (cabbage tree), which shares many of its properties. Māori weavers recognised at least 60 distinct varieties, and different cultivars were grown in pā harakeke (plantations) for their strength, softness, colour and fibre content. Most items of pre-European clothing had harakeke somewhere in their construction: a knee-length flax skirt (piupiu), a rough rain cape (pōkeka) made from flax leaves for travelling, and flax sandals (pāraerae) that were plaited from split harakeke leaves. Tikanga prevented weavers from eating food while they were working, and children were discouraged from touching or stepping over flax materials. For finer garments, muka (flax fibres) were separated from the upper surface of the leaf, scraped clean, beaten, washed, dried, bleached in the sun and sometimes dyed. Woven muka produced a strong, coarse canvas and when it was spun and twisted into ropes and lashings, it was without peer. Cordage varied from the finest lines for fishing and bird snares to plaited ropes strong enough to hold a waka at anchor. Experiments in England showed ropes made from New Zealand flax were twice as strong as those made from European flax, and a Sydney rope maker declared it was superior to any other fibre he had used. Early European explorers were astounded at the size of massive, communally owned fishing nets (kaharoa) almost two kilometres long. All parts of harakeke were used in one way or another. Flax nectar was a prized beverage and sweetener, and a staple food in the south during hard times. Flax roots were roasted over hot stones and beaten into a poultice to treat abscesses and ulcers. Juice from the roots was applied to wounds as a disinfectant and to treat everything from rashes, ringworm and chilblains to toothache. Pia harakeke (flax gum) was a popular remedy for burns, scalds, old wounds and minor cuts and abrasions. It was used like a sticking plaster to seal a wound from bacterial infection. It could even be used as a glue. A sharp stick and a thread of muka was commonly used to sew up wounds. Leaf strips served as bush bandages, and the thick base of the leaf made an excellent splint when firmly bound around broken bones.
The world according to Jaxon Brian Storm Czepanski, 14.
... and it’s tuatara to blame
Almost every year since 1973, tāne Māori of all ages have travelled to an uninhabited island in Lake Rotorua to train in the traditional art of taiaha. They learn how to hold an ahae, or defensive posture, how to perform a poua, or strike, and how to lay down a wero, or ceremonial challenge. But there’s something deeper in play: the wānanga connects modern people to old knowledge, and to each other, and that changes them. It’s become a place of second chances.
As climate change sends sea temperatures soaring, our lush underwater forests of kelp are disappearing (see Issue 176, Jul/Aug 2022). Now, University of Otago scientists have homed in on exactly how the heat impacts the microscopic life-cycle stages of New Zealand’s iconic rimurimu giant kelp (Macrocystis pyrifera). Like a fern, rimurimu reproduces by releasing spores. These then nestle into a crevice and grow into a germ tube, before entering the sexual stage of development. By turning up the heat on rimurimu samples in the lab, scientists found that higher temperatures triggered the release of more spores. But, once released, the hotter conditions led to significant declines in the number of spores settling on a surface and progressing through germination to become germ tubes. The germ tubes were smaller above 19.8 degrees Celsius, too. This research adds to our understanding of kelp’s future, the researchers say, and “aids our attempts to help protect and rebuild it”.
On February 13, 1997, a huge wave belted the container ship Tokio Express as it passed the coast of Cornwall in the UK. Among the 62 containers that went into the sea was one packed with five million pieces of Lego, much of it ocean-themed. The water was suddenly teeming with tiny plastic scuba tanks, seaweeds, life jackets and pirate cutlasses, and Cornwall beachcomber Tracey Williams has been picking them up, along with other plastic odds and sods, ever since. She posts striking arrays of her finds on Instagram and Twitter under the handle @LegoLostAt Sea and last year released a book, Adrift: The Curious Tale of the Lego Lost at Sea. For her, the Lego is a way to talk about plastics in the coastal environment. The bricks and figurines make up just a tiny fraction of the plastic she picks up on regular walks with her dog, Jess. “I regularly see sights too upsetting to post,” she says. “Gulls with carrier bags caught on their wings, beautiful gannets strangled by fishing or angling line, seabirds tangled in net. It can be deeply distressing.” One summer, Williams picked up more than 700 sand toys. “Many are shipped around the world only to break the first time they are used. It’s madness.” Scientists recently examined Lego bricks picked up on Cornish beaches, compared them to bricks that had been well looked after on land, and concluded Lego could last anywhere from 100 to 1300 years in seawater before breaking down. Now the researchers are looking at how far Lego from the spill has drifted, and what’s happened to the pieces. Burning question, says Williams: “Where are all the Lego sharks said to have been lost overboard—are they still trapped in a tote box at the bottom of the sea? We’re yet to find one.”
They stopped him doing the girls’ pūkana when he was little. But nothing will stop Te Orahi Akuhata living his best life now.
For the first time ever, scientists have recorded the brainwaves of freely moving octopuses—tracking three big blue octopuses (Octopus cyanea) through 12 hours of sleeping, eating, and swimming around a tank. Some of the trio’s brain activity patterns resembled those of mammals. But researchers also identified a long-lasting, slow oscillation that didn’t seem to match any particular behaviour and which they’d never seen before. They think it may represent memory or learning processes. The octopus mind is an intriguing subject for neuroscientists, since the invertebrates display behaviour linked to intelligence—such as tool use, playing, and distinct personalities. Yet, the mollusc and mammal lineages split on the tree of life 1.2 billion years ago, meaning octopus smarts have evolved independently from our own. In addition to its central brain, two-thirds of an octopus’ neurons are located in its arms. It’s these powerful arms that posed a challenge for scientists: “If we tried to attach wires to them, they would immediately rip it off,” says Tamar Gutnick, lead author of the study. Octopuses also lack hard surfaces, such as a skull, to attach electrodes to. So the research team anaesthetised each octopus and surgically inserted a data logger under its skin—out of reach of probing tentacles. Electrodes were slipped into an incision between the eyes, into the brain region thought to be important for visual learning and memory, and once they recovered, the octopuses were filmed going about their octopus business. In future, researchers plan to combine brainwave detection with learning and memory tasks, to further tease out what’s going on in their alien brains.
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