Erect-crested penguins are one of the most mysterious birds on the planet. We have little idea how many there are, what they eat, where they forage, or how their environment may be changing as the Southern Ocean warms. No one has even visited the Bounty Islands where they breed in three years. Scientist Thomas Mattern chartered a yacht and mounted a mission to answer some of these urgent questions before it’s too late.
It’s 8pm in Auckland on February 13 and Cyclone Gabrielle is winding up. Over the hill from us families are being evacuated—the old-man pines that hold the cliffs up are falling. We’re fine, but it’s weird. Sirens in the background. I’m getting up every two minutes to check the trampoline, the willow, the kids. During lockdown, if the kids or I were feeling anxious, we’d head for the weedy bush gully at the bottom of our street. There’s a bridge to drop sticks off, dragonflies. The kids discovered a cluster of baby ponga and came back each day to watch the fronds unfurl. When we found a ruru dead on the road, we carried it to that special spot by the stream, and buried it. The gully was squashed under a slip in the floods that came a fortnight ago. This is what climate change feels like to me: a convergence of new and startling happenings, once-in-a-lifespan events that now shunt into one another and overlap, a state of ambient emergency. And hunger, if you’re a rockhopper penguin on the Antipodes. “We should use the list of NZ’s biggest climate polluters to rename this year’s climate disasters,” someone tweeted the other day, snapshotting a top-10 chart compiled by the Environmental Protection Authority. Cyclone Fonterra? Cyclone Z Energy? As the American writer and activist Rebecca Solnit said in a speech at Princeton University last year: “Every crisis is in part a storytelling crisis. This is as true of climate chaos as anything else... A climate story we urgently need is one that exposes who is actually responsible for climate chaos.” It’s not individuals making bad choices as consumers, Solnit argues. It’s the fossil fuel industry and the fact that, given the stakes, there are still bad choices available. I’m not sure it’s as simple as that. Why not demand change on both fronts? We should expect the people who can make sustainable choices to do so—to go solar, take the bus, cut back on meat and milkshakes. At the same time, we should push the system to change, fast—true systemic change is not a pipe dream. Look at cigarette smoking, seatbelts, smacking kids, free-range eggs, plastic shopping bags. (Aucklanders, one way to effect real change is to make a submission, this March, on Auckland Council’s 2023/24 annual budget proposals—Search ‘AK Have Your Say’). Meanwhile, we need to wrap our arms around the people whose choices are limited and those who, like our baby ponga, face being hammered and hammered again. Too often, these two groups overlap. The RSE orchard workers left stranded on their rooftops for 10 hours out the back of Taradale. The people of Rānui, west Auckland, who dragged their sodden couches and carpets out to the kerb just in time to catch the next wallop of weather. Wairoa. Gisborne. Northland. Muriwai. And most of all, everywhere: our kids. As the wind picked up tonight, my eldest asked for a bedtime story, for the first time in months. He chose one called Kōwhai and the Giants, about a Lorax-like little girl desperate to save New Zealand’s trees. “I cannot do it alone,” says Kōwhai. “And when I speak, my voice is not heard.” He lay awake for a long time after that.
What’s it like to be a cockle or a pipi when the sea turns to chocolate milk? Juveniles suffocate in even a thin layer of sediment, says Simon Thrush, head of the University of Auckland’s Institute of Marine Science. Adults “hold their breath” for a couple of days, then have to resume feeding—in water so full of sediment and pollutants it often kills them. In thicker layers of mud, like here at Sandspit after January’s floods, even worms “just get stuck and die. It’s gruesome.” New regulations introduced by Auckland Council in 2019 aimed to limit sediment from land development over the 12,000 building sites active each year. Last year, officers cited more than 82 per cent compliance—yet this summer of extreme rain events has defied all attempts to mitigate the runoff.
It’s harder than you’d think for a new COVID-19 variant to take off in New Zealand, says Jo Chapman, a senior scientist at the Institute of Environmental Science and Research wastewater testing program. “Variants have to be both fit and good at growing, but also lucky—to find a pathway through the community and get a foothold.” Still, enough of them have made it through that we now have a “variant soup”. Initially wastewater testing was an early warning system—it told us where COVID-19 was stealthily spreading. Now, it’s an unbiased way of monitoring trends. The new ESR website poops.nz lets laypeople take a nosy at the data too, even zooming down to the level of a single street or two. Yes, you can now see what’s in your neighbourhood poo.
To an orca, a sunfish is a bit like a watermelon: a nutritious, watery snack, but hard to swallow whole. Also like watermelons, sunfish (also called mola) don’t bite back. This makes them the ideal “training prey” for juvenile orcas, according to New Zealand orca scientist Ingrid Visser. In the first-ever review of orca-sunfish interactions, Visser, along with sunfish researcher Marianne Nyegaard and orca researcher London Fletcher, found several instances of juvenile-parent orca pairs hunting sunfish. About 40 per cent of the dozens of photos, videos and oral accounts they analysed didn’t appear to be about predation, but simply entertainment. Orcas flung sunfish like frisbees, pushed them around underwater, and balanced them on noses in what Visser calls a “mola moustache”. The researchers also found records of orcas extracting a meal of intestinal spaghetti: “It’s like they’ve got a string of sausages in their mouth, pulling them out of the sunfish, which is often still alive and swimming around,” says Visser. “They split the sunfish up like a taco or a pita bread… stick their faces in, and eat the insides out.” One underwater video filmed in New Zealand reveals that sunfish are quick on their fins despite their dinnerplate anatomy. “We thought the orca were pushing the sunfish upside down,” says Nyegaard, “but the mola was thrashing and spinning in crazy manoeuvres all by itself. I thought, ‘What the hell is it doing?!’” The sunfish was attempting to evade the orca by using a suite of sneaky moves, including spinning rapidly, breaching, flipping upside down, or positioning itself with its rigid backside towards the orca’s mouth. “People thought sunfish were just great big blobs and that mola design was cumbersome, but this adds further proof that they’re actually quite good at swimming,” says Visser. “They can breach, their cruise and boost speeds are impressive, and this is more recognition of their agility.”
Hundreds of pest plant species—many of them garden escapees—run rampant in New Zealand’s biggest city. Now, its citizens are fighting back.
Antarctic historian David Harrowfield has spent a lifetime collecting—objects, friendships and memories.
In the Antarctic summer of 1972, four young scientists set off on a trimaran from Cape Bird for a quick outing on a clear day. They would spend the next five days stranded at sea, jumping between ice floes that shattered and sank beneath them, risking their lives with every leap.
Kiekie belongs to the widely dispersed pandanus family, well known as a source of weaving material throughout the Pacific. It’s the only member of the family native to Aotearoa, and it’s best known for its deep green, glossy leaves—but it also produces fruit regarded by many as the finest delicacy of our native bush. The taste sensation of its fruit sent early settlers grasping for superlatives; they made comparisons to pineapple; ripe pears with an aroma resembling vanilla; and soft, waxy bananas. On the female plant, the fruit ripens in late autumn or early winter. Stalks produce three to five fruit (ureure) that look like a cross between sweetcorn and pineapple. The rough skin is peeled away to reveal a sweet pulp of berries inside. The male flower produces a creamy, beige stamen mounted on a sweet, fleshy base of leaves (bracts) known as tāwhara. It flowers for about a fortnight in October. Traditionally, the bracts were eaten fresh off the plant; it was always a race to beat bush rats (and, more recently, possums) to this seasonal treat. Some settlers described a cooling jelly drink made from the juice of tāwhara; others made a jelly from the flowers that apparently tasted like preserved strawberries. Kiekie is common in the undergrowth of lowland forest, its aerial roots locking into bark and rock crevices for grip as it climbs up into the canopy. Its elastic roots were collected and used extensively as lashings and for making sails on canoes. It was also used to bind together tāruke (crayfish pots) and hīnaki (eel pots). For Māori weavers, kiekie was second in importance only to harakeke (flax). Its leaves are narrower and shorter, but may be more durable under water. Strips are split from kiekie leaves, scraped, boiled, rinsed and dried in the sun to bleach. The fibre was often used for the finest whāriki (mats) and kete whakairo (woven bags) and to create tukutuku (wall panels). It was also used for rain-capes, belts and hats. In Traditional Lifeways of the Southern Maori, Herries Beattie recorded a story of the mythological origins of kiekie in Te Waipounamu. Legend has it that a character by the name of Tamatakuariki travelled down the Poutini coast in search of his wife and, in his haste, shreds of his pōkeka (rain cape) were torn off by the vegetation. These fell to the ground and germinated as kiekie. One name of the plant is therefore Te Pōkeka-a-Tama, Tama’s raincoat.
This creature is so old it defies imagination. Its genome is far more complex than ours—big enough to crash one of the country’s most powerful supercomputers. Will we lose the species before we glimpse the ancient stories it has to tell?
Pyroclastic surges—super-heated and fast-flowing clouds of gas and rock fragments—represent the deadliest risk from Auckland’s volcanic field. Previous hazard assessments assumed such surges would travel up to six kilometres, but a new study of the Ubehebe crater in California’s Death Valley shows they extend much further, and future assessments should consider distances of 10–15 kilometres from the vent. University of Otago volcanologist James White says Ubehebe’s eruption was similar to those of some of Auckland’s volcanoes where magma and water mixed to trigger more violent explosions, known as phreatomagmatic. But the Death Valley’s dry environment preserved the pyroclastic deposits exceptionally well, tracing them to at least nine kilometres. Pyroclastic surges are lubricated by a low-friction air cushion which allows them to move across any terrain. White says the somewhat cooler—albeit still lethally hot—surges from magma-water eruptions can travel even greater distances. “What hazard managers are going to be worried about is not distance but area—extending the diameter even by two or three kilometres adds a lot of area.”
Robin Morrison reset New Zealand’s view of itself with his 1981 photography book The South Island of New Zealand—From the Road. The print run of 2000 quickly sold out, and it won the New Zealand Book Awards for non-fiction, but arguments over unpaid bills with the Japanese printer sank any hope of a second edition. Thirty years after Morrison’s death, the book has just been republished by Massey University Press.
Your favourite summer surf break may fizzle out by the end of the century as a result of climate change, according to new modelling led by University of Auckland scientist João Albuquerque. Shifting wind patterns will drive slightly bigger west coast waves, while east coast breakers are set to diminish by up to 20 per cent. Seasonal patterns will fluctuate too, with summer and autumn swells smaller than today’s, while winter and spring will see them ramp up. But it’s not just surf forecasts that will flip-flop: wave directions will shift, too. These altered angles of inundation will impact coastal communities, eroding and flooding different parts of the coast. The projected changes remain subtle up to 2045, but are expected to become “more severe” between 2080 and 2100, Albuquerque says.
Faeces have a lot to teach us. They can reveal secrets about the lives of extinct animals, and the troubles of endangered ones. Eating dung can give animals a nutrient boost—while in the oceans, a deluge of plankton poo powers the entire carbon cycle.
How a town called Maxwell got—and lost—its name.
Anne Wignall is on a mission to reduce her peak time electricity usage to zero. And thanks to her solar system, battery, and Electric Kiwi’s MoveMaster plan with a free Hour of Power, she’s getting closer to reaching that goal.
The First: The Walsh Brothers and the Aeroplane Days of Edwardian New Zealand Terry Moyle New Holland, $49.99
After the rain came for Northland and Auckland, Cyclone Gabrielle made landfall. It was a sobering test.
Geoff Chapple and Miriam Beatson didn’t tell anyone except the minister that they were getting married on February 14, 1988. Everyone else was simply invited to Cheltenham Beach in Devonport: “Please join Geoff and Miriam in a St Valentine’s Day celebration—bring your own champagne picnic.” Robin and Dinah Morrison had an invitation like anyone else—as good friends. Geoff didn’t ask Robin to photograph the event, but maybe he should have known. Robin brought his Nikon and got the shot of the day, featuring the newlyweds’ five-year-old son, Amos (now a photographer himself), clearing away streamers in front. And maybe the secrecy thing had slipped a bit. Someone threw rice. This issue, Geoff Chapple writes about the re-publication of Robin Morrison’s seminal 1981 book The South Island of New Zealand from the Road.
Fifty years ago, when four University of Canterbury students went missing in the Ross Sea, reporter Bruce Laybourn, right, and assistant postmaster Lester Price, were the 21-year-old babies of Scott Base. “Everyone was incredibly worried and trying to figure it out,” Laybourn remembers. Fossicking through correspondence for leads, they found red herring after red herring: one of the men, for example, had written to his family in Christchurch about an island he wanted to visit. “Every clue had to be followed.” When news came over the radio that the four men were safe, a yell went the length of Scott Base. With a bunch of colleagues, Laybourn leapt in a Land Rover and belted over the hill to meet the chopper flying the rescued group to McMurdo Station. Laybourn took photographs of the men as they emerged into the crowd, then whipped out his notebook and started scribbling. “They were very happy to chat. We were all mates. They were just massively relieved.” From there it was a race back to the Scott Base newsroom. Seconded to the New Zealand Press Association, Laybourn was effectively writing for the world’s papers—and because atmospherics at Antarctica made radio comms so hairy, the story had to go out in Morse code. As each page came clacking off Laybourn’s typewriter, he handed it to Price, “an absolute champion on Morse [code]—his speeds were phenomenal”. Tap, tap, tap. “I didn’t even get a byline, but I didn’t care. We were just delighted to have the boys home.”
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