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?
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.
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?
We cull hybrids. We steal their eggs, and break up inter-species breeding pairs, all in the name of genetic integrity. Protecting the mauri. We created this tangle by bringing in exotic species. Can we ever undo it? And should we even try?
One hundred years since its inception, Te Aho o Te Kura Pounamu/the Correspondence School has broadened its scope to become a safety net: a place for kids who are bullied, anxious, or profoundly out of step with the mainstream system. Many of them struggle at Te Kura, too—but for others, there’s something magic about this school that strives to meet them where they are.
Where do young sea creatures spend their first weeks? What’s at the root of oceanic food chains? Kelp forests are to Aotearoa what coral reefs are to other marine ecosystems. Or they used to be.
When the sun goes down, the night shift gets to work on our native plants. It’s thought New Zealand’s spectacular array of moths may be providing a hidden service after dark, transferring pollen between flowers. The problem for researchers is that studying the nocturnal behaviour of moths is extremely difficult. While it has long been known that moths visit native flowers and get pollen stuck to their hairy bodies, it has not been ascertained whether they are successfully transferring it to the female parts of neighbouring flowers. “Previously in New Zealand there’s been no good evidence of moth pollination,” says Barbara Anderson from Otago Museum. “It’s all been anecdotal and circumstantial.” “We knew they were able to remove pollen,” says Max Buxton, of Plant and Food Research, “but not whether they were moving it to the right place at the right time.” Buxton, Anderson, and Janice Lord, a University of Otago evolutionary biologist, set up an experiment in Dunedin, using moths caught in local gardens. They painted a fluorescent dye known as pollen tracker on the anthers of mānuka and pinātoro (native daphne) plants, then left the moths to it. They discovered that the moths were indeed successfully transferring pollen between flowers—the first time it has been conclusively shown moths are pollinating native plant species. Compared with other countries, New Zealand has very few bee species. Moths could be doing much of the pollination. Of New Zealand’s 2000 species of moth, 1800 are found only here, having evolved for millions of years alongside our native plants. In the face of massive habitat change and light pollution, this research, says Anderson, is just scratching the surface. “Our understanding of these interactions is at the very beginning,” she says. “Already we’re having these huge impacts on moths and their plant partners. We’re really playing catch-up.”
A year of wandering the southern oceans, following ancient migration routes in search of food—that’s the tantalising glimpse of whale life that a tohorā/southern right whale nicknamed Bill has given University of Auckland researchers. Thanks to a satellite tag deployed by a team led by Emma Carroll in 2020, Bill has now provided the longest record of tohorā migration ever captured. Usually, satellite tags stop working after around six months. Bill’s tag, however, is still transmitting more than a year later. Bill left the Auckland Islands in August 2020 and travelled thousands of kilometres into waters south of western Australia, before moving far off into the Indian Ocean, almost halfway to Africa. Then, he turned south and swam thousands more kilometres to the Antarctic ice edge. Over several months, he worked his way back along the edge of the pack ice, finally returning to the Auckland Islands in June, having traveled well over 15,000 kilometres. Another tagged whale, Tahi, also travelled far into the Indian Ocean before returning to the Auckland Islands. “We had no idea that they were going so far west,” says Carroll. “Bill and Tahi went a third of the way around the world and back. That’s unprecedented. [caption id="attachment_432915" align="alignnone" width="600"] Photographer Richard Robinson floats above the seafloor holding a VR camera, waiting. The 80-tonne whales, curious and confident, are ideal subjects—approaching slowly, orbiting gracefully and drifting away when they’re satisfied they’ve got to know you.[/caption] “It’s showing that these whales are using far more of the ocean than we thought. Which is great, because if one area isn’t that productive, but the other is, they’re still getting a lot of kai. It suggests the population has resilience.” Carroll and her team have just returned from the Auckland Islands, where they deployed another 11 satellite tags. “We want to be able to match their satellite tracks against currents, productivity, marine heatwaves, and all kinds of things. At the moment, we can see what they’re doing, but we need more data to understand why they’re doing what they’re doing.” As for Bill, well, at the time of writing, he is still transmitting—currently halfway back to western Australia, off on another lap of his extraordinary life. His progress, and that of this years’ tagged whales, can be seen at tohoravoyages.ac.nz
Buried in the soil are the lattices and networks of another kingdom of life, one that’s inextricably connected with what grows above the ground. Fungi determine the types of trees that thrive, and change the quality and health of soil. So, what exactly are they up to down there—and what powers do fungi have that humans could harness?
Wallabies may have evolved in Australia, but they’re so well suited to life in New Zealand that they have reached plague numbers for the second time in a century, eating their way through the landscapes of Canterbury and the Bay of Plenty and escaping from the containment zones created to hold them back.
Out there in forest reserves, down remote back roads and tucked away in corners of small towns hide giant tōtara, mataī and rimu. A tiny group of obsessive people, guided by old records and half-remembered stories, regularly hit the road in search of these monsters. Their aim: to bag a champion tree, one whose size, age and majesty will put it at the top of New Zealand’s notable tree register.
Plant sex is the ultimate form of a long-distance relationship, with animals co-opted into carrying out the act. The result: much of life on Earth depends on the habits of hungry insects, bats, reptiles and birds. But we don’t know exactly who’s doing what to whom, and when—and what might happen if they disappear.
Last century, southern right whales were hunted until there were none left—none that we could find. A small group of these whales, also called tohorā, hid from the harpoon. Deep in the subantarctic, the survivors birthed and nursed their young. Now, tohorā are returning to the coasts of New Zealand. Are we ready for them?
During winter, dozens of seabird species take flight from New Zealand on epic migrations across the planet—and recent advances in tracking technology mean we can now follow them. What we’re learning has upended scientists’ ideas about the lengths animals will go to in order to raise a family.
A unique New Zealand landscape is at risk of losing what sets it apart. Here’s what needs to happen.
Displaying animal skeletons in museums is just one of many reasons for preparing bones. Museums also maintain extensive collections of bones for the study of comparative anatomy. All vertebrate animals have skeletons based on the same plan, because they involved from a common ancestor. By comparing them side by side, researchers can study the process of evolution and the levels of relationship between species. Medical researchers can also gain insight into our own bodies by studying the anatomy of other animals. For this reason, far more bones are held in museum storage than are ever on display. One of the leading lights of comparative anatomy in New Zealand was Thomas Jeffrey Parker, who from 1880 until his early death in 1897, was a professor of biology at the University of Otago and curator of Otago Museum. Parker was a force of scientific enquiry and a masterful teacher who produced more than 40 scientific papers and numerous textbooks on biology. He was also an extraordinary preparator of animal remains. Many of his exquisite bone articulations are on display at Otago Museum, while a collection of painted skulls, with their individual bones artfully colour-coded, is still in use by university students a century after it was made. Among Parker’s many achievements was the development of a technique for preserving soft, biodegradable animal parts like cartilage and gut tissue using glycerine. The items he prepared in this way are still in a fine state, and provide a great resource for researchers. To this day, no one has managed to match Parker’s skill and prowess at using this technique.
Old bones are a staple of museum collections, but only a handful of people in New Zealand have the skills to prepare them for display. Recovering the skeleton of a large animal—rotting it down, preparing, cleaning and articulating it—is a long and demanding journey that only the most dedicated pursue.
Sea lions are coming home to the coasts of southern New Zealand, returning to their former territory after more than 300 years in exile. The big question is: Can we make room for them?
Ramari Stewart on keeping traditions alive.
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