A new study reveals that New Zealand’s huge ocean territory contains two billion tons of carbon, locked in the seafloor. If we want to fight climate change, it might be a good idea to keep it there.
Richard Robinson is an award-winning photojournalist. With a 25-year career in magazines and newspapers, he has captured some of the most memorable images of this country’s biggest news and sporting events. Using his talents to highlight the plights of our Ocean’s he gives voice to our endangered species and is known for his unique and haunting images of life below the waterline.
The market—and human appetite—are often to blame for ecosystem destruction. But in the case of kina barrens, they might be part of the solution.
A team of New Zealanders and Tongans have just carpeted a remote volcanic island in Tonga with poisoned bait, hoping to eradicate rats—and with that one action, restore a vibrant, interconnected ecosystem of seabirds, forest animals, coral reefs and marine life.
Once upon a time, raucous, stinking colonies of seabirds blanketed huge areas of Aotearoa’s mainland, each burrow and poo and eggshell helping fuel the forests. Those birds are gone now—but a new modelling tool gives a fascinating glimpse of what once was.
Hector’s and Māui dolphins are dying in nets—but their biggest foe might be a virus carried by cats. Can transformative tech cut through the tangle and save the creatures at the heart of it?
New Zealand once led the world in marine protection. Now our underwater ecosystems are bottoming out. Why is stopping fishing so politically fraught? How might our ideas about marine protection need to change? And why, when our seas are in such desperate need, is it taking us so long to learn to talk to each other?
Two people have been counting albatrosses on remote islands in the subantarctic for more than three decades. Their research shows that at least one species is en route to extinction. A few changes to the way we fish could save 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.
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.
Every year, New Zealand vessels drag trawl gear across nearly 100,000 square kilometres of our seafloor. We are the only nation still trawling on the high seas of the South Pacific. Can we make bottom trawling better? Or should we ban it altogether?
At sea, the feasts are grand and impromptu—and everyone’s invited.
The invasive seaweed Caulerpa brachypus was discovered in New Zealand just over a year ago, and it promises to ruin everything. On Aotea/Great Barrier Island, people are sacrificing their way of life in an attempt to contain the weed—and stop it reaching the mainland.
Six parrot species are set to be banned in the Auckland region due to the dangers they pose to native wildlife. Is this fair?
A study by the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency of illegal, unreported and unregulated tuna fishing has found that the problem may not be as bad as was feared. It estimated that between 2017 and 2019, 192,000 tonnes of tuna worth more than US$300 million was caught each year in the Pacific Islands region by people not following fisheries rules—down from 300,000 tonnes in the 2016 estimate. “The assumption that unlicensed fishing is rampant has been proven false,” says Auckland-based fisheries consultant Francisco Blaha, who contributed to the report. Only five percent of the dodgy dealings involved unlicensed fishing boats. Most—89 per cent—involved licensed operators misreporting which fish they caught, or how many.
Blue sharks swim in all the world’s oceans, and a new study reveals surprising stories about their migrations and behaviour. For his doctoral research at the University of Auckland, Riley Elliott carefully attached satellite tags to 15 blue sharks—11 males and four females—in the waters off northeastern New Zealand between 2012 and 2015. With limited funding available for the expensive tags, Elliott turned to community groups and individuals, the sponsors following the animals’ movements online. In some cases, the tag stayed attached for at least a year. One shark travelled more than 14,000 kilometres from New Zealand to the Pacific Islands and Indonesia and back. Another dived to more than 1364 metres below the surface—a record at the time for blue sharks—and a third swam all the way to the equator. “We were all kind of cheering for him,” says Elliott. “The scientific theory is they don’t cross the equator.” One kilometre from the line, as though the shark had sensed it, he turned and swam south. “Unfortunately, he went through a real hotspot of tuna fishing, and we stopped hearing from him.” These long-distance travellers were all males. The tagged females remained in and around New Zealand waters all year round—a surprise, given fisheries data had suggested there were few mature females here. In a shark fairy tale, Elliott tagged a male and a female off Aotea/Great Barrier Island in 2014. The female had fresh mating scars (shark romance is not gentle), and there were young pups close by. In late summer, the male swam north to the tropics, while the female stayed around Northland. The following spring, they reunited—returning to the same spot near Aotea at the same time. Blue sharks are declining almost everywhere, as they’re caught more often than any other shark in longline fisheries. In 2019, surface longline fishers in New Zealand caught almost as many blue sharks as they did southern bluefin, the species they were actually targeting. About three-quarters of the sharks caught were killed and processed for their fins or meat.
As this issue went to print, hundreds of kororā had been found washed up dead in separate events along Te Oneroa-a-Tōhē/Ninety Mile Beach and other beaches in the Far North, in what are called penguin wrecks. The Department of Conservation says little blue penguins are dying as a result of the summer’s marine heatwave, which makes it harder for them to find food. Read more at nzgeo.com/penguins
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.
A symphony is taking place beneath the waves, as many different animals call to each other, scare off predators, stun their prey, or munch on algae. What happens when humans drown them out?
How hard could it be to find a manta ray? They’re six metres wide, after all.
Land is owned, but the sea is shared. And we haven’t been sharing very well.
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