Geo News Archives | Page 40 of 42 | New Zealand Geographic

Switching stitchbirds

Getting up before dawn, weathering rough seas, working during weekends and holidays and being scratched and pecked are not activities that today's teenagers normally relish. But a team of students from Glenfield College in Auckland's North Shore City accepted such conditions when they volunteered to help transfer endangered stitchbirds from Little Barrier Island to Tiritiri Matangi Island in the Hauraki Gulf in September 1995. The transfer was the latest in a series of Department of Conservation tactics aimed at helping the plight of the stitchbird or hihi, New Zealand's rarest honeyeater.

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An enemy among us

Since mid-1991 New Zealand has been in the grip of a significant epidemic of meningococcal meningitis. Though not dramatic enough to make the headlines every day, the epidemic has warranted steady media coverage. In early September, for instance, Middlemore Hospital in Auckland claimed that it was admitting a case each day, and in the previous month two fatalities had resulted. Usually, New Zealand has an annual meningococcal disease incidence of 1-1.5 cases per 100,000—perhaps 50 cases a year. Now it is more than 11 per 100,000—up to 80 cases in some months. According to Michael Baker of the Communicable Disease Centre of the Institute of Environmental Science and Research in Wellington, meningococcal disease has become the most closely scrutinised infectious disease in the country. "About one person in 20 who contracts the disease locally dies from it, which makes it a pretty lethal disease for us," he says. "Worldwide, perhaps 10-15 per cent die, so we are doing better than many, but it's still a major concern." The main manifestation of meningococcal disease is meningitis, but the relationship between the two is not completely straightforward. Meningitis gets its name from the meninges, membranes that surround the brain and spinal cord. In meningitis, the meningeal lining becomes inflamed. Any one of more than half a dozen bacterial species can cause this inflammation, but there are three main culprits. In children under five—the main group afflicted by meningitis—Hemophihis influenzae has been behind most illnesses, but the introduction of a successful vaccine in 1994 has reduced the incidence of cases attributable to this organism by 80 per cent, and Streptococcus pneumoniae is now the main cause. In teenagers, among whom a smaller peak of infections occur, and the rest of us (who have a generally low incidence) Neisseria meningitidis is the chief cause. When the disease is caused by this bacterium, it is termed meningococcal meningitis. The bacteria don't actually have to get into the brain to cause problems. Even in the blood they can prove lethal. Meningococci (dead or alive) stimulate the host to produce defence proteins which often precipitate a fatal drop in blood pressure by increasing the permeability of blood vessel walls, especially in the extremities. The term "meningococcal disease" covers both meningococcal meningitis and blood-based septicemia. The bacterial culprits which cause meningitis are not exotic rarities, descending on our humble bodies like aliens from other planets. Far from it: they are everyday inhabitants of our throats—part of our domestic microbiological gardens, where they for the most part reside without causing problems. At any given time,between two and ten per cent of healthy people carry meningococci (the least common of the three bacteria), and probably all of us have been carriers at some time. The epithelium that lines the throat normally keeps the bacteria out of our bodies proper, but occasionally, for unknown reasons, they manage to breach it and invade the blood. From there, a few may succeed in crossing the tightly interlinked cells in the brain's blood vessels that constitute the blood-brain barrier. Once over that hurdle, the bugs are able to multiply rapidly in the cerebrospinal fluid, and inflame the meninges, causing meningitis. The presence of 100,000 bacteria per ml in cerebrospinal fluid triggers the release of host defence chemicals, which themselves disrupt the blood-brain barrier, allowing immune system cells to enter and fight the bacteria, but exacerbating inflammation as well. It is the rapid rise in fluid pressure exerted on the brain which proves fatal. Typical symptoms of meningitis include fever, irritability and drowsiness—all pretty similar to a bout of viral influenza—but these can be accompanied by seizures, headache, dislike of bright lights, neck stiffness, vomiting and coma (all signs that the bacteria have invaded the meningeal membranes), and often death. A rash which resembles tiny red-purple spots or bruises caused by bleeding under the skin is a distinctive and ominous feature. Treatment usually takes the form of large doses of injected penicillin, only a small amount of which will leak across the blood-brain barrier. Anti-inflammatory agents are often given along with the antibiotic to curtail the host's release of defence system proteins that, in the case of meningitis, seems only to make matters worse. Speed of treatment is the difference between life and death. Unfortunately, the unspecific nature of many of the symptoms helps not at all. Without treatment the disease is usually fatal, often within not much more than 24 hours from the onset of symptoms. "About 75 per cent of the cases of meningococcal disease occur in spring and winter, not just here but in many countries," says Michael Baker. "Whether this is due to everyone huddling together indoors, and therefore sharing infectious microbes, or whether some other seasonal throat infection is enabling the meningococcus to get into the blood stream, we just don't know." There are also a few other quirks to meningococcal disease. Pacific Islanders and Maori are more susceptible than pakeha, and people in Southland and Taranaki have a particularly high incidence. "Measles and influenza epidemics tend to sweep the whole country, and a high percentage of the population becomes infected quickly. This disease isn't like that. Only one person in 10,000 comes down. It's not invasive, and there is no great clustering of cases," Baker says. There are several varieties of N. meningitides, termed A, B, and C. Diana Martin, also of the Communicable Disease Centre, says that the majority of cases in New Zealand (as in most developed countries) are group B, against which there is no vaccine, but about 25 per cent are group C, for which a vaccine has recently become available. Plans are afoot to vaccinate in Taranaki, where C is common. Says Martin: "Group A causes massive outbreaks of meningitis in sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere in the developing world, in which thousands of cases can occur in a few weeks. There was actually a modest epidemic of group A in Auckland during the 1980s, which was controlled by vaccination. Most unusual for a developed country." With meningococcal disease the unusual seems disconcertingly possible.

Geo News

Dung beetles down under?

Each day our 50 million sheep deposit an estimated 864 million pellets of droppings weighing 26,000 tonnes, and cattle convert uncounted acres of lush pasture into 113 million pats weighing 205,000 tonnes. This excreta is estimated to be equivalent to the amount produced daily by some 275 million humans. Cow pats persist on the pasture for one to six months, and each day sees an additional 745 hectares inundated! In total, 40,000 to 190,000 hectares of "clean green New Zealand" are completely plastered with the stuff. Is this another environmental nightmare that we should be flagellating ourselves, government, farmers, and possibly their animals, about? Probably not. The situation has existed for decades already, and isn't getting any worse. Rather, it is a question of effective resource management. Animal waste represents a lot of fine organic matter, rich in nitrogen and other plant nutrients. It is valuable food for both plant and soil. Yet in the form it is deposited, up to 80 per cent of the nitrogen may be lost to the atmosphere before it can be assimilated into the soil, and much of the grass buried under the effusion will suffer retarded growth. Too much of a good thing can be detrimental, and an excess of riches often burns pasture plants. Dung blocks sun, too, so smothered plants set their solar panels in darkness, and photosynthesis grinds to a halt. But almost as bad as a squandered resource, droppings constitute shelter and sustenance for various undesirables. Several species of fly call these murky confines home, and most if not all the internal parasites of stock are passed on through animal excrement. Nematode parasites of gut and lung are a major animal health problem, and farmers spend about $50 million each year on anti-helminthic drenches. Parasites are developing increasing resistance to the drenches, so the problem is not improving. Africa, home of wildebeest and nasty viruses, may hold an answer for us in the form of the humble dung beetle. Dung beetles burrow 10 to 50 centimetres deep into the soil beneath droppings, and in these galleries place two-gram balls of dung in which they lay eggs. Larvae feed off the supplied dung, and eventually pupate to become young adults that pair and fly off to set up home in a fresh manure pat. A female may lay ten eggs under each cow pat, and inoculate nine pats during her nine-week lifetime. All stages of the 12 mm black insect feed only on dung, and plant roots are left untouched. Since New Zealand lacks native mammals (with the exception of bats), we have no native dung beetles either. Jenny Dymock, an Auckland entomologist, believes that African dung beetles would be a worthwhile addition to our fauna. "There would be quite a few significant advantages," she explained. "Dung beetles assist worms in improving the aeration of soil, and, by incorporating dung, increase nutrient cycling and soil fertility. By reducing the amount of dung on the ground, pasture growth should be increased, fly numbers reduced, and there will be less faecal contamination of waterways." Overseas studies have shown that the load of parasites on pasture can be reduced by 80-90 per cent in the presence of a vigorous population of dung beetles, and the numbers of intestinal worms affecting calves can be substantially knocked back. We actually have some dung beetles resident here already. Mexican dung beetles were imported into Whangarei, Nelson and Canterbury in 1956, but now they only flourish north of Whangarei. Two Australian species were accidentally introduced more than a century ago, and, although widely distributed, have not had a great impact. They seem most adept at dealing with marsupial droppings. Australia and the USA have already adopted the African species Jenny Dymock is recommending, Onthophagus binodis. Should the importation be approved, New Zealand would obtain fresh, surface-sterilised eggs from Tasmania, to reduce the possibility of also importing dung beetle pathogens or soil-borne microbes. The proposal to bring in the beetles is being considered by the Ministry of Agriculture and other government bodies, and public comment is being solicited before a final decision is made. Onthophagus alone would be unlikely to solve all our animal excrement problems, because it is not very active in winter. If it proves as beneficial as hoped, other species active in cooler areas and seasons could be evaluated for import subsequently.

Geo News

The battle for Kitchener Park

Until surprisingly recent times it was government policy to clear all native bush from land that could prove suitable for agriculture. Fertile plains, such as those that constitute much of the Manawatu, were early stripped of their forest. One of the few fragments of bush in that area to escape was an 11-hectare block originally part of a native reserve for Ngati Kauwhata near Feilding, but in the 1870s it was leased, then purchased from the tribe. The absence of bush in the district must have been quickly felt, for locals attempted to buy the land as a reserve to commemorate Queen Victoria's jubilee in 1897. The owner, a Mr Riddiford, refused to sell, considering that "once he handed it over to a local authority, the bush would be destroyed by carelessness." The words proved prophetic. The Borough Council acquired the block in 1916 after Riddiford's death, and it came to be known as Kitchener Park. Its undoing started some years later when cattle were grazed there. Later the Catchment Board realigned the stream that marked the edge of the bush with a bulldozer, which, apart from the direct damage it caused, dried out some of the lower ground occupied by huge kahikatea. Many of the big trees started to die. In 1970, severe drought killed most of the tawa. However, more serious than any of these was the invasion of the bush by the creeping weed Tradescantia fluminensis—commonly called wandering Jew (right). Nobody is now sure when this menace appeared, but Michael Greenwood, who first became involved with the park in 1944, recalls that it was well established by that time. The invasive weed built up a thick blanket—in places over a metre deep—over the floor of the forest, smothering ferns, mosses, shrubs and herbs, and preventing all regeneration. Fencing out the cattle only helped its growth. Alan Esler, retired botanist and author of a book on the botany of Manawatu, recalls an episode that gives some idea of the scale of the problem. "About 12 years ago a Scout jamboree was held nearby, and, as a community service project, Scouts pulled out Tradescantia for a day or two. In the heaps they had piled up around the fringes of the bush I calculated there were 200 cubic metres of the weed." Although Kitchener Park was close to dead, and certainly buried, it was not forgotten. It had had a proud heritage. H. H. Allan, author of the well known New Zealand Trees and Shrubs among other books, and later director of DSIR's Botany Division, was not the only botanist who had picked up a lot of his early knowledge from browsing among its boughs. He had made a detailed survey of the flora in 1928 (finding 140 species), and a new species, Fuchsia perscandens, was described from material he discovered there . An unusually wide range of lichens—many of them resident on tree leaves—was also uncovered by Allan. But the park won a new sort of notoriety for species loss. In the 33 years following the survey, no fewer than 60 of Allan's 140 species vanished from the bush. Yet the lowland semi-swamp forest that Kitchener Park represents was now almost extinct in Manawatu, and almost no unmodified remnants persist anywhere in the North Island. Despite its decimated understorey, many large old podocarps-kahikatea, matai and totara-remained: one of the best collections in the Manawatu. Some claimed that the bush also contained the tallest kowhai tree in the country. Gavin Scott, a keen botanist, pastor of a local church and chaplain of a freezing works in the area, saw an opportunity to resurrect the park and give redundant workers something to do when the works closed in 1991. He secured funds from the Manawatu District Council to employ a team of ex-freezing workers in clearing the Tradescantia from the floor of the bush. This was a daunting task. Tradescantia doesn't spread by seeds, but vegetatively. Any morsel will root, so literally every fragment must be removed. Herbicide was used to knock the masses of weed back, but it was unable to completely kill the weed, so elimination was a matter of picking out every molecule, on hands and knees. The work has continued every year since, although besides ex-freezing workers, at-risk youth and school groups have become involved—thousands of hours of work, much of it voluntary. So far, two-thirds of the area has been cleared, and it is hoped that the whole park will be free of the pest by the end of 1996, as long as modest funding continues. As well as weed clearing, walkways and paths have been laid, and some planting has been carried out. In the two decades before the work started, the species count had fallen to about 42, but it should start to increase now that air-borne spores and bird-carried seeds have a chance to germinate.There will be a re-dedication of the park in February 1996, 80 years after the official opening. The battle for Kitchener Park is not yet won. Tradescantia is a cancer that can always return though apparently eliminated, either from fragments washed down the stream or left lurking in the ground. Almost alone among imported plants, it can grow in the dense shade present in the interior of our native forests. Vigilance will be required for years—if not decades—to preserve the hard-won gains. But the broader significance of Kitchener Park is that the battle is possible elsewhere. For several years we have succeeded in rolling back the invading animal tide—rats and possums have been eliminated from a number of islands, and possum numbers reduced in a number of mainland forests by aerial poisoning—but pestilential plants in forests have felt pretty safe. Thanks to the dedication of Gavin Scott and his helpers, they have reason to tremble at last.

Geo News

Heroes in a (Pacific) half-shell

Year of the dog, year of the rooster, year of the goldfish—doesn't every year belong to some creature or other? This year, throughout the South Pacific, it's the turn of the turtle. Because turtles are rare in New Zealand waters, we tend not to think much about them. Our image is of wrinkled, rather wise-looking animals, slow and ancient—aquatic tuatara, if you will—creatures that have been around for ever, and always will be. But if recent trends continue, the last part may not remain true. The South Pacific is home to six of the world's seven species of marine turtle, and all of those species are endangered in one or more areas. For instance, declining green turtle numbers are causing concern in Samoa, whereas in Vanuatu leatherbacks and hawksbills seem in more trouble. In many parts of the Pacific, turtles have been taken as food for centuries. Eggs are also a popular food item. Motor boats, cheap nylon nets and population growth mean that more turtles have been caught from even the remotest hideaways in recent decades. Then there are those that get caught in nets meant for other fish, and drown (they are reptiles and breathe air like us), and those that choke on plastic rubbish, mistaking it for jellyfish, a common turtle food item. Turtle breeding is jeopardised by tourist and other commercial developments on the beaches where they lay their eggs. Turtle shells—the ivory of the sea—are valued for their beauty, and used in making jewellery. Turtle skins become leather for shoes and wallets. None of this contribtes much to the turtle's life expectancy. Their life cycles do not help their cause much, either. Females don't start laying eggs until they are at least 20 years old, and perhaps closer to 50. Clutches of 120 or so round white eggs only appear at two- to eight-year intervals. And egg laying, when it does occur, seems frequently to happen on beaches thousands of kilometres from feeding grounds, for turtles are migratory creatures. Nesting females tagged at Scilly Atoll, near Tahiti, for example, have been discovered feeding in New Caledonia. Completely loyal to France! Numbers of breeding females are the easiest turtle populations to monitor, and in Australia numbers of breeding loggerheads have declined by 50 to 80 per cent in the last decade. On some of the breeding beaches, close to 90 per cent of the females appearing are first-tune breeders. In a long-lived animal like the turtle, this figure should be closer to 10 per cent. Mortality among young turtles is high—perhaps only one egg in a thousand becomes a successfully reproducing adult. Migration complicates turtle conservation. Protecting them in only one country accomplishes little, so five years ago the South Pacific Regional Environmental Programme (SPREP) was set up by 23 Pacific nations including New Zealand, four other interested countries (Great Britain, Australia, the United States and France), and more than a dozen non-government organisations such as conservation groups, churches and youth groups to help deal with environmental issues in the region. From its base in Western Samoa, SPREP has involved itself with marine mammals, some birds, biodiversity, climate change, cyclone monitoring, sustainable development and sea turtles, among other issues. The aim with sea turtles is to help fisheries and conservation agencies in the individual countries of the region protect the various species. SPREP marshals resources to assist national groups, encourages lawmakers to forbid commercial trade in turtle products and mounts surveys of populations. Indeed it was the results of SPREP's monitoring in 1989 and 1990 that led to the decision to make 1995 the year of the turtle. In some areas, laws forbid the killing of turtles for any use apart from in traditional ceremonies, but these restrictions are widely disregarded. Eventually, SPREP would like to see reduced usage of turtles in such ceremonies, but does not seek a total ban on killing turtles. Rather, the thrust of the campaign is to get people to think carefully whether they really need to kill a turtle, for if they do, they are potentially robbing their children of the chance to see one. Publicity and education campaigns highlighting the turtle's plight are also a ajor component of the effort. To grab the attention of younger islanders, a rap music video entitled "Turtle, Turtle" has been produced by SPREP in Auckland using island musicians. It will be used to spread the conservation message among islanders here and in the Pacific. Although 1995 is the year of the turtle, the campaign to save them will not be won or lost in a single year. But it is surely high time that turtle soup was taken off the menu.

Geo News

The examined life

The unexamind life is not worth living," wrote Socrates. I've always taken this to mean: slow down and look around you, scan the skies, turn over rocks, "live deep and suck out all the marrow of life" (Thoreau). New Zealand Geographic tries to examine the things that make this country what it is. Our mirror of pictures and words reflects the ingredients that make up our national identity. It affirms who we are and strengthens a collective memory that can bring some solidity in the midst of turbulent social change. In this issue, several threads of the national fabric are held up for examination: among them, our wilderness heritage, our rough and ready bach culture and our fascination with extreme physical challenge. As a child, I equated "wilderness" with barren, waterless wastes—locusts-and-wild-honey territory. Not the dripping ferns, dancing streams and glimpse-ofgrandeur mountain peaks of a place like Fiordland. Now the meaning is changing. Wilderness can be the silty reaches of a mangrove swamp or the micro-community of the forest floor. A walking track like the Route-burn, though it bears the marks of human modification, is still wilderness par excellence, and overseas visitors beat a path to it. Inevitably, as pressure of numbers builds up on our premier tracks, the quality of the experience can suffer. How can we have access without excess? In addressing the question of wilderness management, as Derek Grzelewski does in his consideration of the Routeburn Track, we should remind ourselves of the benison that wilderness is to the human soul. "There is something purifying about walking through a wilderness," wrote Paul Theroux after experiencing the Routeburn. "To see a land in the state in which it has existed since it rose from the waters and let slip its ice, a land untouched, unchanged, its only alteration a footpath so narrow your elbows are forever brushing against ferns and old boughs, is greatly reassuring to the spirit." Nigel Cox's musings on the Kiwi contribution to world architecture will send pangs of recognition and post-summer longing into the hearts of readers who have experienced the rustic charms of sagging Pinex ceilings and unpainted fibrolite, long drops and rusty water tanks, crockery discards and the smell of borer bomb. Not Where the magazine goes, there go I . . . everyone regards the annual abandonment of city comforts as a thing to look forward to; perhaps only those of us who imagine we're closet Crusoes—castaways marooned on an urban island. But baching is something distinctly New Zealand, and to allow this part of our culture to be simply tar-sealed, microwaved and otherwise modernised into oblivion would be a small tragedy. This year, with several hundred others, I lined up on Kumara beach in the salty West Coast freshness of a February dawn—half bemused to be there at all, half excited at the challenge that lay ahead—and waited for the start of the 13th Coast to Coast endurance race. There are easier ways to increase the endorphin flow to the brain, but few where you get such admiring looks from colleagues when you casually mention what you did last summer. Such an intense event leaves strong memories. One of the clearest is riding the first cycle leg from Kumara. A big group of us-50 or more, I suppose (you can't tell, because you never look behind you)—were riding in a tight bunch. Tight like molecules locked in a lattice, and where concentration, exertion and fear mingle in a heady cocktail. We would hit a small rise and half of us would be off our seats, pumping to maintain position, manoeuvring to keep our capsule of safe space intact. Down the other side, voices would shout "Keep pedalling! Keep pedalling! Don't touch the brakes! Don't touch the brakes!" The speed would increase, gears would click and graunch up a cog, the molecular packing would seem impossibly tight. Then, somewhere to my left, a shout of panic and a sickening rending of metal. You can't stop, you're packed too close, but behind you you know that a tangle of bodies and bikes are lying on the road. Friends of mine who'd come to Kumara to lend support picked up the pieces and told me later that of the six who had gone down, all got back on their bikes and continued. One female competitor was so bruised and sore that helpers had to slide her bike between her legs while she lay on her side, then lift her and the bike upright and push her off. They ran beside her for a while to make sure she was all right. Mad to continue? Mad to begin? I don't think so. Just part of the mystique and magic (okay, and a pinch of masochism) of this event, and part of the New Zealand essence.

Geo News

The new lake

Walled up behind the Clyde hydro dam, the Clutha River has formed New Zealand's newest lake, Lake Dunstan. Stretching more than 40 kilometres from the southern end of Cromwell Gorge to the Lowburn Flats to the northwest, the lake covers 26.4 square kilometres of former river bed and terraces. Although construction of the Clyde dam began in 1977, it was not until April 1992 that filling started—a process completed in four stages by September 1993. However, creating the lake has not been a matter of simply letting the river back up behind the dam; it has entailed a lot of complex engineering. A fault line runs through the dam site, and the surrounding mountains are not regarded as particularly stable. Considerable concern has been voiced over the years about the effect a large rockslide would have on the dam. Could the structure withstand such an event? To cope with the unstable geology of the region, the dam was constructed in two pieces with a vertical wedge in the middle, the theory being that the two sides can move up to two metres apart without breaking. Fourteen kilometres of tunnels were drilled into the bowels of the mountains to drain destabilising water down into the lake, and at the northern end of the gorge 15 giant steps were carved into the so-called Cairnmuir Slide. The terraces, each about four metres wide, were constructed by welding together hundreds of rock-filled steel cages. The top of each terrace is tar-sealed, to catch and divert surface rain water away from the slide. As a further stabilisation measure, a network of plastic pipes and culverts has been installed to collect water from above the terraces. This $15 million portion of the project was completed in May 1994. Elsewhere in the gorge, huge buttresses of compacted rock and gravel have been built to add strength to the base of other landslides. The raising of the lake has dramatically changed the appearance of the Cromwell Gorge as well as that of the town of Cromwell and the Lowburn Flats. The narrow orchard-covered river terraces in the Cromwell Gorge have been completely submerged, with the lake now filling the entire valley between the Cairnmuir Mountains to the west and the Dunstan Mountains to the east. Cromwell itself has been changed beyond recognition. Prior to the filling of the lake, the town was perched high up on terraces above the Clutha and Kawarau Rivers. Today it sits on a peninsula jutting out into the lake and surrounded by water on three sides. The lake has caused great upheaval for Cromwell's residents, particularly the loss and subsequent relocation of the commercial heart of the town. However, because of its strategic location midway between the upper and lower reaches of the lake, Cromwell looks set to benefit the most from its presence. With its artificial beaches, harbours and numerous boat ramps, Lake Dunstan is already becoming popular with anglers and water sports enthusiasts. One hundred and sixty residential sections have been developed around the shoreline between Cromwell and Lowburn, with another 60 planned. The filling of the lake has also provided the opportunity for Cromwell's architectural heritage to be repackaged, with the creation of an historic precinct on the south side of the town overlooking the Bannockburn Arm. A total of 12 stone buildings, some rebuilt after being dismantled from their original now-submerged sites, make up "Old Cromwell Town." Several more buildings will be constructed over the coming years to expand the precinct. To a lesser extent, the town of Clyde is also benefiting from the lake, with the southern end of Cromwell Gorge rapidly developing a reputation as one of the best rowing venues in New Zealand. To maximise this potential, a new rowing complex is planned at Weatherall Creek near the dam. While the development of Lake Dunstan has caused massive physical changes and socioeconomic dislocation for some, Central Otago people are coming to grips with their new lake and looking forward to building further on the benefits it has brought to the region.

Geo News

Mainland antarctica's first terrestrial dinosaur has been identified from fossils unearthed in the New Zealand-administered Ross Dependency.Named Cryolophosaurus by its discoverers, US scientists William Hammer and William Hickerson, the animal has been described as a seven-meter crested carnivore which lived during the early Jurassic. This and other fossil finds at the Mt Kirkpatrick site, 700 km from Scott Base, are the first Jurassic animals of any type to be found in Antarctica. Other identifiable remains include a 7-8 m prosauropod, a pterosaur, teeth from other scavenging dinosaurs and a single tooth from a tritylodon—a "mammal-like" reptile. Cryolophosaurus is both a new species and genus, and is one of few well-preserved carnivorous dinosaurs from the Jurassic known from the entire Gondwana supercontinent—the giant landmass which once included New Zealand, Australia, Antarctica, India, Africa and South America. "Cryolophosaurus is a fairly advanced species for the early Jurassic, and shows that large carnivores evolved rapidly during the late Triassic and early Jurassic to populate most of Gondwana," says Hammer. The discovery may also throw light on some unexplained aspects of dinosaur evolution, says New Zealand paleontologist Joan Wiffen. "Finding a therapod of that age probably means that more dinosaurs originated in the southern hemisphere than previously suspected. Gondwana's dinosaurs may even have migrated northwards to populate the northern hemisphere, rather than the other way round."

Geo News

Celestial trails

Everyday phenomena can take on extraordinary dimensions, depending on how you see them. The "sun trail" image shown above (top) was produced by Brian Donovan and Max Osborne of the University of Auckland's Audio Visual Centre. Brian Donovan, in particular, has had a long-standing interest in night sky and sun photography, and it was he who conceived the idea of the photograph—one taken with an ultra-wide angle lens which would record not only the sun's passage across the sky for a day, but include a landscape as well. Producing such an image is not straightforward. Any direct shot of the sun, no matter how brief, is usually completely overexposed, so a continuous 12-hour exposure sounds impossible. Using extremely dark filters could make it feasible, but then all one would have would be a bright semicircle on a completely black background. Brian and Max decided that the answer could lie in making three exposures on one frame of film. Two exposures would be brief and unfiltered: one before dawn and one after sunset, to lighten sectors of the sky and provide some foreground. The main exposure would be for 12 hours and would require heavy filtration, but would add the arcing image of the sun's trail. Brian first tested the feasibility of this approach with some simpler shots that could be taken with normal cameras. One, taken from the Auckland Harbour Bridge off-ramp below Pt Erin, is a double exposure of sunrise in midsummer. The moonrise over Rangitoto is from Milford Beach. Photographing the all-day sun trail was much more demanding. For a start, it had to be taken in winter, between the autumn and spring equinoxes, as during the rest of the year the sunrise and sunset points are more than 180° apart. But the camera provided the real headache. A 16 mm fisheye lens was to be used, and filters cannot be placed in front of this type of lens. Hence a special camera had to be constructed with neutral density filters carried behind the lens on a sliding carriage. Max executed the manufacture of the camera. In addition, they had to find a site where the camera could safely be left unattended, as neither of them was sufficiently obsessed about obtaining this picture that they were prepared to sit beside a camera for more than 12 hours. In the event, a relatively secure position on top of the University of Auckland's Physics building was used, and they could only hope that passing pigeons would reject the camera as a perch (or worse . . .) The camera was mounted on a tripod, aimed at north, and a 30-second unfiltered exposure was made 30 minutes before sunrise. This exposure also recorded a waning gibbous moon, as well as cloud which mercifully disappeared later. The neutral density filters were then positioned behind the lens, the aperture adjusted, and the lens uncapped for the all-day exposure Finally, 30 minutes after sunset, another 30-second unfiltered exposure was made of the scene. All the city's buildings and fixed light sources had, as a result, two exposures. The result is one of the more unusual records of September 7, 1993.

Geo News

Museum ahoy!

Remember those museum visits of childhood: school buses lumbering into the carpark while swaying teachers cautioned "no running please, and keep your voices down"? And, once inside, the galleries of labelled objects frustratingly quarantined behind glass? Looking at the old coastal cutter Rewa, bedded in oozing harbour mud alongside a wormy wharf, the air alive with gull cries and the sound of trickling water, it is hard to reconcile such memories with the present. Yet the Rewa, dating from 1886, sits in a museum, too: Auckland's newly opened Hobson Wharf, the trading name for the New Zealand National Maritime Museum. For director Rodney Wilson, the $12 million project represents a "new breed" of museum which attempts to continue the traditional roles of heritage preservation, interpretation, education and scholarship, but in more engaging ways. From the scuba-clad plunge of Auckland mayor Les Mills into the Waitemata Harbour in February 1992 to "turn the first sod," the direction of Hobson Wharf has been unswerving. Recognising that all New Zealanders originally came from somewhere else, the museum celebrates the country's heritage of Polynesian, Maori, Dutch, English, and French navigation. "We are a maritime people. We are from ocean-voyaging nations. This place is about interpreting ourselves in such terms," says Wilson. The museum tells the story, until now strangely neglected, of our ongoing relationship with the sea, from pre-European fishing and navigation to late-twentieth century ocean racing. It is a heady mix of history and representation, with artefacts juxtaposed against audio-visual displays and theatrical setpieces. The front entrance, a mere bowsprit or two away from the massive, cradled bulk of America's Cup challenge KZ1, itself has historical connections with the sea. Called the Launchman's Building, it was for many years home to shipowners and agents servicing the Hauraki Gulf. In the main building are resonant assemblages, including a coastal whaling station on a shelving beach strewn with bones and bleached timber. A whaleboat lies hauled up on the shingle next to heavy tackle—makeshift windlass, tryworks and blubber pots. Nearby stand raupo-thatched whalebone sheds. It is a scene of mournful desolation heightened by the rasp of the sea, overlaid with whale talk. A few steps away is a reconstructed immigrants' cabin of the 1840s. As people walk through the gloomy steerage accommodation, the cramped quarters creak and tilt disturbingly. A hatch above sweeps light across the worn floorboards. "If it had been like this when we came, I don't think I would have bothered," says a white-haired woman groping for support. Other visitors studiously search a computer database of nineteenth century immigration records to learn about their ancestors. On-screen information includes names, ages and occupations of migrants along with shipping details. Polynesian settlement is examined in a woven flax and lashed timber canoe hall, Hawaiki. Here the Maori and Pacific canoes are dominated by the twin-masted 23-metre outrigger canoe Taratai from Kiribati. Other traditional vessels include the Waan Aelon Kein, a Marshallese outrigger walap, the Drua, a double-hulled Fijian canoe and, berthed in the museum's marina, the Atiuan voyaging canoe Enuamanu 1. Also afloat are the towering 50-metre steam crane-ship Rapaki, the brigantine Breeze and the newly built scow Ted Ashby, a replica of the flat-bottomed traders once common on Auckland waters. Indeed, the list of boats in the Hobson Wharf collection—there are over 100—reads as a who's-who of New Zealand maritime history. They include the country's oldest jetboat, the dory in which Colin Quincey rowed the Tasman Sea and a delightfully refined 1930s speedboat. The museum also houses a fascinating collection of outboard motors, dating back to a Wisconsin Row-Boat 1918 model, as well as interactive navigation instruments and a large hall of immaculately restored New Zealand centreboard yachts. There is even a seaside shop and a late-1950s bach called "Wai Whare," complete with chromed chairs, plastic flyscreen and ceiling beading that doesn't quite line up. Stepping across the rock-edged, paua-studded path into that time capsule. with its sounds of lawns being mowed and contented children shouting above the surf, is to bridge a gulf back to innocence. Such evocations are a measure of the museum's success. Wilson didn't want Hobson Wharf to become "a cultural video parlour" of second-hand electronic experiences. It enjoys the advantage of having real artefacts, the actual products of history, there to be seen and touched. But, equally, the museum is dedicated to preserving and interpreting human skills and experience. Throughout the year, in eight commercial workshops on site, visitors can see boatbuilders, sailmakers, a woodcarver, a scrimshander, boat restorers, riggers, Maori and Pacific craftspeople and others at work. Many of the workshops offer evening classes. On the water, people can get experience of another kind, taking a short spin around the wharves in the steam launch Puke, learning to sail in the Soling keel boats of the Rangitoto Sailing Centre based in the marina, or involving themselves in Hobson Wharf's heritage sailing programme on board the Ted Ashby, the Breeze and other museum craft. Wilson's vision of a living museum has been ably realised in the perfect maritime setting of Hobson Wharf, where boats still plying the Waitemata offer a convincing link with the present. The museum, which has such indispensible twentieth century cultural additions as a restaurant. 480-seat convention centre and art exhibition space, intends to remain innovative. Among future plans: classical recitals, a candlelit Christmas event and, next March, the opera HMS Pinafore, to be performed, naturally, on the water. "We sail the ocean blue, and our saucy ship's a beauty . . ." Now, you can't get more lively than that.

Geo News

A tale of two kiwis

After three years of painstaking detective work and "Kiwi" ingenuity, it's official: New Zealand has four species of kiwi, not three. The identification of the new brown kiwi, which has been given the name tokoeka, was announced by scientists in April after DNA cloning techniques similar to those popularised in the new sci-fi blockbuster Jurassic Park revealed profound differences between northern and southern brown kiwi populations. The tokoeka is the first new bird species to be identified in New Zealand since the takahe was rediscovered in 1948. The researchers, Charles Daugherty from Victoria University and former Wellington Museum director Alan Baker, used two biochemical techniquespolymerase chain reaction (PCR) and allozyme electrophoresis—to analyse the genetic make-up of brown kiwis from around the country. Their findings confirmed what conservationists had suspected since 1979: that there are two distinct species of brown kiwi. Surprisingly, the genetic break occurs at Okarito, half way down the South Island's west coast, not between the two islands. The three populations of brown kiwi found south of Okarito (in Fiordland, Haast and Stewart Island) turn out to be genetically distinct from the Okarito and North Island brown kiwis. Analysis of mitochondrial DNA (i.e. DNA that is not within the nucleus of the cell, but within the mitochondria) suggests that both species are derived from an ancestral Fiordland population. Baker suggests that birds from Fiordland spread north up the West Coast to Okarito, and then much later colonised the North Island at a time when there was a land bridge between the two islands. At some point, speciation occurred—probably, say the researchers, during the ice age in the Pleistocene, when these flightless birds would have became isolated into small populations at high altitude. Isolation would have restricted their ability to swap genetic material, with the result that the populations would have diverged genetically, eventually forming distinct species. As with all good detective stories, the hunt for the new brown kiwi involved some intrepid gathering of evidence, in this case by Department of Conservation officer Rogan Colbourne and his Labradors Tess and Lucy. Over a three-year period, Colbourne and his canine assistants trapped kiwis in the bush at Stewart Island, Haast, Fiordland, Okarito, Little Barrier and numerous North Island sites, taking blood samples from their legs. "Tess and Lucy, suitably muzzled of course, would track down kiwis during the day while they were sleeping in their burrows. At night I would walk around imitating the kiwi's calls, and catch the birds, using a net," says Colbourne "I had to take in my own laboratory supplies into the bush: centrifuges to separate the red blood cells, and liquid nitrogen to store the samples before sending them to Baker and Daugherty." Colbourne's work for DOC has also helped identify physical differences between the brown kiwi species. For instance, South Island brown kiwis are larger than North Island birds. The Okarito population has a greyer plumage and white head markings around the eye and eyebrows, whereas the Haast birds which are of a reddish hue and the Fiordland population are brownish-grey. The compact, squat North Island birds are distinct from the paler, more elongated southern ones. They are darker and have broader, scalier legs and long whiskers that reach to the end of their beaks. They have harsher, pricklier feathers, with small spiny ends, as compared to the softer, denser feathers of the South Island birds, and they have shorter necks. Behaviour also varies between the kiwi species. In the North Island, the male and female share a single territory, and they eject their chicks from the territory after a year. Generally, the males, rather than the females, incubate the eggs, in clutches of two per year. The Stewart Island birds live in groups of up to seven individuals, and appear to share nest duties. They have one egg per clutch, but sometimes have more than one clutch a year. The Okarito kiwis are lowland birds, while the Haast birds live at higher altitudes—up to 1500 metres—and may move down for winter, or even hibernate—an aspect of kiwi research still uncharted. Okarito birds share the physical characteristics of the southern species but are genetically closer to the North Island species, leading scientists to suspect that the North Island populations are derived from the Okarito group. Charles Daugherty began analysing kiwi blood in the late 1980s using allozyme electrophoresis, a technique he was also using to sort out tuatara species (see Issues 3 and 6). It is a simple enough process; you take a blood sample and pass an electric current through it. Because different proteins have different levels of mobility, you can map the proteins from each sample. Daugherty found that there were two basic types of brown kiwi, with a break occurring between them in the South Island. but felt that his findings were insufficient to make any firm claims. It was at this point that Alan Baker's research using PCR came in. The polymerase chain reaction enables scientists to copy sections of a gene (analogous to the "copy and paste" function in word processing programmes). The copies are then split off the original gene and sequenced to read the code. "The people producing Jurassic Park in Hollywood were interested in our work," says Baker. "They called us up to check on the details." Baker compared the genetic codes for the Okarito and North Island populations and found they were very similar. "Every population showed a totally different code. No sequences were identical, but for these two populations the codes were very similar," says Baker. "Each molecule of mitochondrial DNA is mutating continuously. At the end of a million years there is a five per cent change in the molecule. That change takes place at a roughly constant rate, so if two kiwi populations are five per cent different genetically, they probably separated one million years ago. There are errors associated with this technique but it puts us closer to finding answers than before," says Baker. Baker's genetic work matched Daugherty's blood protein work very closely, and gave a finer resolution to the results. Baker says further genetic research is now warranted, and predicts that the Haast, Fiordland/ Stewart Island, North Island and Okarito populations could prove to be separate species as well, giving a total of six kiwi species. The news has been greeted with mixed feelings by DOC. "This discovery means we will have to change the emphasis of our work," says Hugh Robertson, who runs the Department's kiwi recovery programme. "We now have two threatened species of brown kiwi rather than one. So, in one sense this is a conservation negative, and makes our job harder." However, on the positive side, he says that DOC now knows it has to focus its limited resources on the key populations that need management, such as the 60-100 kiwis at Okarito. "This will help our captive breeding programme, so we can avoid mixing different species and populations," he says. Alan Baker is optimistic the discovery will open up new areas of research in New Zealand. "We are at the forefront of this 'd-loop' research. It is now quite likely that this technique will apply to other species." Already in New Zealand it is beginning to be used to study native fish, the kiore (Polynesian rat) and the hoiho (yellow-eyed penguin). DOC is also funding Baker to do the same work on little blue penguins. "Kakapo, kaka, keathey could all be studied using the PCR technique, and I would say that it is likely to detect some hidden or cryptic species. It also allows us to reconstruct the evolutionary history and biogeography of New Zealand's biota." Daugherty, as well as using the allozyme technique on tuatara, has found that the common skink consists of four cryptic species—species which look the same but are genetically different—two of which are rare. He is now carrying out more research on skinks and geckos. Who knows how many more subdivisions are to be found in New Zealand's native species. Only time—and biological detective work—will tell.

Geo News

Summer of the algae

The summer of 1992/93 has been unusually cold. Everybody has been saying so. Apple growers have been a fortnight late starting to harvest their crops, and few persimmons will attain high enough sugar levels to be exportable. People who for years have swum every day from Labour Day through to Easter Weekend have been selective this year about when they took the plunge.

Geo News

To catch a thief

The subject didn't know he was being filmed, but this wasn't Candid Camera, and nobody was prattling on about what a rewarding job being an insurance rep had turned out to be. What we had on this occasion was a robber. It was a dark night, and only an ultra-sensitive electronic eye could have detected the beam of infrared light which was producing the black and white image on the security monitor. The villain was instantly recognisable: a notorious Australian crim. His name has been mentioned in connection with various offences, including swallowing the embryos of endangered species—a real animal. A brush-tailed possum, in fact, and this time he had put himself right in the frame. The security camera had caught him in the act of robbing a kokako nest, and consuming the precious clutch of eggs it contained. Conservation biologist John Innes, of Landcare Research in Rotorua, has spent the last two years studying kokako breeding in Rotoehu Forest. He's long suspected that nest predators are contributing significantly to the decline of the species in the North Island, but information about which particular predators are involved has been hard to obtain. Catching a predator in the act of robbing a nest is not easy, especially since the nests are in trees, sometimes 30 metres above the ground, and most of the attacks happen at night. Last year, Innes started using security surveillance equipment to monitor some of his kokako nests. Electronic surveillance causes a minimum of disturbance to wildlife, and new time-lapse videotape recorders developed for the security industry have made it unnecessary for scientists to get up in the middle of the night to change the tape. The new recorders can be set to record at a much slower speed than the 24 frames a second used in a normal television picture. At one frame a second, for instance, a three-hour tape will run for 72 hours. When played back at normal speed, the effect is to speed everything up, and the villains caper about like characters from the silent film era. But they are still readily identifiable in a freeze-frame. During the kokako breeding season—from November to MarchInnes managed to record two kokako nests at Rotoehu. The possum incident took place at one of these nests, but at the other, two kokako chicks were successfully hatched. During filming of the second nest, a ship rat visited the sitting female kokako on most nights, but her presence seemed to be enough to deter any serious attempt to attack the chicks. Whether this was a case of a particularly gutless rat matched against a braverthan-average kokako isn't known, but Innes thinks that rats are more frequent predators of eggs than they are of chicks. However, just when the chicks were half-grown, and the threat posed by rats was beginning to diminish, the drama unfolding on the tape moved into tragedy: the nest was discovered by a harrier. In less than two minutes, the harrier carried off one chick and left the other one badly injured. When this second chick died, the kokako parents abandoned the nest, and that night the rat moved in again to scavenge the pathetic remains. Rats are usually considered to be messy feeders, often leaving half-chewed remains and indigestible items scattered around. But by the following morning all that was left in the nest were the quills of two small pin feathers; no horny bill, no feet, no major bones. Despite the sadness of the outcome, the primary object of the surveillance experiment had been spectacularly successful. The identities of two of the kokako's nest predators have been confirmed, but what is also beginning to emerge from the tapes is that predation evidence is more difficult to interpret than was previously thought. At the second kokako nest, neither harrier nor rat had left any signs which would have been regarded as characteristic of the predator involved but even if the rat, for instance, had left the usual clues, they would probably have been misinterpreted. Without the video evidence, the rat would have been assumed to have been the killer, whereas its role in this case had only been that of a scavenger. Nevertheless, rats are significant predators, and Innes says that it would be foolish to draw general conclusions from the slim evidence from only two nests. And, since kokako numbers continue to drop, more information is certainly needed, not just about predation but about the behaviour of kokako themselves. Next summer the security cameras will be out again in Rotoehu Forest. Meanwhile, in nearby Pureora Forest, Chris Ecroyd, of the New Zealand Forest Research Institute, has been using electronic surveillance to solve a botanical mystery. For some time, Ecroyd had suspected a link between the rare plant Dactylanthus taylorii and the equally rare short-tailed bat. A plant parasite,causes the formation of a flower-shaped woody growth on the roots of its host tree. (See "Flowers of Hades", Issue 6) Unfortunately, the popularity of these so-called wood roses as curios has contributed to the decline of the species. For many years, local collectors have dug them up, destroying the parasite in the process. The flowers of the real Dactylanthus are of little interest to collectors other than as site markers, but for Ecroyd they yielded important clues to the solution of a botanical puzzle. Dactylanthus flowers are drab, but they possess a strong musky scent and large quantities of nectar. What was the purpose of these attributes, wondered Ecroyd. They hardly seemed necessary for the heterogeneous selection of ants, flies and beetles that visited the flowers during the day. Ecroyd postulated the existence of an unknown specialist pollinator. An animal, he suspected. One which was large, nocturnal and used scent rather than sight to locate the nectar. Video surveillance seemed to offer an ideal opportunity for the mystery visitor to reveal itself. For the first few nights of the plant watch, rats hogged the limelight, almost destroying the male Dactylanthus flowers in their eagerness to get at the nectar. And while they also pollinated some of the female flowers in the process, Ecroyd doubted that they were the answer to his puzzle. He felt he might have better luck on Little Barrier Island. But here, little Polynesian rats (kiore) completely destroyed the flowers, and there was still no sign of the creature he was hoping for. Beginning to lose hope, Ecroyd returned to his original site in Pureora Forest. There, one April night, the wait was rewarded, and something else dropped into the frame. Scuttling through the leaf litter on its elbows and toes, the newcomer made its way over to the Dactylanthus. Pollen grains dusted its muzzle as it lapped up the nectar before flying out of the picture frame. This was the first of many visits which short-tailed bats were to make to the plant that night—dramatic confirmation for Ecroyd of his theory that the bat and the plant parasite had evolved a close relationship over the millennia that they have coexisted here. There's a spin-off, too. Ecroyd speculates that if he can synthesise Dactylanthus nectar, it could be used as a lure to help locate elusive short-tailed bat populations. Video surveillance looks like being in demand for many more wildlife research projects in the future.

Geo News

Bugs by mail order

"Would your bird like the Alphitobius diaperinus (that's the lesser mealworm to lesser mortals) or perhaps a Galleria mellonella (waxmoth) larva for the axylotl? The Locusta migratoria is high in protein with medium fat levels ... "

Geo News

Good news for gannet fans

In some respects, the 25-kilometre stretch of Farewell Spit is the last place you would expect to find a colony of gannets. Elsewhere in the New Zealand biological region the birds characteristically choose craggy offshore islands to build their mounded nests of seaweed, soft plants, earth and guano. Of these 20 or so colonies, the Cape Kidnappers site has been a very viewable mainland exception, while the rock stack of Motutara at Muriwai also provides reasonable viewing from the shore. Farewell Spit is home to over 90 species of birds, so it isn't surprising that a few gannets have made an appearance on the ornithologist's record sheet, along with kea, sparrows, spoonbills and a veritable who's who of waders. A census of gannets taken in 1946-47 recorded some 21,000 pairs breeding in New Zealand, a number which doubled to 43,000 in a 1980 reassessment. Together with non-breeding roosters a likely population of some 90,000 adults can be deduced today. Such a successful breeding pattern gives no surprise to the fact that from 300 birds recorded on Farewell Spit in 1983 there are now over 900 nesting sites. But what is surprising is where they have chosen to nest: three adjoining hillock-like sandy shellbanks two kilometres past the lighthouse. The establishment of this second mainland colony represents a departure from their preferred craggy headland roosts. The Australasian gannet (Sula serrator) lays its single egg between September and December. Incubation is shared by the parents for the 43 days before the black and naked chick emerges. Within a month the chick's plumage is fluffy white, but it later changes to a brown-andwhite mottle—the juvenile coloration. By May most of these juvenile birds have left the Spit to begin their flight over the Tasman. They will spend anywhere up to three years around the Australian coast south of Queensland before returning to New Zealand to breed. Although some will begin breeding as early as their fourth year, most will wait until their fifth year, or even later. Gannets form strong pair bonds with a lifetime partner. From August, a wonderful procession can be observed on the Spit as the males fly down to the high tide mark in front of the lighthouse to gather their nesting material. Debris, seaweed and marram grass are plucked up, then the birds circle around the foreshore before returning to their nests. Observers have likened the manoeuvre to aircraft in a holding pattern: individual birds collect their cargo, then take up their position in what looks like an endless circular conveyor belt before shuttling back to their nests one by one. The females stay to guard their sites—a necessity, given that unattended nests are raided and even wholly dragged away by opportunistic males. Sandy grit and faeces are the cement which holds the building materials together, and the final structure is a substantial bowled nest positioned a metre or so from its neighbour—just out of pecking range! Why have these gannets chosen this unusual nesting site? Certainly, other colonies are under severe population density pressure as numbers increase and nesting sites become scarce. A 1987 survey reported the Spit population to be composed of mainly younger birds. In established colonies these individuals would be working hard to establish territory, and would often end up as fringe dwellers. Farewell Spit offers an almost unlimited number of sites and an extended feeding range through 360 degrees. As a result of migration to the Spit, the birds have become a common site in Golden Bay, gliding across the water, then plummeting into the sea from heights of up to 30 metres to take sprats, squid and school fish. For anyone who has wondered how their bodies can withstand the crushing impact with the water when they dive, their 145km/hr entry is cushioned by inflatable air sacs beneath the skin on the lower neck and breast. Because public access to the Spit is under strict control (the area has been designated a wetland of international importance).

Geo News

Gender Problems

Beaches mean different things to different people: places to gather kai moana, places for jaded city dwellers to recharge their batteries, places to absorb the sense of order apparent in the natural world.

Geo News

Comrades on ice

A few days before Christmas, 1989, his brain and body weary after a business collapse, Graeme Dingle stretched out in his hot tub and picked up an atlas. The page opened at a map of the Arctic Circle. He looked at the map and a shiver went through his bony frame. No one had ever followed that dotted line that etched such a perfect circle around the globe. Dingle studied the map for a full hour, with rising excitement. "Then I decided," he said. "The first circumnavigation of the Arctic Circle would be my next adventure." In February 1992, mountaineer and adventurer Dingle, by this time joined by fellow outdoorsman Kim Price, set out. They are calling their expedition Arktikos, and it will be the longest polar journey ever undertaken: 25,000 kilometres through five countries in 250 days. They are travelling at temperatures of minus 50°C—temperatures so cold that metal shatters and fuel turns to jelly; so cold that if you inadvertently put a metal object in your mouth it will freeze instantly to your lips and tongue. With them is a Muscovite, Tolya Chernishov, who works for a private adventure tourism company in Moscow. Travelling ahead of the team is their radio operator and manager, Aucklander Annie Bradshaw. The expedition started—and will finish—on the shores of Bering Strait at a small Siberian town called Uelen. From there they are travelling by foot and snowmobile some 10,000 kilometres across the Siberian Arctic, then by ship from Murmansk in Russia across the Norwegian and Greenland Seas to the coast of Greenland. Here they will begin the most treacherous part of their journey: crossing the notorious Northwest Passage between Greenland and Canada. This is the passage that merchants long dreamed of as an Arctic shortcut to the Orient; many died in pursuit of the dream. In this stretch of water and thick pack ice, which the team will travel across by inflatable raft,icebergs as big as the city of Wellington travel at speeds of up to 10 miles a day. Compasses will be of no use because the magnetic North Pole lies within the passage. Once through, the team will travel up the Mackenzie River in Canada to the Yukon, then across Alaska and back to the shores of Bering Strait. As we go to press the men are boating up the coast of Greenland—a distance twice the length of New Zealand. Later in June they will cross the 350 kilometres of open water of Baffin Bay to Grise Fiord in Canada, where the Northwest Passage begins. A 1000-litre fuel tank has been installed in the boat, and the trip is estimated to consume 860 litres—which leaves little room for an emergency. So heavy is the weight of the fuel that should the inflatable capsize, it would not be able to be righted by the crew. A mechanical "righting mechanism" is being installed—it will be a slim thread upon which three people's lives will hang if the boat flips. The story of the team's experiences with their machinery so far has been a sobering one. The crew were to start their journey with three Russian-built machines capable of taking them across the vast Siberian expanse. In the trials before the start, however, two of these had to be abandoned, and after leaving Uelen the team endured one breakdown after another. Dingle recounts one of the frustrating episodes, early in the journey, in their "Slavamobile"— named after its crusty Russian driver, Slava. "There was a sickening clunk, whereupon Slava looked under his seat and Tolya said, 'Car is broken.' The half shaft had become detached from the diff, a problem that Slava described as being common with Volga diffs. 'Vulgar diffs, all right', I muttered. Then began one of the most bizarre afternoons of my adventuring career. We found that it was possible, with several forceful kicks, to drive the offending half shaft back into the diff, and as I wore heavy climbing boots this became my job—every 150 metres for the next 10 kilometres." And their luck, unfortunately was not to change. In late March the team limped into Pevek, one third of the way through their Siberian leg. A town of 15,000 inhabitants, Pevek began life as one of Stalin's gulags. Now, many of the town's best citizens are the children of those prisoners. Tall steel chimneys belch black coal smoke in a constant effort to provide life-giving heat to the town, and the sea ice and surrounding snow are stained black with soot. "But Pevek was full of human warmth, hospitality and goodwill to Arktikosa legacy that our support team Annie and Russian translator Alexei Krylov were responsible for." Dingle continues: "Here, at Pevek, determined to have reliable machinery, we hired a vehicle called a GTT, a nine-tonne cross between a tank and a locomotive-powered vibrator. "From the outside the GTT looks pretty much like any other armoured troop carrier, except that we had plastered it with the brightly coloured decals of our sponsors. It is a two- by three- by six-metre steel box with tracks, with a mean looking snout and small savage eyes at the business end. Once everyone takes up their positions and adjusts their ear protectors, Sasha (the driver who came with the vehicle) looks around, grins and gives the thumbs up. The oil pump whines and the six big diesel pots explode into life. With the clatter of the steel tracks, even shouted conversation at close range is impossible. "We departed Pevek with Annie filming and Slava following up in the Slavamobile. This was the last we were to see of the tough little Russian and his desperate machine. A few kilometres across the sea ice the mobile broke down for one last time. Slava nursed it back to Pevek where it was sold, and he departed for his home town, where it was time to put in his spring crop of potatoes. "As we clattered into the wilderness in our GTT towards our next goal, the town of Tiksi (the half-way point of the Siberian leg), the navigator kept his eye on the Trimble satellite navigation system, plotting progress on the map and indicating by sign language the course to Sasha. It was not quite the romantic voyage across Siberia that we had dreamed about. We reached Tiksi at 4am on April 16. We drove into the harbour on the sea ice, past ships that had been frozen in all winter. A full moon floated eerily over the city." At this point in their travels, Dingle was not to know that the GTT was also to go the same way as the others. On the last leg of their Siberian overland travel, from Tiksi to the port of Dudinka, a worried project director, Rob Mounsey, could do nothing while he listened in Auckland to reports of daily breakdowns while the sea ice cracked up under the team. "In parts the ice was moving under the vehicle, and they would have to back off and find a safer route. Meanwhile, the breakdowns continued, and at one stage Kim and Tolya had to ski for three days to the nearest village for help, while Graeme and Sasha waited with the vehicle," Mounsey says. But in spite of the problems, on May 16 the team made it into the port of Dudinka. From there, in a much-welcomed break which will stand them in good stead for the coming sea voyage, the crew hitched a ride on a research vessel to their last Siberian destination, Murmansk. In the relative warmth of a 10°C-plus New Zealand winter it is perhaps hard to understand why a group of New Zealanders should want to go through such grim physical—and sometimes spiritual—conditions at the other, alien, end of the earth. Reading between the lines of the problems and hardship of the expedition, another story emerges, as a paragraph from Dingle's letter early in the journey shows: "In the evening we went out in a tracked vehicle to recover the machine and its driver, Slava. We stopped on a point overlooking a gulf. In a moment we knew why we had come to the Arctic. Why we had suffered storm and bureaucracy, risked bankruptcy and frostbite: for 300 unspoiled degrees we had a vista of gulf and hills. No trees, no rocks, no sharp edges, just gentle curves, and as the weak sunlight slanted through the atmosphere, it dyed everything a pink and mauve as if it were filtered through gold and diamond dust." There is still more of this journey ahead. After it is completed later this year, New Zealand Geographic will tell the team's story in full.

Geo News

Sharp shooter

Over a year's experimentation with high-speed photographic techniques has paid dividends for Dunedin natural history photographer Nic Bishop. Enlisting the help of two electronics experts, and with financial backing from Shell New Zealand, he has succeeded in developing equipment to photograph insects in flight and freeze other action too fast to be seen by the human eye. Photographing flying insects is one of the most demanding challenges of nature photography. Simply getting the insect to fly into the field of view of the camera is one hurdle, but even more problematic is getting the shutter to fire at the precise moment the insect is in focus. The speed at which many insects fly means that they remain in focus for a mere 1/500 of a second, necessitating virtually instantaneous detection and shutter opening. Then there is the need to freeze the insect's wings on film—in some species the wings beat at 1000 cycles per second. To tackle these problems Bishop built a flight tunnel and wired it with light beams and detectors able to respond even to the wing tip of a flying insect, and to operate the camera at the precise instant the insect zooms into focus. The conventional camera shutter was discarded, being about 25 times too slow at opening, and has been replaced by a modified shutter system. Freezing the insect's motion is done by exposing the subject with a very brief flash pulse. Once again, conventional flash equipment had to be dispensed with because it simply did not have the power and speed requirements. Instead, a new flash circuit was developed, one which delivers a light output equivalent to conventional units, but compressed within a pulse lasting only 1/40 as long. This pulse, a mere 1/40,000 of a second duration, is brief enough to stop even the most active animal in mid-motion. The project has not been without teething problems. For example, the voltages unleashed by the flash circuits are so high (lethally so) that they have blown up flash tubes with explosive finality. At the other end of the scale, the detection circuitry is so sensitive that it can respond to outside interferences such as temperature fluctuation, vibrations, and electrical perturbations in nearby equipment. With the system now working, Bishop has been exploring the high speed action of some of New Zealand's smallest inhabitants, and some of his initial results can be seen in his latest book Natural History of New Zealand, published by Hodder and Stoughton.

Geo News

The new-look Cook

Shortly after midnight on December 14, 1991, a seismograph at Twizel recorded shock waves which in 20 seconds reached the magnitude of a 3.9 earthquake. But this was no earthquake. Seventy-five kilometres away, the top of Mt Cook was collapsing. An awesome rock avalanche had let rip, dislodging 14 million cubic metres of rock buttress and glaciers, and sending them on a wild cascade 2720 metres down the mountain. The majestic East Face, the summit of New Zealand's highest mountain, was transformed. A giant had toppled in a frantic hail of rock, snow and ice which at times reached speeds of 450 kilometres an hour. Twizel recorded the faint falling of rocks for hours afterwards. The avalanche also dislodged one of the more easily assimilated pieces of Kiwi trivia. Generations had learned that Mt Cook was 12,349 feet high—so easy to remember, it seemed incontrovertible. Its metric equivalent, 3764 metres, never sat so easily in the cerebral filing system. Now Aorangi-Mt Cook is 10 metres shorter, and shrinking. Still the Cloud Piercer, but immanently fallible. The mountain is falling down under its own weight, but scientists are matter-of-fact about this. "All our mountains are unstable, and a mountain falling down is not an unusual phenomenon,"Christchurch DSIR geomorphologist, Dr Mauri McSaveney says. "It's something that's been happening for thousands of years." On its upper slopes, the mountain does not have the glacial ice flow which causes erosion lower down. Rock falls are the only means of erosion. The December avalanche did away with the theory that the high peaks of Cook were high because their rock was slightly stronger than that lower down. Like many mountains in this area of the Southern Alps, Mt Cook is made of sedimentary rock called greywacke—very hard sandstone and siltstone which is about 200 million years old. The giant rock fall gave scientists a rare opportunity to look inside the mountain, and McSaveney was amazed at how fractured and weak it really was. The loose, shattered rock he saw was what mountaineers call "Weet-Bix". Mt Cook is not made of stern stuff. "Yet if anyone had asked me on the Friday (13th December), 'How safe is Mt Cook?' I'd have said, 'Perfectly safe'," says McSaveney. Veteran Cook climber Rob Hall agrees. That Friday there were two climbing parties in Plateau Hut, about four kilometres from the summit. Alarms were set for midnight. David Ellis and Nick Shearer planned to climb Mt Tasman. Hall and his three companions were preparing to climb Mt Cook via Zurbriggen Ridge. Their timing was impeccable. A decision to leave any earlier and they would have been right in the path of the avalanche. "It would have been a spectacular way to go." Hall can now laugh. Awaking at midnight, Hall's first thought was that the wind had come up. He'd gone to bed on a clear, moonless night. Ellis went outside. He, too, heard the sound of wind, but, eerily, there was no air movement. The climbers heard a loud rumbling sound. Hall thought it might be an icefall in the Hochstetter. From the but windows they gazed at the peaks outlined against a black sky. "Suddenly, I saw huge yellowy sparks, and realised that it was not ice falling—it was rocks," says Hall. To Ellis, the sparks and bright green flashes looked like incendiary bombs falling. The climbers were vious to danger, more fascinated than frightened. Sometimes there are strange sounds in the mountains. Where there are glaciers, rock avalanches are quite common. "We just didn't realise the scale of it," says Hall, "that by morning there'd be a pile of rock at the bottom of the mountain." Hall's party changed tack and decided to climb nearby Mt Dixon. Ellis and Shearer set out across the Grand Plateau away from the sound of rumbling and grinding rocks. By torchlight they could see a fine mist. As they crossed the northern end of the Plateau they began to cough up dust. "As dawn approached we looked across, and there was this huge dust cloud over the East Face. It hung there until nearly 10 o'clock," says Ellis. Daylight revealed that the avalanche had crossed within 500 metres of the but as it curled around and roared its way down the Hochstetter. On the ridge of Mt Dixon, Hall surveyed the damage. "The scar looked enormous—as if a blanket had spewed down the mountainside and turned it from white to black." The 500-metre scar can be seen from some points on the Canterbury Plains, 100 kilometres from the mountain. Bryan Moore was the first to brave Mt Cook after the avalanche. On January 2, 1992, he went up the Hooker Face in perfect conditions. Perched on the thin inclined sliver of ice at the top, he gingerly surveyed the wasteland—the "acres and acres" of loose rock which is now the East Face. By winter, snow will dignify the Grand Plateau snowfields once more, hiding the chaos beneath. Winter will also bring a veneer of ice and snow to the jagged East Face, but some five years will pass before glacier ice flow carries the last of the debris through the now defiled Hochstetter icefall, and it will be many years before thick glacier ice forms in the scar. Why the avalanche happened on a calm, clear night is a mystery. The mountain does not yield up its secrets easily, and history is of little help. In 1873 there was a rock fall of similar magnitude on Mt Cook, but McSaveney can find only one reference to it in a scientific journal. It seems it happened in a period where no-one took much notice of such things. The winter of 1991 was one of the snowiest on record. The most plausible theory is that the movement of ice may have plucked rocks from the mountainside. If all or part of an apron glacier clinging to a mountain face falls, it frequently takes some rock with it. If this rock is supporting an unstable buttress, the "chock" stone may be dislodged. Then it's a case of "chocks away!" But any evidence that this happened in the December avalanche would have been swiftly buried. McSaveney is certain of one thing: it will happen again. The most frustrating thing is not knowing when. "It might take a century, it might happen next week." The top of the East Face scar stands at a 70-degree angle. To remain stable, it needs to be around 55 degrees. Bits will continue to fall off, or there'll be another big fall. The mountain peak will shrink as the sharp feathered edge of ice is weathered to a stable shape. So, for some time to come, it's pencils only in the record books. From the Hermitage, Cook's peaks look little different—a relief, no doubt, to the souvenir sellers. From Okarito in South Westland the mountain's profile is dramatically altered. And if a glacier forms in the face of the scar, the East Face will provide a fresh challenge to the dauntless climber. "It will need a technically competent climber," says McSaveney. "This will be a mighty ice climb." The new East Face conqueror will need to be sure of one thing: that no rocks have fallen for quite some time. "It could be a rather long wait," McSaveney says drily.

Geo News

On the solar trail

In November 1990, Solar Kiwi, New Zealand's first solar-powered racing car, successfully competed in the second triennial Darwin-to-Adelaide World Solar Challenge. (See New Zealand Geographic, Issue 9). Two of Solar Kiwi's builders, Stewart and Vivianne Lister of Hamilton, initially regarded their adventure as a "oncer," but with a little prompting, and an offer of financial backing from a local group, the Listers decided to reconsider, and the Solar Kiwi Challenge 1993 project was born. More advanced technology will be used in the new car, which Stewart hopes will make it "technically capable of finishing in the first ten." But the new project is about more than just the next Australian race. The Listers have also launched a solar model contest, aimed at teaching young New Zealanders wise energy use and an understanding of energy options. A total of 118 New Zealand high schools, from Taipa to Invercargill, will build model solar cars to compete in regional races to be held in October 1992, with the finals planned for Hamilton in November 1992. The Listers provide a starter kit containing a solar panel, motor, transmission and resource book. The rest is up to the school. The Listers are currently visiting all the schools in the competition. As well as showing off Solar Kiwi, they give children rides on a solar-assisted electric scooter and explain the finer points of making a model solar racer. When space and weather permit, a few lucky students even get to drive Solar Kiwi. The headmaster of one school, when offered a turn around the tennis court, swiftly seized the steering wheel and the opportunity with both hands. With a gleam in his eye, he accelerated straight for the gate, and the call of the open road. It is a racing car, after all! Long Bay College (situated just north of Auckland), has even more ambitious plans than simply joining the model racer competition. Inspired by the exploits of the four high school entrants in the 1990 race, they have decided to go for the real thing. They plan to be at the start line in Darwin in November 1993 with their own entry.

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