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.
Te Rawhitiroa Bosch documents the traditional harvest of a sperm whale stranded in the Coromandel.
Some animals are ephemeral. Others are almost eternal. Some age gracefully, while others self-destruct. Why are some creatures here for a good time, and others for a long time?
In February 2022, Tropical Cyclone Dovi brought weather chaos to New Zealand’s North Island—along with a few unexpected visitors from warmer waters in the South Pacific. Noddys, frigatebirds and a bridled tern were reported from Northland, while a lone tern caught the eye of Hayden Pye, a Massey University doctoral student visiting the Muriwai colony. Colin Miskelly, curator of vertebrates at Te Papa, describes this find as “the pick of the bunch” from the flurry of vagrant sightings. It was New Zealand’s first-ever record of a black-naped tern, usually found frequenting the ocean around New Caledonia. Sadly, the emaciated tern died, but its legacy lives on as a specimen at Auckland Museum, and as a new bird on New Zealand’s official species list.
This is one plant you won’t find in a glossy coffee-table book on the 100 prettiest native species for the garden. Supplejack is a climber that inhabits the deep, dark, shadowy gullies of our native bush. In Māori legend, supplejack is said to have sprouted from the bloody tip of the tail of the taniwha Tunaroa, whom Māui hacked to pieces and tossed far and wide into the bush for molesting his wife Raukura. Supplejack vines grow from a bulb the size of a man’s fist, their long glossy black strands about the thickness of a finger, with a knuckle at each node like bamboo. The vine wraps itself around the limbs of saplings and forest giants alike, sometimes even dragging them to the forest floor. Like many aka (vines), supplejack is regarded as a nuisance: an impenetrable tangle that strangles the life out of regenerating bush and stops trampers in their tracks. Little wonder it was known as “taihoa” or “wait-a-while” by Pākehā bushmen. But supplejack had an extraordinary range of uses. The vine’s leaves, young shoots and roots were made into medicinal tonics to treat everything from sore throats to chronic rheumatism, recorded Murdoch Riley in Māori Healing and Herbal. Pākehā and Māori used supplejack laced between a couple of saplings to make a stretcher to carry the wounded out of the bush, or to create a bed sprung with a latticework of vines. A bundle of tightly bound vines made a good torch. Set alight, the vines could also be used to cauterise wounds. Cut into slivers and boiled to extract the juice, the vines could produce a “wonderful beer; clear, gold and heady”, according to Riley. Boys built bows from supplejack. Schoolmasters used supplejack canes to discipline lads who misbehaved. In 1906, ethnographer Elsdon Best noted hoops of supplejack poked into the ground and lashed together to support the weight of a young child learning to walk. Supplejack was used to make all sorts of ingenious fishing devices, traps, nets and scoops. Stiff, springy hoops of vine were used to hold open the mouths of scoop nets or to strengthen and reinforce fish traps, hīnaki (eel nets) and bag nets. Many Ngāi Tahu whānau still remember cutting supplejack vines from the bush and building tāruke (crayfish pots) in the mid-1900s. In latter years, the designers improvised with hybrid designs, lacing supplejack hoops together with No. 8 wire. They weighted their pots with concrete or scrap iron donated by New Zealand Railways. Tāruke had significant advantages over the steel-framed, wire-netting-clad pots that eventually replaced them; they didn’t rust and were durable and flexible enough to withstand perhaps a decade of the worst storms Tangaroa could throw at them. Excerpted from Treasures of Tāne: Plants of Ngāi Tahu by Rob Tipa (Huia Press).
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?
The 2019 kākāpō breeding season was the best in the 26-year history of the recovery programme. But it was also the worst: the fungal disease aspergillosis hit the Codfish Island/Whenua Hou sanctuary, infecting 21 kākāpō and killing nine—all either nesting females, chicks or juveniles. New fungal genome analysis shows the birds all caught the same strain—and it probably came in with people, most likely on supplementary food. That is surprising, says University of Otago geneticist Peter Dearden, but “we can’t explain it unless it’s been carried by humans”. The same strain of aspergillosis was also identified on Anchor Island in Fiordland, home to a smaller kākāpō breeding population. But the birds there didn’t get sick. [caption id="attachment_472574" align="alignnone" width="600"] Kākāpō Huhū’s results show the shadow of the fungus, though the bird survived.[/caption] Other factors such as climate change are likely in play. “It was a very hot, dry summer in 2019,” says Andrew Digby, the science adviser for DOC’s recovery programme, who was involved in the research. “All the infections occurred over quite a narrow time period, and it might be that the climatic conditions were [right on Whenua Hou] at the same time as chicks were at their most vulnerable stage.” All islands where kākāpō breed are subject to strict quarantine and hygiene procedures, but the team have now put in additional measures such as freezing supplementary food, ventilating nests and not moving chicks directly between them. They rely more on remote monitoring and have established hands-off breeding sites on Te Kākahu-o-Tamatea/Chalky Island in Fiordland. “That’s how we want to be managing kākāpō in the future,” Digby says. “It’s not to say the intense management is wrong. Without it, kākāpō would be virtually extinct by now. But it’s another reason why it’s important that we step back.”
How a diagnosis made life better for cybersecurity engineer Denise Carter-Bennett (Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei, Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Hine).
Flying robots are taking to the skies in greater numbers—performing tasks such as tracking critically endangered Māui dolphins and collecting data on extreme weather events. But they can’t fly well in windy conditions, and don’t have the battery capacity to power long flights. Birds, on the other hand, can wheel and soar in even the most turbulent conditions, exploiting wind energy to fly effortlessly. In a new paper, birds provide inspiration to make drones more adaptable and energy efficient. Researchers suggest mimicking flying strategies such as vultures circling in thermal updrafts (below, D, E), or birds exploiting updrafts created by the likes of cliffs or buildings (F). “Dynamic soaring” strategies seen in gulls, kites and crows could inspire drones programmed to be more reactive to subtler air patterns. These include surfing wind gusts (above, A), sweeping close to the sea surface on the updraft of a long wave (B), or looping in the eddies off the tip of a sharp ridge (C).
The crayfish population in the Hauraki Gulf is in worse shape than official fishery stock assessments suggest, according to a new analysis. Researchers from the University of Auckland used two marine reserves— Cape Rodney-Okakari Point (Goat Island) and Tāwharanui—as “proxies” for natural, unfished crayfish abundance. “We hired a fisherman and all of his gear and we did cray potting inside and outside the marine reserve for two years,” says Benn Hanns, lead author of the paper. Comparing catch rates inside and outside the marine reserves indicates that the crayfish population has plummeted to around two to three per cent of unfished levels—though Hanns suggests the population may be even lower. It’s substantially different from the Ministry for Primary Industries’ estimate of 18 per cent. Under current rules, if a fishery drops below 10 per cent of its original, unfished level, it must be closed. Stock assessments rely heavily on fisheries-dependent data and models with complex, inbuilt assumptions. Hanns says some of these assumptions are outdated. “This research shows the utility of marine reserves beyond conservation… They can actually be these really important sanity-checking tools.” But even within the marine reserves, numbers of crayfish have been declining in recent years. Hanns chalks this up to one big problem: the marine reserves are too small. His research has contributed to a recent proposal to expand Goat Island Marine Reserve, currently under consideration.
New Zealand’s most valuable work of art lay waiting in a Taranaki swamp for 150 years. In this condensed extract from her new book, Te Motunui Epa, Rachel Buchanan details what happened when these exquisite carvings awoke, were smuggled across the world, and became entangled in the ransom of a millionaire’s kidnapped daughter.
The NGO Environmental Law Initiative (ELI) took the Minister for Oceans and Fisheries to the High Court in October, challenging the decision on the total allowable catch of crayfish in Northland. (As part of a no-holds-barred commitment to oceans journalism, New Zealand Geographic was involved in preparing and presenting the case.) ELI contended that the advice to the minister was “inaccurate, misleading, and unsupported by peer-reviewed and published literature”, and that the minister had failed to consider the “interdependence of species” in the marine environment that ultimately leads to trophic collapse—the kina barrens that New Zealand Geographic reported on in November 2021. The court found that the fisheries decisions were “unlawful” and ordered Minister David Parker to remake the decision based on best-available information, considering the wider impacts of rock-lobster fishing and taking a precautionary approach. This sets a precedent for other decisions and may accelerate an ecosystem-based approach to fisheries management that has long been proposed by those concerned about environmental impacts of human activity in the seas.
Range anxiety, charging locations, higher power bills… There’s a lot to think about when buying an electric vehicle. But Electric Kiwi has a grand plan to help ease those concerns, writes Chris Schulz.
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?
Comvita and Saving the Wild are battling to save wild land in Kenya. And bees are playing a very important role.
Around the country, Birds New Zealand branches are trying to motivate their members to fill in one more observation list, while keen birders are ticking off grid squares, aiming for high scores. They’re working on the Bird Atlas, the biggest-ever citizen-science project on our shores.
This year, the book that won New Zealand’s richest literary prize, the $60,000 Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction, was in fact two stories woven together. It’s called Kurangaituku. One cover is light. The other is dark. You choose which side to start reading from but either way, they meet in the middle. Here’s the really cool thing: this new sort of novel, this hybrid, is about a hybrid, too: Kurangaituku, the magnificent, terrible bird-woman much maligned by boiled-down versions of a pūrākau, legend. (She ends up cooked in a thermal pool by brave warrior Hatupatu.) Whiti Hereaka spent 10 years enthralled by Kura, writing and rewriting a richer version of the story. She dressed as the bird-woman herself for the award ceremony—wicked neon and black makeup, ostrich-feather wings. A champion of hybrids. Judging by Bill Morris’s story, they could do with one. Some of the most pressing science stories today seem simple but turn out to be, like Kura’s, a tangle of perspectives and interests. Trying to pin them down is like grappling with an octopus. Kate Evans was up against one of these when she decided to write about the future of trawling. It’s not nearly as simple as “we should just stop”. But we can’t keep decimating the seafloor, either—not least because, as we’re learning, trawling messes with the ocean’s carbon cycle. If Hereaka’s a champion of hybrids, Karl Warr is a champion of our seas. He trawls, but on a small scale, and he winces every time. He’s also deeply sceptical of the new net set-up touted by Big Fishing as the sustainable way forward. So he’s come up with his own—and it seems to be working better. How does this story end? Cliffhanger: Warr needs an injection of funding and support to progress his project. Meanwhile, the fishing industry, with millions of public dollars in tow, is pressing on with incremental changes to its own net. “The tūī sings a different song to that of the kākā,” Hereaka writes in Kurangaituku. “But both sing the truth.” It’s not true, though, that there are two sides to every story. Sometimes there is one clear and obvious reality and to pretend otherwise is to obfuscate. This is why most journalists no longer give precious newsprint or airtime to climate-change deniers. It’s why New Zealand Geographic makes no bones about issues such as ecological collapse in the Hauraki Gulf, and the urgent need to protect the crayfish that could bring things back into balance. In October, we ventured out of the fourth estate and into the High Court as part of a group arguing that a ministerial decision about crayfish quota in Northland was based on advice that was “inaccurate, misleading, and unsupported by peer-reviewed and published literature”. We won. Ten years ago, I’d have fretted about journalistic ethics—we’re meant to stand on the sidelines, not actually get things done—but now I’m just very proud to work here, and relieved that good science still matters. As do our stories.
Lindsey Fitzharris
Sarah Farrar, Jill Trevelyan and Nina Tonga Te Papa Press, $70
Soviet Russia aimed a satellite at Venus. It hit Ashburton.
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