Where the wild things are

Barely seven per cent of New Zealand is land. The rest of it, the wet bit, covers four million square kilometres. In 2016, photographer Richard Robinson won a Canon Personal Project Grant that enabled a dozen expeditions into this vast marine prairie, arguably the country’s last great tract of undisturbed wilderness.

This is what he found there.

Wherefore the whales?

Where do whales and dolphins hang out? And why? Friend of NZGeo Steve Hathaway and daughter Riley have some of the answers, some more interesting questions, and hundreds of videos for kids on their new platform Young Ocean Explorers.

Check out one of the videos here.

An easy Christmas gift with a free calendar

Order a New Zealand Geographic subscription as a Christmas gift, and have a magazine sent to your place in advance to wrap up and give on Christmas Day. Bonus: the Christmas issue comes with a free 2018 calendar.

You can subscribe from just $1/week for digital, $1.50/week for print, or $2/week for both, billed bimonthly or annually. See the options here.

Poles apart

New Zealand took in its first refugees on October 31, 1944, when 733 Polish children accompanied by 113 caregivers arrived in Pahīatua, in the Northern Wairarapa.

It was expected that the children would be able to return home at the end of the war, but it soon became clear that there was no future in Poland for them. They were invited to make a life for themselves in New Zealand.

See the finalists in Photographer of the Year 2017

This season heralds a bumper crop of finalists in the Photographer of the Year competition—65 sparkling new visions of our society and environment from the finest photographers in the country.

You can view the whole lot online, vote for your favourites for the Panasonic People's Choice award, or get along to the exhibitions in Cathedral Square, Christchurch (on now) and Auckland Museum (from December 15). See the finalists and vote here.

Photo: Jason Hosking