On December 10, 2024, a juvenile bottlenose dolphin was reported tangled in fishing line near Riverhead, in the upper reaches of the Waitematā Harbour. The dolphin couldn’t flex its tail properly, or dive, or chase fish. Its pod headed elsewhere. One larger dolphin stayed behind, and for the next month it stuck close, spending almost […]...
Tongariro is by far the most popular national park in the North Island, attracting tens of thousands of skiers, walkers and trampers every year. The park centres around three active volcanoes: Tongariro, Ngauruhoe and Ruapehu, all of which are considered by local Maori to be sacred ancestors. In 1887 the chief of the local iwi Ngati […]...
Robotic in form and startlingly efficient en masse, ants have outlived the dinosaurs and now scuttle over every major landmass but Antarctica. Humans can learn a lot from these diminutive critters, which communicate using cocktails of exotic pheromones, expeditiously divide labour among thousands, and silently conduct their small and significant lives for the greater good—of the colony and their immediate […]...
Fine documentary photojournalists are as rare and as delightful to encounter as any of New Zealand’s endangered species. As this magazine’s art director, I am all too aware of the difficulties that a complex photo-journalistic assignment poses. An instinct that puts a photographer in a certain place at a certain time with an eye for the […]...
As 2006 came to an end, stories of record warmth around the world contrasted strongly with the cold temperatures New Zealand experienced in December. Averaged over the whole country, the month was 1.9°C below the long-term average. Although nationwide it was not the coldest December on record—December 2004, for example, was 0.3°C colder again—many places […]...
This issue’s cover posed a challenge: to present cannabis in a way that was recognisable, but that didn’t immediately call to mind a number of associations. An image of a cannabis leaf has layers of meaning attached to it. We wanted to make it possible for readers to take a fresh look. We are, as […]...
On January 23 1863, the German-born geologist Johann Franz Julius von Haast reached the mountain pass that bears his name; a momentous occasion as he believed his party of five to be the first Europeans to traverse the 564 m crossing....
I grew up with a mainsheet between my teeth, and every summer as the mercury rises, the salinity of my blood seems to increase in anticipation of another dousing. There is nothing, in all the world, more satisfying than hoisting a rag, casting off from the tangle of civilisation and sailing towards a beckoning horizon. You […]...
