Triplefins are found on temperate and tropical reefs in most parts of the world, where they are generally inconspicuous small fish. The blue-dot triplefin (Notoclinops caerulepunctus), here photographed on a rock wall at the Poor Knights Islands, is, at 5 cm, one of the smallest of the 26 species of triplefin found in New Zealand […]...
Joseph Conrad and the Otago....
Taxa: a survey of marine invertebrate biodiversity...
French oceanographer Jacques Cousteau rated the Poor Knights Islands off Northland’s east coast as one of the top 10 dive spots in the world. Twenty-five years after they were gazetted a marine reserve, they remain as magnificent as ever, a place of rare undersea richness where exciting biological discoveries continue to be made....
Some of the caves at Matanaka are hundreds of metres long with extensive dry floors beyond the reach of the sea....
My first close encounter with an orca took place in May 1991. I was a student at the Leigh marine lab when I heard that orca had been sighted in the bay. Grabbing my snorkelling gear, I sprinted down to the beach and dived in. Nearby, the tall fin of an adult male was projecting […]...
The desire to save lives by preventing shipwrecks was the spur that drove Robert FitzRoy to start issuing weather forecasts in England in 1860, when the science of meteorology was still rudimentary and weather observations were sparse. Following FitzRoy’s methods, Commander Edwin began forecasting for New Zealand’s coastal waters in May 1874. A retired naval […]...
In 1258 Hulegu Khan, great-grandson of Genghis, sacked Baghdad, bringing to a close the Golden Age of Islam. On another battle-front, in the climax of its 70-year border conflict, the Mongol Empire vanquished the remnants of the Sung dynasty, claiming dominion over formerly prosperous China. These events occurred a century before the Incas rose to […]...
Dr miles lamare has spent six weeks of each of the last four years in—and under—Antarctica. A lecturer in the Department of Marine Science at the University of Otago, Lamare has been diving under the sea ice to see how marine invertebrates such as the sea urchin Sterechinus neumayeri and the starfish Odontaster validus (the […]...
“When I was 14, my father and mother took me to Ocean Grove in Victoria, Australia, and friends had a foamy surfboard, some 8 foot long. I remember the sparkling white water bouncing me back to the beach, droplets going everywhere with a sense of speed and motion, and sliding over a fluid as smooth […]...
