Coasts

Fine sediment is the most pervasive and significant contaminant in New Zealand’s rivers, estuaries, and coastal areas.

Braided rivers are an arena where woody weeds and floods are in constant competition with each other.
Braided rivers naturally flood frequently, repeatedly mobilising their bed sediments and shifting their multiple channels.

New Zealand’s newest citizens like the solitary life, have leopard-like markings, and can each weigh up to 600kg.

Foreign marine pests can threaten our marine life and it’s important to find them early before they can set up home here.

Hazardous and murky conditions in our ports and marinas can make it challenging for divers to carry out important biosecurity inspections for introduced pest species. NIWA scientists are pioneering the use of underwater remote operated vehicle (ROV) technology to improve surveillance checks.

A combination of field surveys and on-site observations are being used along with laboratory-based experiments to determine the effects of seabed disturbance on benthic life.

Most of the plastic in the ocean originates on land, being carried to the estuaries and coasts by rivers. Managing this plastic on land before it reaches the river could be the key to stemming the tide of marine-bound plastics. The aim of this project is to understand the sources and fate of plastic pollution carried by urban rivers using the Kaiwharawhara Stream as a case study.

For more than a year a frozen slab of leopard seal poo sat in a NIWA freezer. The poo, known scientifically as scat and about the size of two bread rolls, is as good as gold for leopard seal researchers.

Phytoplankton: tiny cells with a big job

During the voyage, we collected planktonic protist cells for which DNA will be sequenced for taxonomic identification, but also to understand their physiology through the daily diurnal vertical migration (diel) cycle.

As a young child growing up on an Irish farm, one of Eimear Egan’s chores was to regularly clean out the well from where her family drew its drinking water. In the well lived a large eel that, no matter how many times it was shifted, just kept coming back.