Coasts

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.

A leopard seal, who has made the balmy waters around Auckland home, is prompting a NIWA scientist to campaign for her to be made a New Zealand citizen.

18 Nov 2018. NIWA Blake Ambassador—Lana Young—explains how bongo nets are deployed to collect plankton around the clock on board the RV Tangaroa.

16 November 2018. By Voyage Leader Dr Moira Decima.

13 November 2018. By Voyage Leader Dr Moira Decima.

10 November 2018. By Voyage Leader Dr Moira Decima.

8 November 2018. By Voyage Leader Dr Moira Decima.