Coasts

Beachgoers are being asked to look out for leopard seals over summer and report sightings as soon as possible.

Every year NIWA carries out numerous marine surveillance missions, surveys at ports and harbours around the country. Their divers are looking for the pests that have hitched a ride to New Zealand waters and are capable of destroying our unique ecosystems and shellfish industry.

Excessive nutrient input (eutrophication) threatens many New Zealand estuaries causing ecological problems, such as algal blooms and poor physical and chemical conditions for estuarine life.

Wire deployed corer floats being retrieved on board the RV Tangaroa. The corer sampled sediments at 9994 metre depths in the Kermadec Trench.

Wire deployed corer landing at 9994 metre depth in the Kermadec Trench. Deployment and retrieval on board the RV Tangaroa.

A tsunami reporting station situated in the Pacific Ocean that is currently off line is to be upgraded in a joint operation involving New Zealand and United States government agencies.

Since the end of June, a barge has been stationed just off Wellington’s Miramar Peninsula drilling into the seabed to find an alternative water source for the city.

A sophisticated buoy has been deployed in Wellington Harbour to “phone home” information about currents, waves and water quality in the harbour.

A leopard seal pup born off St Kilda beach, Dunedin, on Tuesday has been found to have only had 10 per cent of normal lung capacity.

NIWA scientists have found signs of recovery in the Kaikōura Canyon seabed, 10 months after powerful submarine landslides triggered by the November earthquake wiped out organisms living in and on the seabed.

A leopard seal has spent so much time in New Zealand waters she has prompted a NIWA scientist to challenge conventional thinking about the species.