News

The NIWA Board is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr Rick Pridmore as the new Chief Executive of NIWA to succeed Paul Hargreaves following his retirement.

The research vessel Tangaroa will set off on 20 May for the final data-gathering phase of a $44 million project to map the outer limits of New Zealand’s continental shelf.

A NIWA research voyage using RV Tangaroa has returned to Auckland on Thursday, 2 May, after three weeks of frontier mapping of undiscovered volcanoes between the North Island and the Kermadec Islands 1000 km to the north of New Zealand. Prior to the voyage little was known about this segment of the Pacific “Ring of Fire”.

New Zealand’s largest aquaculture facility – Bream Bay Aquaculture – opens tomorrow, 24 April, in Ruakaka, just south of Whangarei.

The announcement last week that the Maui gas field might run out 2 years early is a worry because New Zealand relies on natural gas for much of its energy needs. There are also emission problems associated with burning fossil fuels, and fossil fuels are not renewable. So, where can we get the energy we need if we want to increase our economic prosperity and improve our standard of living, without damaging the environment?

A CD released this week makes UV information available to the community. UV Atlas allows UV intensities in different parts of New Zealand to be compared directly, and quantifies long term changes in UV that have occurred in recent years. The product is the culmination of several years of research to make UV information more accessible to the community.

The giant squid (Architeuthis), the world’s largest invertebrate, has never been seen alive – until now. A new Discovery Channel special joins an international expedition team in the waters off New Zealand as they succeed in capturing living juvenile specimens for the first time. The juveniles were found in the larval stage, ranging in size from 9 to 13 millimetres. The expedition, fully funded by the Discovery Channel, was undertaken in cooperation with NIWA and led by marine biologist Dr Steve O’Shea.

Dr Brendan Gara from the Isle of Man, and Australian Ian Cameron have seen a lot of fish in their 35-plus years working in the aquaculture industry.

The two have just begun work at Bream Bay Aquaculture, the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research’s (NIWA) new aquaculture facility at Bream Bay, Whangarei.

The odds of your favourite seafood coming from the aquaculture industry are getting better.

Two high-tech recording buoys shaped like dive tanks will be released into the Pacific Ocean this month by NIWA scientists as part of an international programme to understand and predict phenomena influencing the world‘s climate.

The buoys, worth $35,000 each, will provide real-time measurements of the temperature and salinity of the upper ocean that will help forecast long-term climate change, and events like El Niño and tropical cyclones.