Marine invertebrates

Useful information and resources on New Zealand's marine flora and invertebrate fauna.

In this blog series, we feature a new critter from our expansive invertebrate collection including pictures of specimens in their unique habitat. The blogs also feature news, links and fun facts that showcase New Zealand’s fascinating marine fauna.

An interactive guide to the sponges of New Zealand.

An interactive guide to the intertidal sponges of New Zealand.

Pollen from New Zealand pine forests has been shown to travel more than 1500km through wind and ocean currents, and sink thousands of metres into the ocean to reach some of the world’s deepest ecosystems.

This week we feature a community of critters living on the Chatham Rise sea floor.

In this critter "quill" is not part of a feather but rather a unique tube built by a polychaete worm that lives in it.

Squat lobsters are known for their lengthy eyelashes and come in many different sizes from the mighty Munidopsis aries (90mm carapace length) to some species which have bodies only a few millimetres long.

This year is the 2400th anniversary of the birth of Aristotle, a philosopher and scientist (384 BCE), who among other many great achievements was the first person to describe the structure, ecology, and diversity of sea urchins – way back in the 4th century BC.

A new fully illustrated electronic identification guide, Bountiful Bryozoans, has just been released to help people identify this group of marine creatures in the wild.