Tag archives for New Zealand
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New Zealand’s large, slow-growing longfin eels (Anguilla dieffenbachia) are on a “slow path to extinction,” according to an April report by the parliamentary commissioner for the environment. The commissioner has now been joined by a number of scientists in calling for a ban on fishing of the eels, since their numbers have been declining in…
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Eelpouts, rattails, and cusk eels were among the odd haul of species discovered during a recent expedition to the Kermadec Trench.
100% Pure? New Zealand’s Green Image Shows Cracks in Antarctic Fishing
Posted by Claire Christian of Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition in Ocean Views on September 26, 2012 New Zealand enjoys its green image, branding itself as “100% pure.” Yet when it was given an opportunity to make a truly bold move to protect a uniquely undisturbed marine ecosystem, it balked. Last month, the NZ cabinet rejected a proposed U.S.-NZ plan to turn a large swath of the Ross Sea, which is part…
A River in New Zealand Gets a Legal Voice
Posted by Sandra Postel of National Geographic's Freshwater Initiative in Water Currents on September 4, 2012 
It speaks the language of riffles and babbles, not legal rights and codes, but the Whanganui River, New Zealand’s third largest, has received something no other river in the country – and possibly the world – yet has: a legal voice. In a framework agreement signed last week between the Crown and the Whanganui…
In 2010 and again in 2011, a team of Australian divers descended down one of the deepest, coldest freshwater caves in the world, in a remote part of New Zealand’s South Island. The expedition was led by Richard Harris, who has received support from National Geographic as well as the Waitt Foundation. The divers…
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Kicking off the year’s Women’s History Month, National Geographic, in conjunction with the All Roads Film Project hosted the 4th annual “Women Hold Up Half the Sky” Film Festival in Washington, D.C. on March 2nd and 3rd. Watch the trailers from each film and read commentary from the directors themselves.
Pacific Islanders Use Stars to Sail Canoes From New Zealand to California
Posted by Brian Handwerk on August 31, 2011 Pacific sailors concerned about the great ocean’s future recently charted a course towards future healing by reaching back to the incredible voyages of their ancestors. Sailors on the Pacific Voyagers project steered a fleet of traditional Polynesian sailing canoes or vaka from New Zealand to San Francisco—guided only by the stars that once helped…
Remembering Gallipoli II: Resurrecting Ismail Hakki
Posted by Bulent Atalay of Author, National Geographic Books; author, Smithsonian Books; Prof. UMW, Adj Prof UVA. on May 9, 2011 
On June 23, 2006 I had been serving as a lecturer on board the cruise ship, Crystal Serenity, when the ship docked for the day in Thessalonica (the old Ottoman Turkish city of “Selanik”). With close friends from the ship, I drove to Virgina, to see the tumulus of Phillip of Macedon, the father of Alexander the…
Remembering Gallipoli I: ANZAC Day 2011
Posted by Bulent Atalay of Author, National Geographic Books; author, Smithsonian Books; Prof. UMW, Adj Prof UVA. on May 3, 2011 
Sailing north through the Dardanelles, the straits that separate the Asian side of Turkey from the European, the land is pockmarked with numberless trenches. It is here that hundreds of thousands of troops — Turkish and Allied — faced each other in 1915. The preponderant numbers on the Allied side comprised the Australian and New Zealand troops, mobilized into the “Australian and New Zealand Army Corps,” or “ANZAC.” When it was all over, a half million young men, approximately evenly divided between the two sides, had been wounded or killed.
Posted by The world became less peaceful for the second consecutive year, according to the fourth annual Global Peace Index (GPI) published today. “As the global economy continues to falter, this year’s data shows an intensification of conflicts and growing instability linked to the downturn that began in 2008, with several countries seeing sharp increases in homicides,…
One of the world’s most endangered birds–a brown kiwi (Apteryx mantelli)–hatched at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo’s Bird House early yesterday. Photo by Mehgan Murphy, National Zoo “Keepers have been carefully monitoring the egg’s progress since it was laid January 19. Keepers looked for signs of pipping: the process in which the chick starts to break…
To better understand how rising sea levels could impact the planet, researchers have drilled more than 6,000 feet into the Earth’s crust–making the deepest hole in scientific ocean drilling history. In doing so, they retrieved a 35-million-year record of sea level fluctuations. Seawater sprays on the rig floor of the research vessel JOIDES Resolution during…
More than a century after being transported to New Zealand to pollinate crops of red clover, the short-haired bumblebee is set to make a return to its mother country, England, where it has been extinct for 20 years. Photo of short-haired bumblebee by Dave Goulson, courtesy Natural England The short-haired bumblebee was last seen in England…
Illustration of moa by Charles R. Knight/NGS Feces dropped by moa, giant birds now extinct, are providing scientists with an idea of what the vegetation of New Zealand looked like before the first humans colonized the islands. A team of ancient DNA and paleontology researchers from the University of Adelaide, University of Otago and the…
