Our Changing World

Each year, five Prime Minister’s Science Prizes are awarded in the most prestigious New Zealand science awards. We explore the AgResearch science that got the top recognition this year and catch up with two of the other winners. Science Communication prizewinner Professor Jemma Geoghegan talks about the hundreds of interviews she’s done about viruses, and Future Scientist prizewinner Rena Misra explains her project exploring how a plant-fungus combination could have the potential to help clean up stormwater.

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Guests:
Professor Jemma Geoghegan, University of Otago Rena Misra, Epsom Girls’ Grammar School in Auckland Dr Linda Johnson, Endophyte Discovery Team, AgResearch
In this episode:

00:06–02:05: The main science prize was awarded to a group who have discovered a way to protect pasture ryegrass from pests.

02:06–02:57: The winners of the Science Teacher Prize and the MacDiarmid Emerging Scientist Prize.

02:58–19:33: Interview with Science Communication prizewinner Professor Jemma Geoghegan of the University of Otago about viruses and pandemics.

19:34–26:10: Interview with Future Scientist prizewinner Rena Misra of Epsom Girls' Grammar School in Auckland about a fungus-plant symbiosis that might help clean up stormwater…

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With its steep sides, forested slopes and heavy rainfall, Fiordland has interesting ecosystems both above and below the water. Below the surface of the inner fiords, a variety of sponges, corals, and other filter-feeding animals cling to the cliff-like reefs. Claire Concannon heads to Doubtful Sound with a research team who are habitat-mapping the fiords to better understand what’s there, and how things are changing over time. They are also investigating the resilience of its iconic black corals to local landslides and marine heatwaves.

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Guests:
Professor James Bell, Victoria University of Wellington Miriam Pierotti, Victoria University of Wellington Amber Kirk, Victoria University of Wellington
Learn more:
Our Changing World visited Professor James Bell at the Coastal Ecology Lab in 2023 to learn more about sponges. The 2022 marine heatwave mentioned here led to one of the largest ever recorded sponge mass bleaching events . In Antarctica giant glass sponges also live in quite shallow waters, under the sea ice. Eva Ramey and Dr Alice Rogers are also involved in a project to study the movement of sharks in Fiordland . Professor James Bell has investigated ‘middle’ light zone habitats around Aoteaora. Learn more and check out some videos in his recent article on The Conversation .
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Cooper’s orchid is New Zealand’s rarest and most elusive, with fewer than 250 plants left in the wild. It belongs to the group of potato orchids, which grow mostly underground as tubers – except for a brief period every few years when they push out a leafless stick with a few flowers. This largely subterranean lifestyle already presents a challenge, but saving this species is even harder because, like all orchids, the Cooper’s orchid can only produce seedlings with the help of the right soil fungus. After years of lab experiments to produce in vitro seedlings, botanists are now ready to boost dwindling wild populations.

Guests:
Dr Carlos Lehnebach, botany curator, Te Papa Tongarewa Dr Karin van der Walt, conservation advisor, Ōtari Wilton’s Bush Jennifer Alderton-Moss, plant conservation researcher, Wellington City Council
Learn more:
Read the article that accompanies this episode: Rare orchids reintroduced into the wild . Alison Ballance talked to Carlos Lehnebach about why some orchids smell like mushrooms and how that helps them to fool insects. This Critter of the Week episode focuses on the helmet orchid (Corybas dienemus ), another rare native orchid that likes cold, damp and windy places. In this interview, Jesse Mulligan talks to Fred Clarke, a Californian orchid breeder who created the acclaimed black orchid After Dark . This Critter of the Week episode discusses the copper beard orchid (Calochilus herbaceous ), which is threatened by habitat loss and climate change.
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Kākahi are a keystone species in lake and river ecosystems, keeping the water clean by filtering one litre of water every hour. These native mussels once blanketed lakebeds across Auckland – but recent surveys found an alarming decline and disappearance across many lakes. A team of scientists and divers have mounted a rescue mission for one of the last remaining kākahi populations, trying to keep the mussels safe from invasive fish through all the steps of their complicated – and fascinating – life cycle.

Guests:
Madison Jones, Senior Healthy Waters Specialist, Auckland Council Belinda Studholme, Senior Biosecurity Advisor – Freshwater, Auckland Council Ebi Hussain, Submerged Environmental and Aotearoa Lakes Andrew Simpson, Global Dive
Learn more:
Read the article that accompanies this episode: A rescue mission saving rare freshwater mussels . Meet the bullies – the native freshwater fish that host the kākahi in their parasitic stage – in this 2023 episode recorded by Claire at Zealandia , where the fish have been translocated. Alison Ballance covered the translocation of kākahi into Zealandia back in 2018. Wondering how the perch and other pests ended up in Lake Rototoa? Black Sheep has the details in the episode Invasive: the story of Stewart Smith .
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Claire Concannon spoke to RNZ's climate correspondent Eloise Gibson for the last episode of the Voice of the Sea Ice series. Listen to the full interview between Eloise and Claire in which they talk about the Paris Agreement, New Zealand's international climate commitments, and what we can do as individuals.

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Guests :
Eloise Gibson, RNZ climate correspondent
Learn more :
Read Eloise’s recent analysis about New Zealand’s international climate targets , or New Zealand's glacier loss . Eloise has also recently fact checked Winston Peters on climate accord , reported on our 2035 Paris Agreement target and delved into the recent uptake of solar demand in New Zealand. The Climate Action Tracker website keeps tabs on the targets and pledges of different countries and monitors whether they are on track to keep the world below 2 oC of warming (compared to pre-industrial temperatures).
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Human-induced climate change is impacting Earth’s global systems, including ice melt in Antarctica. What is the world doing to combat it? Signed in 2016, the Paris Agreement is the current global plan to tackle it. Countries pledge different emission reduction targets and then produce their workings and homework about how they are going about it. Where does New Zealand fit in? Are we doing our bit as a nation? And should we be bothering with individual actions or is that simply a bait-and-switch tactic by those who want to delay real change?

Guests:
Eloise Gibson, RNZ climate correspondent Dr Jess Berentson-Saw, Director of Narrative Research and Strategy, The Workshop
Learn more:
Read the article that accompanies this episode: Is New Zealand doing its bit in combating climate change? Read Eloise’s recent analysis about New Zealand’s international climate targets , or listen to this episode of The Detail . Eloise has also recently fact checked Winston Peters on climate accord , reported on our 2035 Paris Agreement target , and delved into the recent uptake of solar demand in New Zealand. The Climate Action Tracker website keeps tabs onthe targets and pledges of different countries and monitors whether they are on track to keep the world below 2 °C of warming (compared to pre-industrial temperatures). The Workshop have published a cheat sheet on ‘How to talk about climate change’ .
This series was made with travel support from the Antarctica New Zealand Community Engagement Programme. …

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In February 2025, the world hit a new low for global sea ice extent. Arctic sea ice has been declining for several decades now, but Antarctic sea ice had been holding steady, until recently. With low summer sea ice extents for four years in a row, it appears that Earth’s warming has kicked Antarctic sea ice into a new regime. Claire Concannon speaks to scientists to understand what this means for Antarctica, what this means for us, and how they feel about it.

Guests:
Dr Natalie Robinson, NIWA Dr Jacqui Stuart, Victoria University of Wellington Dr Greg Leonard, University of Otago Dr Daniel Price, University of Canterbury and Kea Aerospace Dr Inga Smith, University of Otago Dr Michelle LaRue, University of Canterbury
Learn more:
Read the article that accompanies this episode: A time of change for Antarctic sea ice . Read about the recent State of the Global Climate Report . The world’s biggest iceberg recently ran aground , but to get up close and personal, listen to the Voice of the Iceberg miniseries. The world is also experiencing ice loss from its glaciers. New Zealand’s glaciers have shrunk by 29% since 2000 . Listen to The annual snowline survey to learn how our glaciers are monitored.
This series was made with travel support from the Antarctica New Zealand Community Engagement Programme.

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Penguins that return to the ice in the middle of winter to lay their eggs. Seals that use cracks in the ice to keep their pups safe. And fish that have antifreeze proteins to survive in the icy cold waters... Antarctic life is tough, and full of surprises. Scientists are keen to piece together the Antarctic food web puzzle to better understand the interconnections, and to enable smart conservation decisions.

Guests:
Arek Aspinwall, University of Canterbury Dr Michelle LaRue, University of Canterbury Professor Steve Wing, University of Otago
Learn more:
Read the article that accompanies this episode: How Antarctic seals and penguins rely on sea ice . Meet other seals and penguins with Peregrin Hyde on his journey to South Georgia Island as part of an Inspiring Explorers expedition. In ‘Best Journey in the World’ from the Voices from Antarctica series, Alison Ballance travelled to Cape Crozier with a team from NIWA studying the emperor penguins.
This series was made with travel support from the Antarctica New Zealand Community Engagement Programme.

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What’s it like to live and work on the frozen ocean? A team of researchers is camping out on the sea ice to investigate the small critters that live on the bottom of the ice, and among the sloshy platelet ice layer just below it. From microalgae to krill, these tiny organisms hold up the big complex food web of Antarctica. Scientists are keen to understand these communities, and how they might shift as the sea ice cycle changes.

Guests:
Dr Natalie Robinson, NIWA Dr Jacqui Stuart, Victoria University of Wellington Dr Greg Leonard, University of Otago Lizzy Skelton, University of Canterbury Dr Aimee van der Reis, University of Auckland Salvatore Campanile, Victoria University of Wellington
Learn more:
Read the article that accompanies this episode: What lives in Antarctic sea ice? Dr Natalie Robinson spoke to The Detail in 2023 about the unprecedented sea ice conditions of that year Alison Ballance's Voices from Antarctica series from 2020 explores what it’s like to live and work in Antarctica.
This series was made with travel support from the Antarctica New Zealand Community Engagement Programme.

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Step out on the sea ice just outside New Zealand’s Scott Base with researchers studying the physics of its annual cycle. Each year a massive patch of ocean around Antarctica freezes and then melts again come summer – Antarctica’s heartbeat. In winter, the ice effectively more than doubles the size of this already massive continent, and it plays a huge role in controlling our planet’s climate.

Guests:
Dr Inga Smith, University of Otago Antonia Radlwimmer, University of Otago Professor Wolfgang Rack, University of Canterbury
Learn more:
Read the article that accompanies this episode, Monitoring and measuring Antarctica's heartbeat . Listen to Physics on Ice from 2021 with Emeritus Professor Pat Langhorne and Dr Inga Smith. Alison Ballance's Voices from Antarctica series from 2020 explores what it’s like to live and work in Antarctica.
This series was made with travel support from the Antarctica New Zealand Community Engagement Programme.

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Welcome to Antarctica - a land of ice, extremes, and ambition. From historic expeditions to modern day science projects, Antarctic exploration is a unique, and dangerous, experience. We meet one researcher involved in an epic journey across the largest ice shelf in Antarctica, mapping a safe route through a crevassed landscape for others to follow. Plus, we learn about the different types of ice found in this vast, frozen landscape.

Guests:
Dr Daniel Price, University of Canterbury and Kea Aerospace Ngā Taonga Sound and Vision archival audio
Learn more:
Read the article that accompanies this episode. Daniel did the route-finding for the SWAIS2C project. Veronika Meduna flew out to the camp in the 2023/2024 season to report on their activities. Daniel has spoken to Morning Report about Kea Aerospace ’s work developing a solar-powered aircraft Hear about other ongoing research in Antarctica from the latest research season, including investigating new methane seeps , and giant glass sponges . Learn more about living, and working, on the ice in the 2020 podcast series – Voices from Antarctica .
This series was made with travel support from the Antarctica New Zealand Community Engagement Programme . Sign up to the Our Changing World monthly newsletter for episode backstories, science analysis and more.

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Using acoustic tags and a network of receivers attached to the seafloor, researchers are tracking the movements of sevengill sharks in Fiordland. They want to understand how these apex predators adjust to changing ocean temperatures, particularly during marine heat waves. Plus, an international collaboration involving a high-tech German research vessel is exploring New Zealand’s deep-sea realm.

Guests:
Eva Ramey, PhD candidate, Victoria University of Wellington Dr Alice Rogers, Victoria University of Wellington Coastal Ecology Lab Dr Kareen Schnabel, NIWA Professor André Freiwald, Senckenberg am Meer Research Institute Dr Cornel de Ronde, GNS
Learn more:
Read the accompanying article . Listen to this 2016 episode about the Great white sharks of Australia and New Zealand. RNZ journalist Kate Green also hopped aboard the RV Sonne to find out about its technology and capabilities. This is not the first time the RV Sonne has been in New Zealand waters, one previous expedition also involved investigations of underwater volcanoes .
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People with ADHD often fidget more than those without. Why might this be? Does it help them focus? Or distract them further? An Auckland Bioengineering Institute researcher has teamed up with the Mātai Medical Institute in Gisborne to investigate this using advanced MRI techniques. And at Waikereru ecosanctuary, local birds are being enlisted in a trial to help speed up the regeneration of native bush.

Guests :
Professor Justin Fernandez, Auckland Bioengineering Institute Dr Gil Newburn, Mātai Medical Institute Professor Dame Anne Salmond, Waikereru Ecosanctuary
Learn more :
Read the accompanying articles: Recruiting the birds to bring back the bush and Why fidgeting might be a good idea . In 2017 Alison Ballance did a story about The 1769 Garden where she spoke to the garden designer, curator and local botany expert. To learn about the Mātai Medical Institute, listen to The advances in MRI coming out of Gisborne from November 2024. The Mātai Medical Institute is also involved in research into recovery post meth addiction , concussion in teenage rugby players , and muscle development in children with cerebral palsy.
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The Eastern Whio Link project has been working to restore the whio or blue duck population in the rivers of the Waioeka Gorge. Sam Gibson, aka Sam the Trap Man, explains why he thinks the project has been so successful, and what he loves about these scrappy little ducks. Then, Professor Matthew Stott speaks to Claire Concannon about the complexities working on an active volcano in Antarctica, and what they hope to learn from the microbes they find there.

Guests :
Sam Gisbon, Eastern Whio Link Professor Matthew Stott, University of Canterbury
Learn more :
Read and see more photos in the accompanying articles: Searching for extreme life and Trapping to help wild whio . Head on to the slopes of Mount Erebus, and into an ice cave with Alison Ballance and Craig Cary in this 2011 episode . Matthew Stott also works with heat-loving microbes in Rotorua , including some that appear to have broken the ‘rule of thumb’ and are only found in New Zealand. Sam the Trap Man has also shared some yarns about bush life with RNZ’s Saturday Morning.
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All around New Zealand, people are trying to make things just a little bit better for their communities. The 22 Environment Centres, or Hubs, found throughout the country aim to help with this. Claire Concannon visits the Tairāwhiti Environment Centre to learn about their three pou of waste minimisation, education, and biodiversity, and about the environmental projects they support. She also meets their close neighbours – Gizzy Kai Rescue – who are looking to balance the scales of local food waste and food scarcity.

Guests:
Steph Temple, Hub Coordinator, Tairāwhiti Environment Centre Sam Rowland, Manager, Tairāwhiti Environment Centre Lauren Beatty, Gizzy Kai Rescue Dr Sarah Boyle, Wai Connections Tairāwhiti
Learn more:
Visit the websites of Tairāwhiti Environment Centre , Gizzy Kai Rescue , the Every Bite programme , the Aotearoa Food Rescue Alliance , and Wai Connections . Learn about other food rescue programmes around the country, including in Hawke’s Bay and Porirua . Another conservation project in Tairāwhiti is aimed at bringing a beautiful endangered plant back from the brink .
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Trapping is hard mahi, especially on rugged terrain thick with vegetation. If you need to check a trap frequently to clear it and refresh the lure, the kilometres of bush bashing quickly add up. Plus, in areas where kea are found, trap options are limited by concerns for these curious and intelligent parrots. A team in Queenstown are investigating if the latest ‘smart’ traps – equipped with cameras, AI-powered to recognise specific targets, and networked so they can communicate and be operated remotely – might be the answer.

Guests:
Paul Kavanagh, project director, Southern Lakes Sanctuary Philip Green, field and technical advisor, Southern Lakes Sanctuary
Learn more:
Read the article that accompanies this episode. Country Life tagged along with the Halo project, part of Predator Free Dunedin, who are also trialling networked AI traps just north of the city. One of the Southern Lakes Sanctuary hubs at Makaroraisfocused on trapping to protect mohua , and they are trialling an AI method to identifyindividual birds by their song. In the Catlins, a team are battling predators and browsing pests to protect taonga there.
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The summer science series continues with an episode from RNZ podcast Country Life. From a block of gorse-infected scrubland on Banks Peninsula, renowned botanist Hugh Wilson has spent half a lifetime growing Hinewai Reserve into a 1600-hectare paradise of regenerated native forest by leaving nature to it. Cosmo Kentish-Barnes visits to learn more.

The Country Life podcast takes you all over the motu to hear the extraordinary stories of every day rural New Zealand. Hosted and produced by Sally Round, Cosmo Kentish-Barnes, Duncan Smith and Gianina Schwanecke

Listen to more Country Life episodes .

Guest:
Hugh Wilson, botanist
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The summer science series continues with an episode from RNZ podcast Black Sheep. Freddie Angell was New Zealand's most notorious wildlife smuggler. His repeated attempts at stealing and exporting native wildlife in the 1990s, including kea and tuatara, made him all but a household name. William Ray speaks to documentary-maker Andy MacDonald about his extraordinary story.

Black Sheep is an RNZ podcast produced and presented by William Ray.

Listen to more episodes of Black Sheep .

Guest:
Andy MacDonald, documentary-maker
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The summer science series continues with an episode from Tune into Nature, a podcast about New Zealand wildlife and wild places, and the people who look after them. Independent producer Karthic SS visits the Mokomoko Dryland Sanctuary Central Otago. Here, a team is working to bring back endangered lizards – Otago skinks and grand skinks – to the drylands wilderness they once lived in. These species are true wildlife underdogs – so rare and out of sight, not many people know they exist.

Tune into Nature is a podcast produced and presented by Karthic SS.

Listen to more Tune into Nature episodes .

Guests:
Grant Norbury, ecologist and chairperson, Central Otago Ecological Trust (COET) Anna Yeoman, science communicator and trustee, COET Carey Knox, herpetologist, Southern Scales Kathryn Longstaff, Department of Conservation (DOC) Central Otago Ross Curtis , senior ranger, DOC Central Otago Joanna, ranger, DOC Central Otago
This episode was supported by OAR FM Dunedin, Science Communication at the University of Otago, and the NZ Lottery Grants Environment and Heritage fund, administered by Te Tari Taiwhenua, the Department of Internal Affairs.

Learn more:
Alison Ballance goes on an urban lizard hunt in this 2017 episode. Anna Yeoman spoke to Nine to Noon about her lizard book.
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The summer science series continues with an episode from RNZ podcast Here Now. A love for tropical plants united Canterbury-based botanists Dr Julie Barcelona and Dr Pieter Pelser in the mid-2000s. The pair are renowned for their work on the large and unusual flower Rafflesia, which smells like a rotting carcass. They have found at least three new species on their adventures in the Philippines. Kadambari Raghukumar learns more about their spectacular discoveries.

Featuring:
Dr Julie Barcelona Dr Pieter Pelser
Here Now is an RNZ podcast produced and presented by Kadambari Raghukumar.
Listen to more episodes from Here Now . Watch a video about this episode .
Learn more:
What will happen to plants in a warming world? Naturally rare and threatened
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Welcome to the summer science series! We're kicking off with two stories made by local podcast producers. First, on New Zealand's quest to become predator free by 2050, are we forgetting about mice? Dan Moskovitz, a student at Victoria University of Wellington, investigates what might happen to mice – and ecosystems as more areas become predator free. Then, a story from Xanthe Smith's Catch On podcast. Many people who consume fish stick to eating the fillets, meaning a substantial chunk of the whole fish gets chucked. A project seeks to tackle this food waste by connecting communities with kaimoana.

Guests:
Associate Professor Stephen Hartley, Victoria University of Wellington Dr Araceli Samaniego Brent Bevan, Department of Conservation Chris Jupp, Kai Ika Vera, Kokiri Marae Naenae Hub
Learn more:
Listen to more episodes of Catch On , a podcast by Xanthe Smith for the Office of the Prime Minister's Chief Science Advisor Find out about the Kai Ika Project Dr Araceli Samaniego's paper, Small mice create big problems Listen to Voice of Tangaroa for more exploration of ocean issues Watch Fight for the Wild , a series about Predator Free 2050
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New methane seeps are being discovered in Antarctica, some now appearing in areas that researchers have been monitoring for years. These are areas on the seafloor where methane gas escapes out from under the ground through fissures or cracks. What is the extent of the seeps? How large is the gas reservoir they are being fed from? How much methane is escaping from the sea into the air? Why now? And does this have implications for further warming the planet? A team of NIWA scientists are racing to find answers.

Guests:
Dr Sarah Seabrook, NIWA Dr Leigh Tait, NIWA
Learn more:
You can find all the papers referenced this episode in the write-up that accompanies it. Claire spoke to Sarah about her initial work on seeps and the microbes that are attracted to them in 2022 There’s currently a massive project underway to investigate whether the West Antarctic Ice Sheet will melt under 2oC of warming. Veronika Meduna joined them on the ice last year. Listen to our recent episode about life on the seafloor under the ice, including mysterious giant glass sponges .
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New Zealand’s tuatara are the last remaining species of an order of reptile that was alive alongside the dinosaurs 240 million years ago. The rest died out about 65 million years ago, but in Aotearoa the tuatara live on, found on 32 offshore islands and in a small number of ecosanctuaries and zoos on the mainland. Now one researcher is investigating the microbial community that lives inside their gut. Are there also bacterial ‘living fossils’ to be found? And has their gut microbiome changed as a result of living in captivity on the mainland?

Guests:
Cam Hoffbeck, PhD candidate, Taylor lab, University of Auckland Chye-Mei Huang, Ectotherm ranger, Auckland Zoo
Learn more:
Read the article that accompanies this episode . Hear from another researcher who has been exploring the viruses found in tuatara . Cam has also spoken to Emile Donovan on Nights about her research. In 2014 Alison Ballance visited Orokonui Ecosanctuary to learn about the tuatara who had recently made the move to the cold climes of Dunedin . Our own microbiome may affect our brain, moods and behaviour , and changes across our lives .
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Dive under the Antarctic sea ice near Scott Base into the weird world of cold-water life. Pink sea angels, worms that look like intestines, ocean creepy crawlies that get as big as your hand... and mysterious giant glass sponges. These sponges are one of the strangest, and oldest, animals on Earth: surviving without light, eating bacteria and viruses, and making themselves out of silica they absorb from the water. In most parts of the world, they live at depths too deep to dive, making them tricky to study. But in the cold waters of McMurdo Sound, they can be found in shallower waters. Now an international team of scientists are unlocking some of their secrets.

Guests:
Professor Ian Hawes, University of Waikato Dr Jürgen Laudien, Alfred Wegener Institute, Germany Katherine Rowe, University of Waikato Dr Erik Wurz, Wageningen University & Research, The Netherlands, Andreas Schmmider-MartÍnez, Universidad Mayor, Chile
Learn more:
Read the article that accompanies this episode Listen to The secret life of sea sponges Find out what it takes to live and do science in Antarctica with the award-winning 2020 Voices from Antarctica series by Alison Ballance
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For centuries Samoa's traditional healers have harnessed the power of the country's native plants as remedies for village ailments. Now scientists at the Scientific Research Organisation of Samoa are putting those plants under the microscope to unlock and understand how this traditional knowledge works. In this episode of Pacific Scientific from the ABC, tour the labs and lush gardens filled with plants that could hold the secret to battling diabetes, HIV, and cancer.

Guests:
Annie Tuisuga, Scientific Research Organisation of Samoa MaserotaOfoia, Scientific Research Organisation of Samoa Benaiah Une, Scientific Research Organisation of Samoa Sekotilani Aloi, University of Samoa Lecturer
Pacific Scientific credits:
Series Creator: Carl Smith Reporter: Adel Fruean Producer: Shelby Traynor Series Producer: Jordan Fennell Executive Producer: Will Ockenden ABC Science Editor: Jonathan Webb
Learn more:
Read the article that accompanies this episode . Listen to more Pacific Scientific episodes .
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Ngutukākā, or kākābeak, is a popular garden plant in Aotearoa. But in the wild, it is now rarer than kākāpō, with only about 100 individual plants surviving on steep, inaccessible cliffs. The East Coast is one of its remaining strongholds and the Tairāwhiti Ngutukākā Trust is on a mission to bring the taonga back. Veronika Meduna joins the inaugural Tairāwhiti Ngutukākā Festival to find out more about the community’s efforts to turn State Highway 35 into a Crimson Highway by rewilding this iconic native.

Guests:
Graeme Atkins, Tairāwhiti Ngutukākā Trust Mere Tamanui, Tairāwhiti Ngutukākā Trust Hōhepa Waenga, East Coast Myrtle Rust Response Team Natalie Robertson, artist and Associate Professor at Auckland University of Technology Emma Giesen, Trees That Count Stephanie Gardner, Trees That Count Tamariki from Te Kura Kaupapa Māori o Mangatuna
Learn more:
Read the article that accompanies this episode . Visit the Tairāwhiti Ngutukākā website Graeme Atkins featured in a recent episode of Country Life . For more on rare flora, Our Changing World has covered threatened limestone plants and explored what will happen to alpine plants in a warming world .
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Invasive redback spiders are highly venomous, threatening both people and New Zealand’s native species. A team of scientists is developing a cunning tool to trap male redbacks, by concocting an irresistible spiderweb perfume. We visit 800 captive redback spiders in the lab, learn about their wild mating habits, and check out the “spider arena” where the redbacks’ signature scent is put to the test.

Guests:
Dr Andrew Twidle, Plant & Food Research Tom Sullivan, Plant & Food Research
Learn more:
Read the article that accompanies this episode . Redbacks aren’t the only spiders to engage in a spot of sexual cannibalism. Claire Concannon enters the weird world of spider reproduction on a spider hunt in this episode . Back in 2016, Alison Ballance reported on the threat to Cromwell chafer beetles posed by red4KU24B9_Female_Redback_Spider_PFR3471_jpg
back spiders. Coming up with clever ways to lure pests is also a big focus of Predator Free 2050, as Katy Gosset finds out in this 2021 episode .
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The MRI technique advances coming out of the Mātai Medical Research Institute in Gisborne have been described as ‘pioneering’, ‘groundbreaking’ and ‘world leading’. Claire Concannon speaks to chief executive and research director Dr Samantha Holdsworth to learn why, and about their big plans for the future.

Guests:
Dr Samantha Holdsworth, research director and chief executive of Mātai Medical Research Institute Taylor Emsden, MRI technologist at Mātai Medical Research Institute
Learn more:
Read the article that accompanies this episode. One of the studies underway at Mātai looks at how brains and hearts are damaged by meth use , and also how they can recover. One of the pilot research projects that Mātai hosted involved investigating muscle development in children with cerebral palsy . The Mātai concussion study involves teen rugby players , learn more about other research on this issue from the University of Canterbury .
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About two hours south of Dunedin, in the Catlins, the Tautuku and Fleming rivers flow into the sea at Tautuku beach. Covered in native bush from headwaters to the ocean, this special catchment is home to many native, and some threatened, plants and animals. But there’s an ongoing battle. Browsing animal such as deer and pigs are destroying the undergrowth, while feral cats and stoats are predating on critters such as the mātātā, the South Island fernbird. We meet some of the people fighting back.

Guests:
Gavin White, pest control for Forest & Bird Francesca Cunninghame, project manager for Forest & Bird
Learn more:
Watch Fight for the Wild , a documentary series exploring Predator Free Aotearoa 2050. Listen to Deer Wars , a podcast telling the story of the 50-year struggle to control red deer. Drones are a new tool in the battle against introduced pests, William Ray reports in this Our Changing World episode . Find out more about the Tautuku Ecological Restoration Project .
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Every year in New Zealand, recreational hunters shoot more than half a million wild game. Most are shot with lead-based ammunition. Now, researchers are investigating what happens to that lead, and how much of it is getting into the food chains of humans and the endangered kea. Alison Ballance speaks to scientists at Nelson-Marlborough Institute of Technology, and kea conservationists and predator control experts at the Department of Conservation to learn more.

Guests:
Dr Eric Buenz , biomedical researcher at Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology Professor Gareth Parry, Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology Adjunct Professor Myra Finkelstein , University of California, Santa Cruz Tom Brookman, Department of Conservation Dr Kerry Weston, Department of Conservation
Learn more:
Read the web article for this episode . In Kea get a helping hand , Alison Ballance joins kea researchers at Arthur’s Pass. The kea’s close relative the kaka is also at risk from lead poisoning – check out Alison’s story on The dark side of being an urban parrot - kaka and lead. Find out more about the element lead in “Lead – sweet tasting but deadly ” from the Elemental podcast series, which investigates the periodic table of chemical elements. Read the research mentioned in this episode about X-ray screening , and the latest research about kea and lead .
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To keep their eggs safe, some birds build simple cup-shaped nests. Others craft elaborate fully enclosed domes, with porches, fake entrances and ledges. But is this intricate construction of nests a set, encoded behaviour? Or can birds adapt in different conditions? Researchers are keen to learn about flexibility in nest design, to better understand how different species might be able to respond as the climate changes.

Guests:
Dr Iliana Medina Guzman, University of Melbourne Kane Fleury, Tūhura Otago Museum
Learn more:
See nest pictures and read the related article for this episode here . Iliana’s colleague Dr Claire Taylor spoke to Nine to Noon about some of this work in July, their work has been written up by the University of Melbourne , and their investigations of the role of climate and the analysis of variation in nest design have been published. Some birds use spikes as weapons around their nests , while in Wellington, some kākā might be trying to nest in unhelpful places . Explore the Our Changing World bird episodes back catalogue , for heaps more bird and nest stories.
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Almost 40 years on from the first reports of the Antarctic ozone hole, and 35 years since the Montreal Protocol to ban CFCs came into effect, what’s going on with the ozone hole? How does it form? How do we measure it? And having solved the CFC problem, why are we still monitoring ozone so closely? Claire Concannon heads to NIWA's Atmospheric Research Station in Lauder, Central Otago, to find out.

Guests:
Dr Richard Querel, NIWA Dr Ben Liley, NIWA Dr Olaf Morgenstern
Learn more:
Read the article that accompanies this episode. This year’s World Meteorological Organization ozone bulletin was positive about the recovery trend for the ozone layer. In Ozone holes & UV radiation Alison Ballance investigates the particularly large ozone hole of 2020, and why New Zealand has such high UV levels. The University of Otago researchers who published findings indicating a growth in the ozone hole in some parts of the stratosphere spoke to Morning Report last year.
Thanks to Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision for some recordings from the 1980s and 1990s used in this episode.

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We love our four-legged friends. It’s estimated about a third of New Zealand households share their home with at least one dog, and two thirds of dog owners consider their furry friends to be family members. Some dogs work, others keep us company, make us laugh, get us walking twice a day, and shower us with unconditional affection….. But are we looking after all their needs? Claire Concannon speaks with a dog welfare expert about the science behind how we know our dogs love us, and what to do to make sure we are looking after them.

Guests:
Dr Mia Cobb, University of Melbourne Ellen Rykers, RNZ
Learn more:
See more cute dog photos in the article that accompanies this episode . Mia coordinated on a Map of the Month project to check if Melbourne is a dog-friendly city . Listen to what it takes to train a dog to detect cancer , or train a sheepdog , or how to train a puppy and interpret dog signals .
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We all experience anxiety – when our brains look into the future and imagine bad things happening. It’s normal and has helped keep us alive as a species. But levels of anxiety are rising, particularly in young people, and at the severe end of the spectrum clinical anxiety prevents people from going about their lives. This Mental Health Awareness Week we meet a team of researchers at the University of Otago investigating the brain-body connection in anxiety, and how different potential treatments might help. …

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It’s been almost 30 years since a team joined forces to investigate a particularly aggressive form of stomach cancer that was afflicting one Tauranga whānau. Kimi Hauora Health and Research Clinic in Tauranga and University of Otago geneticists together found the cancer-causing genetic change, helping save thousands of lives worldwide. Justine Murray is at Mangatawa Marae with Maybelle McLeod and Erin Gardiner to reflect on that time, and Professor Parry Guilford discusses those first formative years.

Guests:
Maybelle McLeod, CEO and Nurse at Kimi Hauora Health and Research Clinic Erin Gardiner, Nurse at Kimi HauoraHealth and Research Clinic Professor Parry Guilford, Department of Biochemistry, University of Otago
Learn more:
Read the accompanying article, Solving a genetic cancer puzzle . Read the press release about the 2023 Prime Minister's Science Prizes Read here about the history of Mangatawa Marae RNZ interview following the 2023 Prime Ministers Science Prizes
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This week, we’re hanging out in the terahertz area of the light spectrum. Sandwiched between infrared light and microwaves, terahertz has been the long-forgotten cousin of the light family. But no longer! At the Australian Synchrotron, intense and focused beams of terahertz light are used to test new materials for carbon capture, clean energy applications, and the next generation of computing.

Travel to Australia for reporting on this story was supported by the New Zealand Synchrotron Group Ltd.

Guests:
Nicholas Page, PhD candidate at the University of Otago Kiri Van Koughnet, PhD candidate at Robinson Research Institute , Victoria University of Wellington Kane Hill, physics master's student at the University of Auckland Dr Freddy Lyzwa, the Photon Factory , University of Auckland Dr Dominique Appadoo, senior beamline scientist at the Australian Synchrotron
Learn more:
Read the article that accompanies this episode, Using light to study materials . Listen to a previous OCW episode about the future of long-term data storage . The Dodd-Walls Centre for photonics and quantum technologies got a boost of funding in 2023 for its quantum technologies programme of research. Learn more about MOFs in this Nine to Noon interview.
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Electrons! High speeds! Intense beams of light! Claire Concannon takes a tour of our nearest particle accelerator – the Australian Synchrotron in Melbourne. Designed to create high-energy x-ray light useful for science, the synchrotron enables an incredible diversity of research. And, because of long-standing funding support, New Zealand scientists can also use it. Claire finds out what interesting research questions some visiting New Zealanders are shining a light on.

Travel to Australia for reporting on this story was supported by the New Zealand Synchrotron Group Ltd.

Guests:
Dr Emily Finch, Australian Synchrotron Dr Helen Brand, Australian Synchrotron Dr Rosie Young, Australian Synchrotron Ben Krinkel, University of Auckland Shayhan Chunkath, University of Auckland
Learn more:
Read the article that accompanies this episode - The 'science donut' across the ditch Physicist Suzie Sheehy spoke to Nine to Noon about synchrotrons as part of the conversation about the 12 physics experiments that changed our world . For more on the Australian Synchrotron, you can visit their website , read this piece on The Conversation , or learn about the New Zealand Synchrotron group . Jamie Morton of the NZ Herald wrote a piece about the New Zealand research aimed at the life on Mars question. The scientific report about the Degas painting is available here . While the writing is quite technical, the images are pretty neat. One of the synchrotron scientists wrote this piece for The Conversation that’s an easier read.
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Advances in the field of genomics (the study of DNA and genomes) have meant big leaps in our ability to sequence, understand and manipulate the genomes of living things. Damian Christie explores research happening now in New Zealand in this area.

Plus, with a recent announcement that the government is introducing new legislation, what’s next for the regulation of gene technologies in Aotearoa?

Guests:
Damian Christie of Aotearoa Science Agency Professor Emily Parker, Ferrier Institute, Victoria University of Wellington
Learn more:
Watch the What if….? video series on genomics in Aotearoa Listen to the recent episode of The Detail on Modifying our gene modification laws Previous Our Changing World episodes have investigated the future of genomic medicine in Aotearoa and the use of genome sequencing during the pandemic . Visit the gene technology regulation page on the MBIE website to learn more about the proposed regulations, and learn more about gene editing on the Royal Society webpage. Sign up to the Our Changing World monthly newsletter for episode backstories, science analysis and more.
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Wastewater testing became part of our daily lives during the Covid-19 pandemic, but what else can it tell us about what’s happening in our communities? From looking for illicit drugs, to monitoring alcohol consumption and health biomarkers, Claire Concannon meets scientists tapping into the rich research potential of what’s in our pee.

Read the article:

Learn more:
The Detail also did an episode on this topic in 2022, delightfully called ‘Spying on our sewage’ For more about drugs and alcohol in New Zealand, watch/read/listen to Wasted and Proof Our Changing World also covered New Zealand’s world leading approach to Covid-19 sequencing during the pandemic .
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They will look like fish, swim like fish and even sense like fish. Liz Garton meets a research team designing robofish and smart wetsuits to monitor the state of our oceans.

Learn more:
Claire Concannon checked out more of the Auckland Bioengineering Institute’s research last year in Digital twins and beating hearts . The podcast Voice of Tangaroa takes a deep dive into the state of New Zealand’s oceans.
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Making and processing music is something unique to human brains, says Dr Sam Mehr. But why are we so attuned to rhythms, melodies and matching tones? Claire and Sam take a deep dive into the universal language of music, and how our minds make sense of it.

Spotify is open on Dr Sam Mehr's work computer. He's halfway through Billie Eilish's new album, which he's enjoying.

"I listen to every Billie Eilish album that comes out. I mean, she's great and it's kind of wild, why she's great to me."

It's one of his side interests, homing in on supremely popular music to figure out the secret sauce of what makes it so well-liked.

But his main research focus is the basic psychology of music - why and how our brains process music.

The psychology of an everyday thing

Think of the space that music occupies in your life. Do you listen daily? On your commute? To get pumped up in the gym? Do you hear it all around - radios, cafés, the supermarket, TikTok videos? Maybe you sing or play an instrument. But have you ever stopped to wonder... why?

"No species other than humans have something like music. Other species have vocalisations that might sound a bit like music, but they're very, very different in their functions and in their design than the human music faculty is," says Sam.

"Just the fact that we're doing it in the first place is like, wait a minute, what's that about?"

Based now at the University of Auckland, Sam's own musical background paved the way for what he researches. He played piano from a young age, saxophone at school and then went to a music conservatory to study music education at third level. It was while running classes for very young kids with their parents that he started to ponder about the psychology behind it all.

Is it a universal language?

While a highly produced Billie Eilish album might be an entertaining listen, when it comes to answering the fundamental psychological questions about how humans interact with music, Sam focuses on more basic forms of music that have been around for much longer.

Something he and collaborators have been working on for over a decade now is the Natural History of Song project - a collection of vocal music from all around the world, with recorded context for each piece of music. There are 118 recordings, divided into four categories - lullaby, love, dance, and healing songs. (You can explore the recordings in this interactive visualisation of the project.) …

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In July 2023 four male kākāpō were released into the fenced Sanctuary Mountain Maungatautari - part of a new habitat trial to investigate suitable locations for the growing kākāpō population. But after a further six were introduced, the kākāpō began to wander - beyond the fence. A year on, and several escapes later, what's been learned? And what's next for kākāpō in Maungatautari?

There are plenty of night-time wanderers in New Zealand that you might expect to come across driving on back roads - rats, mice, a seemingly endless number of possums.

But it's not often that you round a corner to come face to face with a kākāpō.

Elwin's escapade

This was the surprising sight that faced Tyler James Lindsay very early one morning in January 2024.

A Cambridge local, Tyler was driving a milk tanker along Scott Road, northeast of Sanctuary Mountain Maungatautari, when suddenly he saw before him a strange shape.

"Just a big green bird. Just in the middle of the road looking straight at my lights, I think it was rather confused," he says.

Luckily, Tyler is into native birds, so he was aware that kākāpō had been introduced to the fenced sanctuary six months earlier. He knew exactly what he was looking at.

The next day, Tyler's report made its way to Sanctuary Mountain Maungatautari kākāpō ranger Dan Howie, who quickly began the search for the elusive Elwin.

"Such an incredible interaction that he saw this bird out there - in the middle of the road no less - which is absolutely terrifying as kākāpō ranger," says Dan.

But this was not the first time, nor the last, that Dan would feel that fear.

The habitat trial

Kākāpō numbers are growing. In 1995 there were just 51 kākāpō and the threat of losing them forever was all too real.

A decade ago, around the time that Dr Andrew Digby joined the Kākāpō Recovery team, there were just over 120 kākāpō. Today there are 247.

Intensive management and three quite successful breeding seasons have enabled this doubling of kākāpō numbers in the last 10 years. Initially, the challenge was to save the charismatic, flightless parrots from extinction. Now, the team also has an added challenge: where to put them.

To date, the majority of kākāpō have lived on offshore predator-free islands in the rohe of Ngāi Tahu - Whenua Hou / Codfish Island next to Rakiura / Stewart Island, and Pukenui / Anchor Island in Fiordland. But these islands are getting full. …

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An expedition to the Bounty Trough off the Otago Coast uncovers a treasure trove of deep-sea creatures - including some species new to science. Veronika Meduna meets slimy fish, snails, and tiny shrimp-like critters from the ocean depths.

The Bounty Trough is one of the world's least explored deep-ocean ecosystems.

Earlier this year, an expedition set off to explore this deep underwater rift valley off the Otago coast as part of the international Ocean Census project, under the umbrella of the United Nations Ocean Decade.

In partnership with Te Papa and NIWA, the voyage aimed to fill gaps in our knowledge of what lives in the deep.

Hundreds of new species discovered

Onboard the research vessel RV Tangaroa were different sets of traps and samplers as well as a deep-tow camera system to allow the scientists to watch what goes on at depths of up to 5,000 metres. The expeditioners returned with hours of video footage and 1,800 specimens. Hundreds of them are new to science - including a slender, slimy bottom-dwelling fish known as an eelpout.

The number of new fish species may be countable on one hand, but Dr Rachael Peart expects to identify several new small crustaceans known as amphipods and isopods. They look a bit like tiny shrimp and dominate life in the deep ocean.

Te Papa mollusc curator Kerry Walton has already identified 78 new species of snails and mussels from the Bounty Trough, including a parasitic snail stuck to a gummy squirrel - a weird sea cucumber with a large sail-like extension.

Te Papa fish curator Andrew Stewart says the museum's collection is limited to shallower depths of about 1,200 metres and mostly commercial species. Being able to explore the Bounty Trough opened up a treasure trove of sightings and catches from the deep.

It also brought home the importance of ocean life.

"This is the world's largest habitat, by a vast margin. It plays a massively important role," he says. "We really need to know what's down there because shifts down there are the canary in the coal mine. We lose those, we're in trouble. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but we're in trouble."

Why explore the deep sea?

Professor Alex Rogers, the science director of the Ocean Census programme, says there are many reasons why we need to know what lives in the deep.

About half of the oxygen we breathe is produced by tiny plants that live in the ocean. They also kick off the marine food web - from microorganisms to fish - which ultimately feeds millions of people. …

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Avocado seed powder to make snacks, fish waste skin for wound healing, and bioactive compounds made from brewer's spent grain - Claire Concannon visits a food lab at AUT turning food waste into wealth.

Food is usually a no-no in a science lab, but this lab at the Auckland University of Technology is different.

One fridge is labelled 'beer research'. There's a drawer full of stick blenders, and a coffee machine.

"Well, it is a food lab," says senior lecturer Dr Rothman Kam. "It would be quite sad if you do experiments and were not able to eat the food that you make."

Food scraps to snacks

Rothman and his food science lab group are interested in turning food waste into high value products (a process called 'food waste valorisation').

For example, tonnes of avocado seeds are a waste product of making avocado oil. Rothman and his team have set their sights on transforming seeds into snacks.

They've worked out a method of blending the seeds and processing them to make them fit for human consumption, resulting in an avocado seed powder.

This powder can then be added to breads or biscuits, or used with other grains to make puffy snacks.

Arti-fish-al skin for wound healing

A second project, led by PhD candidate Edward Quach, is investigating the use of fish waste products to create artificial skin. This skin can be loaded with drugs to help burn victims heal faster.

While the method of using fish gelatine in this way isn't new, Edward is trying a novel technique that bypasses the need to extract the gelatine, and instead goes straight from the freeze-dried ground-up fish waste to the jelly-like skin.

A second life for spent grain

The lab's 'beer research' focuses not on the alcoholic drink, but on the spent grain generated in the beer brewing process.

PhD candidate Ha Minh Quoc uses a freeze-drier to remove any moisture from the brewer's spent grain. Once he has dried out the grains, and ground them to a powder, he adds bacteria in. The bacteria (and the enzymes they contain) chop up proteins found in the grain, producing molecules with bioactive properties.

These bioactive molecules are small bits of protein (peptides) that can carry out many different important functions in our cells. For example, bioactive peptides might help fight off germs, reduce high blood pressure, lower blood fats, act as antioxidants, or help ward off obesity, diabetes or ageing. …

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Climate-change-induced sea level rise is happening. What will this mean for our low-lying wetlands? Will they get eroded away - releasing more carbon? Or will they grow at the same rate, and hold their ground? And what will this mean for the critters that live there? A team are investigating at an Otago wetland that might be the first in New Zealand to make this change.

From Lake Waihola, not far south of Ōtepoti Dunedin, fingers of water run down the plains, converging with the Waipori river coming from Lake Waipori.

Dr Chris Kavazos, a freshwater technical advisor for the Department of Conservation, stands in one of these fingers. Waders on, he rummages in the muddy bottom for a logging device that has sat there for the last four months.

Tracking the change

In that time, the device has been taking measurements of pressure and conductivity every ten minutes. From here, the water will complete its journey by joining the Waipori River, which connects with the Taiari (Taieri) river, and then empties into the ocean ten kilometres away.

But it's not just a one-way trip.

The area is extremely low-lying, just centimetres above sea level. Despite the distance from the coast, these waters experience tidal changes, and influxes of sea water. By measuring tiny pressure changes that equate to water depth, plus a conductivity reading that gives an indication of salinity, these logging devices are tracking the impacts of rising tides on these inland wetland areas.

As sea levels rise - a result of human-induced climate change - these wetlands might be the first in New Zealand to experience significant impacts. Chris and others are keen to understand what it might mean for the area, and its inhabitants.

The Waipori-Waihola wetland complex

From a map the approximately 2,500-hectare Waipori-Waihola wetland complex is easy to spot.

Two lakes mark the north and south boundaries. The darker patches of lagoons, pools, swampy areas and meandering channels that connect them are easy to distinguish from the bright green rectangles of cultivated land that form the borders.

And off a gravel road on the inland side of the wetland complex is a small collection of buildings – an office, accommodation, equipment sheds and a native plant nursery – this is the working space of Te Nohoaka o Tukiauau Trust …

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We might think deep-sea squid look a bit strange, but if they have the capacity for it, they would likely consider us monsters! Claire speaks to a squidologist and a PhD candidate about their research trying to understand more about the lives of deep-sea squid.

When you picture where creatures live on Earth, what do you see?

A tropical jungle? A highland pasture? An inland lake? Maybe a rocky seashore?

All of it combined - ecosystems on land, plus shallow coasts - makes up just 5% of the liveable space on our planet.

Instead, maybe you should be picturing somewhere dark, cold, and under hundreds of metres of water.

The deep-sea world

"If aliens would come to planet Earth and sample the habitats here to find out what our biodiversity is like, they could conceivably have to sample 95 times before they would find a habitat that was not deep sea," says Associate Professor Kat Bolstad from Auckland University of Technology.

This is why scientists are still finding new species of deep-sea squid.

When Kat says deep-sea, she means the part of the ocean below the sunlight ("photic") zone, where photosynthesis can take place. But even without sunlight, there are plenty of creatures down there making their own light though bioluminescence.

It's a very different world to our up-top, dry-air, UV-intense spaces, which makes it tricky for us to visit and study. You can lower submarines or equipment down there. But squid are alert to anything strange in their environment and tend to make themselves scarce.

Kat does make use of such exploration methods and has even been down to depths of 1,000 metres in a bubble submarine in the Antarctic herself. But to unravel the secret lives of squid, she also relies on other avenues. Like "squid Christmas".

'It's the most wonderful time of the year'

Every year, Kat and some of her research team travel to Wellington for "squid Christmas" - a clean out of NIWA's freezers that sometimes yields "presents" in the form of "squidsicles" - frozen squid specimens.

It's always a time of excitement.

"Anytime you look at samples from the deep sea, there's a reasonable chance that you will see something that no human has ever seen before," says Kat.

As well as NIWA, Kat collaborates closely with Te Papa and Auckland Museum, who also have marine collections filled with deep-sea treasures collected by research vessels on fishing surveys, biodiversity sampling, or discovery expeditions.

Focusing on squid eyes …

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Jump onboard an alpine flight to photograph some glaciers! The annual snowline survey has been running since 1977, but today new techniques are allowing researchers to go beyond 2D photos to make 3D models of the glaciers. Claire Concannon joins the team for a long day of flying and photographing.

It's a bright blue morning in Queenstown. Summer has been and gone, and the first hints of autumn are starting to appear. Leaves turning, a sharpness in the mornings, the first overnight frosts.

And as this shift begins, it's also time for another annual event - the end of summer snowline survey flight to monitor New Zealand's glaciers.

How to build a glacier

A glacier forms when snow builds up over time, turns to ice and then begins to flow downwards under the pressure of its own weight. For this to happen, you need snow accumulating.

The snowline is an imaginary line that traces along mountain slopes and marks the lower limit of permanent snow cover. Below this line, snow and ice melt away, above it, snow sticks around.

At the change of seasons, snow below this line from the previous winter will have melted, and if you time it right, and no new snow has fallen, you can fly a plane past a glacier and photograph the end-of-summer snowline. By repeating this each year, researchers can track changes happening to our glaciers over time.

'Trev used to run on excitement and liquorice'

The survey began in 1977. Back then, it was designed and led by a scientist called Trevor Chinn. After completing an inventory of all New Zealand's glaciers, and coming up with a total of more than 3100, Trevor realised that it just wasn't practical to monitor every individual glacier.

Instead, he developed a list of 51 'index' glaciers that would be surveyed each year. Using aerial photographs that showed the end of summer snowline height, they would be able to estimate ice volumes of the glaciers year-on-year - and keep an eye on changes.

Though the survey baton was passed on to Dr Drew Lorrey of NIWA in 2009, Chinn continued to go on the annual flights until his passing in 2018. As a nod to him, there's still a bag of liquorice opened and passed around on each flight.

"Trev used to run on excitement and liquorice," says Lorrey . "There's a really rich legacy that we've got to do justice to, in terms of carrying on, but also making sure that the science grows and that it actually is applied with a purpose." …

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A new six-part video series highlights the state of our oceans, and efforts from researchers, Māori and other partners to develop sustainable solutions.

Check out this new series of short video documentaries, Turning The Tide .

Across six episodes, Turning The Tide shows what's happening beneath the ocean surface, and highlights mahi across the motu to restore marine ecosystems.

We hear firsthand from researchers, iwi, hapū, community leaders and others who are coming together to devise sustainable solutions for the sea, and ensure healthy and resilient oceans for generations to come.

From kina barrens to restoring mussel beds to engaging rangatahi, Turning The Tide traverses a raft of fascinating marine stories that will take you deeper into our oceans.

Watch Turning The Tide on the RNZ website , RNZ Facebook page , or the RNZ YouTube channel .

Turning The Tide was made by Tauihu Media and funded by the Sustainable Seas National Science Challenge.

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Māori and Pacific peoples are three to six times more likely to develop stomach cancer than New Zealanders with European ancestry. Claire Concannon visits a research team taking aim at this disparity.

Dr Tom Mules wears two hats. He's a researcher at the Malaghan Institute for Medical Research, but he's also a gastroenterologist at Hutt Valley hospital. It's there that he meets patients suffering from stomach cancer.

"It's a horrible disease. A large number of people are diagnosed when the treatment options are limited, when it's too late for surgery," he says.

This is what has motivated him to take on his latest research challenge - one that he hopes will reduce stomach cancer rates and disparities in Aotearoa.

What's a bacterium got to do with stomach cancer?

Worldwide, stomach cancer was responsible for more than 660,000 deaths in 2022 . In Aotearoa New Zealand it’s the eighth leading cause of cancer death for men. But when you look into the data, the picture gets more complicated. Māori and Pacific peoples are three to six times more likely to develop stomach cancer, and chances of survival are worse.

There are some well-established risk factors for stomach cancer, and one of these is infection with the stomach bacterium Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori ). Many people around the world are infected with H. pylori , between 40–50% of the global population, and a lot of people are asymptomatic. However, in some people H. pylori can cause inflammation of the stomach lining, and, if left untreated, this can lead to tissue damage, ulcers, and eventually, for some people, stomach cancer.

As Tom explains, we don’t have up-to-date data on the rates of infection of H. pylori in New Zealand, the best information we have comes from a small South Auckland study from over a decade ago.

Looking at just shy of 600 people, the researchers found that around 30% of Māori and Pasifika had H. pylori infection, while for New Zealand Europeans it was just under 8%.

A team at the University of Otago is currently running a study to find out how common H. pylori is in New Zealand, so that we have better numbers.

The rise of resistance

Of course, because it is a bacterium, we can target it with antibiotics. The current strategy in New Zealand is a kind of scattergun attack: patients diagnosed with an infection will be given a mixture of three antibiotics to take. …

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Aotearoa is a country plagued by pests, but conservationists are hoping advances in drone technology could turn the tables. Producer William Ray looks at how drones are being trialled in controlling everything from microscopic diseases to elusive wallabies, and wilding pine trees.

A ghostly grey image appears on the laptop screen. "You see these deer?" asks Jordan Munn, pointing at a corner off the screen where a pair of animals are highlighted in bright white.

"I have directed a hunter to these deer. He's actually just shot this one, this deer to the right, and it's about to fall over," he says.

The brilliant silhouette of the first deer tumbles to the ground, the second follows a few moments afterwards.

Hunting with heat

Jordan is professional hunter and owns a company called Trap and Trigger based in Upper Hutt. The company has contracts with several regional councils for eliminating everything from deer to wallabies to wilding pines

And Jordan says there's a new technology revolutionising the industry - small commercially available UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles), or as they are more often called: drones.

"We're becoming more and more reliant on them," Jordan says. "It's amazing how the pest control industry has reshaped in the last decade. Ten years ago, basically non-existent."

When mounted on a drone, the thermal vision of an infrared camera makes warm-blooded deer, wallabies and other mammalian pest species stick out like a sore thumb - even when the animal is mostly obscured by scrub.

A decade ago, Jordan says, even a thermal imaging camera or scope was beyond the budget of most commercial hunters. But costs have come down radically over the past decades, and they are still dropping.

"Within a few years, every contractor will have a thermal handheld camera and a thermal scope and a thermal drone. And if you don't have one of those or all of those, you're lagging behind," Jordan says.

It all seems very science fiction, and Jordan speculates it could be possible to use drone technology to remove the hunter from the equation entirely.

"We haven't yet got guns on them," Jordan says. "But if we could legally use a firearm from a drone safely.... It would work. It would work very well. But there will be a few issues, social issues and legal issues to get to that point."

While weaponised drones aren't likely to arrive in New Zealand any time soon, Otago Regional Council is already experimenting with fully autonomous drones for a different type of pest.

Tree terminators …

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Caves created by rivers of lava underlie New Zealand's biggest city. A new research project is documenting Auckland's lava caves, hoping to protect this hidden geological heritage and understand what future eruptions might have in store.

Known for its iconic maunga like Rangitoto and Maungawhau Mt Eden, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland is a city built on an active volcanic field that has erupted at least 53 times.

But beneath streets, houses and parks, there are other - hidden - remnants of the city's fiery past: hundreds of lava caves.

The backyard cave

Lava caves form when hot flowing lava meets air and crusts over, creating a tunnel. Eventually the lava drains away, leaving behind a cavity.

Formed as far back as 200,000 years ago and as recently as 550 years ago (when Rangitoto erupted), lava caves in Auckland range from small cracks to lengthy tunnels. The longest, located in Wiri, stretches to 290 metres.

The lava cave in Sean Jacob's Mt Eden backyard is about 100 metres long. "For something that's so quiet and so peaceful when you're down here, it was sort of created by so much violence," he says.

The Jacob family bought the property in 2008 - in part so the cave would be protected, unlike many others across the city which have been destroyed or infilled with concrete in years gone by.

The speleologist

Peter Crossley is perhaps the only person who went inside some of those caves that no longer exist. A speleologist, Peter has spent 50 years documenting Auckland's lava caves.

"Some people would say that they're muddy, grotty, dark, infested with rats and all the rest of it. But when you look at it, you realise: it's a tunnel which has been filled with lava, almost yellow in heat, that could frazzle you in a microsecond," he says.

Over the decades, Peter has seen surveying methods advance from compasses to state-of-the-art 3D scanning, giving scientists unprecedented detail and valuable insights into past eruptions.

Now he's passed on his knowledge of 180 lava caves to a new research effort.

A new lava cave every month

Jaxon Ingold, a master's student at the University of Auckland, is collating everything we know about Auckland's lava caves - drawing on Peter's records, historical sources, and mātauranga Māori - so this geological heritage can be better protected and respected.

"What I'm currently working on is: is it possible to predict where as-yet undiscovered lava caves may be located? So that we can be more careful in those areas," says Jaxon. …

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A deadly frog fungus has decimated frog populations around the world, but frog biodiversity hotspot Papua New Guinea remains untouched - for now. In this episode of ABC podcast Pacific Scientific, James Purtill discovers the amphibian treasures of the world's largest tropical island, and what conservationists are doing to protect them.

Frog populations around the world have been decimated by a deadly fungus. But one place that has remained unaffected - so far - is Papua New Guinea.

It's home to the world's most diverse array of tropical frogs, including many species unknown to science. Conservationists are racing to safeguard these amphibian treasures before the fungus inevitably reaches Papua New Guinea.

The frog-killing fungus

The deadly fungal pathogen, called chytrid fungus, has swept around the world in recent years, causing mass mortality in some frog species and populations.

Chytrid fungus has been detected in New Zealand in both introduced and native frogs. It might be one factor behind the decline of the endangered Archey's frog, but its impact here is still not well understood.

When the worldwide chytrid epidemic began to accelerate in 2015, Yolarnie Amepou from the Piku Biodiversity Network in Papua New Guinea joined a search for the fungus. No evidence of chytrid was found, but scientists believe it's just a matter of time before the pathogen arrives on the world's largest tropical island.

A frog paradise

Papua New Guinea is home to rare and unique species, with many still unknown to science. In this episode from the ABC podcast Pacific Scientific , reporter James Purtill joins Yolarnie and her friend Heather for a frog hunt in the jungle near the capital city, Port Moresby.

James also checks out a captive frog facility where conservationists are raising an insurance population for if - or when - chytrid fungus hits.

Pacific Scientific is a podcast series covering science and scientists from across the Pacific. It is a co-production between ABC Science and Radio Australia. This episode was reported by James Purtill and produced by Tamara Cranswick.

James spoke to Yolarnie Amepou, director of the Piku Biodiversity Network, and Ryan Reuma, wildlife officer at the Port Moresby Nature Park.

The series producer is Jordan Fennell and executive producer is Will Ockenden. Jonathan Webb is the ABC science editor. …

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This week, Phil Vine dives into the science of climate attribution. How much is climate change affecting extreme weather events? And how can this new science prepare us for the future?

For a long time when asked this question, climate scientists simply shook their heads.

They had been telling people that global warming was making many storms, floods, and weather events worse - but when asked: "by how much?" - they didn't have an answer.

Then one day Oxford University physics professor, Myles Allen, experienced one of those extreme weather events.

As the River Thames flooded and threatened to pour water through his kitchen door, on the radio the Met Office was saying it was impossible to accurately link the event with climate change. He said to himself: "we need to do better than that".

Famously, rather than search out sandbags to keep the floodwaters at bay, he sat down and wrote a journal article - making that connection between global warming and specific weather events.

And a branch of science was born: extreme event attribution studies, or climate attribution for short.

In Aotearoa, there's a whole gang of scientists from different institutions carrying out world-leading research in this new field.

2023: the year of storms

Few in the upper North Island will forget the beginning of 2023.

The Auckland Anniversary Floods arrived at the end of January. Four people dead. Seven thousand homes damaged.

Less than two weeks later came Cyclone Gabrielle. Eleven people killed. A staggering 850,000 landslides.

After Cyclone Gabrielle, Dr Luke Harrington from the University of Waikato and an international team from the World Weather Attribution project worked round the clock on rainfall data and climate models.

They were endeavouring to find out if, and how, climate change had affected the devastating tropical cyclone.

And they broke with scientific tradition. Rather than wait and publish a paper in a year's time, they sought to get a report out while Cyclone Gabrielle was still in the news.

"If it's 12 to 18 months after the event happened, the public doesn't really care," says Luke.

The project team worked out that 10-15 per cent more rain fell because of global warming .

"It demonstrates that climate change isn't a future problem. It is not something that you are going to see play out in 50 years' time, it's already playing out now," Luke says.

The cost of climate damage …

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Could the answer to one of our most pressing health needs be hiding in Aotearoa's bush? On Our Changing World this week, Liz Garton heads out on a foray to discover some of our fungal gems, and she finds out what we're doing to uncover their potential antibiotic properties.

Could the answer to the global problem of antibiotic resistant bacteria be in our backyard?

It's a question being given serious time and consideration by Dr Siouxsie Wiles and Dr Bevan Weir, with help from fungi enthusiasts around Aotearoa.

The problem

The World Health Organization describes antimicrobial resistance as one of the top global public health threats, responsible for an estimated 1.27 million deaths in 2019.

"Life is always fighting, so bacteria will find a way to fight against antibiotics," says Dr Bevan Weir, head of Mycology and Bacteriology Systematics Research at Manaaki Whenua / Landcare Research. "They'll evolve chemistry to cut the molecule and render it inactive or other forms of resistance - they can change their cell walls and pump out the antibiotic more."

"They're always finding a way to evolve around antibiotics, so we do need to find more," he says.

The foray

On a cool but sunny autumn morning in May 2023, Liz Garton joined The Fungal Network of New Zealand's annual foray at Maungatautari Sanctuary Mountain. The 2024 fungal foray is taking place now, from 12-18 May in Havelock.

Each year the foray is held in autumn when the fungi fruits, and it can be spotted.

Each fungus begins as a miniscule spore. From that grows the mycelium, a network of fungal strands, like string, and from those you get the fruiting body. The fruiting body is the bit we see sprouting out of the ground, or whatever the organism is growing on - what we call a mushroom.

Bevan says one of the main reasons for the foray is to take samples for the national culture collection (which he curates) and to try identify and describe what is found.

"That's one of the big questions we don't know; what fungi is native and what are not," he says. "We have probably only described or identified about a third of the fungal biodiversity in New Zealand."

With that unidentified diversity comes diversity of chemistry too. A fungus growing on a piece of wood needs to defend itself and compete with bacteria.

"So it will be producing an antibacterial to kill that bacteria and we might be able to discover what that is and use it for us in a medical context," says Bevan.

The (possible) solution

This brings us to the work Bevan is doing with microbiologist Dr Siouxsie Wiles at the University of Auckland…

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A multi-year research project aims to find out the risks from two Bay of Plenty offshore island volcanoes: Tūhua / Mayor Island and Whakaari / White Island

In the National Isotope Centre in Gracefield, Jacqueline Grech Licari is bent over half a sediment core section, carefully looking for a dark line of ash - a clue left behind by Whakaari, a volcanic island in the Bay of Plenty.

Tracing the history of past eruptions

Jacqueline is a PhD candidate at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington using sediment collected from the seabed around Whakaari, White Island, and its neighbour, Tūhua, Mayor Island to investigate their eruptive pasts.

Layers of ash - also called tephra - are carefully logged and sampled. Chemical analysis identifies exactly which volcano it came from, while the thickness of the layer gives hints at the eruption's size.

With 38 cores taken from the seabed around both these volcanic islands, Jacqueline has a lot of work to do. But she's hoping to be able to build a picture of the frequency, timing, and scale of previous eruptions. And, importantly, how widespread the effects were.

Her work will feed into the wider Beneath the Waves programme - a five-year research project led by GNS Science to investigate these two nearshore island volcanoes.

The anatomy of a volcano

The overall goal of the programme is to identify the full extent of the risks these active island volcanoes might pose to mainland communities.

Could they trigger tsunamis that would impact the coastline? Might ash make it across the ocean buffer and cause air quality and soil problems? And at what frequency might eruptions of this scale occur?

One aspect of the project has been to map the anatomy of the two volcanoes.

Using sensors that can detect changes in the conductivity of the rocks in the crust, the researchers are able to reconstruct a 3D map of the pluming of the volcanoes - where the magma chambers, and hydrothermal systems (the paths that water heated by the magma takes) are. GNS Science geophysicist Dr Craig Miller hopes this will give context to future monitoring and help them better interpret any signals they see.

This mapping will also enable them to look for any spots in the seabed floor weakened by volcanic activity that might have the potential to slide and cause a tsunami when an eruption occurs.

Listen as Craig explains to Claire Concannon the differences between the two volcanoes, and how the team hopes this research will help with hazard mitigation. …

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Meet two winners of the 2023 Prime Ministers Science Prizes. In the wake of the 2019 Whakaari eruption, Professor Ben Kennedy engaged communities with the science of volcano hazards - mahi that earns him the 2023 Science Communication Prize. Meanwhile, Future Scientist prizewinner 17-year-old Sunny Perry has developed a helpful soil map.

When Sunny Perry decided to make a map identifying locations of corrosive soil around Northland, she didn't foresee the extra benefits.

Winning the 2023 Prime Minister's Future Scientist Prize was a big one. Heaps of driving practice with her dad - which helped her pass her driving test - was another.

But there were downsides too: 5am starts, turning her bedroom into a chemistry lab, and having to let her dad pick the road trip tunes. "There were some very questionable choices sometimes," Sunny says.

Road tripping for soil samples

In total, the duo visited 20 sites across Northland: from north of Kaitaia, all the way south to Mangawhai, and across to the west coast.

At each site, Sunny took triplicate soil samples at different depths which she then brought back to her makeshift chemistry lab to test for the presence of a certain type of soil - one that has the potential to cause damage to the environment and infrastructure if disturbed.

An aggressive soil

You may not have heard the term "acid sulphate soil", but Whangārei District Council certainly has. This soil was the culprit behind corrosion of concrete pipes in the Marsden City development at Ruakākā, which cost ratepayers $5 million. Auckland Airport is aware too, since it had to add eight tonnes of lime to a stream on its property in 2016, after plants started to die around it.

These acid sulphate soils can form in waterlogged areas devoid of oxygen and rich in organic matter. They contain crystals of pyrite - iron sulphide minerals. When they lie undisturbed, they are safe and harmless.

But, if they are dug up or drained, and exposed to oxygen, the pyrite in the soil reacts with the oxygen, producing sulphuric acid. The acid lowers the pH of the soil, which can cause damage to plants, creatures, and infrastructure.

Where are these soils found?

To avoid disturbing these soils, you need to know where they are likely to be.

That's what Sunny set out to determine. Using knowledge of the conditions needed for these soils to form, mapping skills developed throughout the project, and her soil sample testing, she has created a map of Northland which shows where these acid sulphate soils might be.

Sunny hopes it can be used to make good decisions about land management across Northland. …

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Kate Evans visits a passionate team as they carpet a remote volcanic island in Tonga with poisoned bait, hoping to eradicate rats. What does it take to complete this kind of project, what are the chances of success, and what will it mean for the island's ecosystems if they manage to remove the rats once and for all?

Rat eradication from islands is a team sport. It's not a competition - but if it were, New Zealand would surely be up there. That's why on most pest removal teams around the world you can probably find one or two Kiwis right in the thick of things.

It takes a village

A team lined up to complete the rat eradication project for the island of Late in the kingdom of Tonga is no different. The New Zealand Department of Conservation is supporting the operation and have provided some skilled staff. The helicopter team (pilot, engineer, ground crew) are all Kiwi too.

They're joined by a project manager from the NGO Island Conservation, and Tongan conservationists from the national environment department.

Years of feasibility studies, finding funding, planning and logistics have come down to this - a second, and final, aerial application of poisoned bait across the island.

Island paradise

It may not be what you picture when you think of a tropical island, but its jagged basalt cliffs and remoteness has made volcanic Late a potential wildlife haven.

Here you can find the Tongan whistler and ground dove, two rare birds on the IUCN red list of threatened species. And it has the habitat needed for the malau - the Tongan megapode - to breed. Malau don't incubate eggs by sitting on them, instead they bury them in warm volcanic soils and sands, and Late's smoking surface is perfect.

Rat eradications elsewhere have allowed forests to rejuvenate, land birds to rebound and seabirds to return. The bird guano ripples the effect out further - feeding the coral reefs and allowing nearby ocean ecosystems to flourish.

Science journalist Kate Evans joins the team on the last day of bait spreading, in what they hope will be the first day of a bright future for the island and its inhabitants. …

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Journalist Rebekah White meets two people who have been counting albatrosses on remote islands in the subantarctic for more than three decades. Their research shows that at least one species is en route to extinction. A few changes to the way we fish could save it.

Gibson's and Antipodean albatrosses are citizens of no one nation. They are ocean birds, living on the wind and waves, travelling massive distances, passing back and forth over the high seas and the imaginary boundary lines we draw on maps.

But when they land to chat, to flirt, to lay an egg and raise a chick, they come to two of New Zealand's subantarctic islands.

Three decades of albatross study

And when they return, some of them meet with two familiar human faces.

Across the last 34 years, Department of Conservation researchers Kath Walker and Graeme Elliott have been visiting these islands to count the birds, and to study them.

At first everything seemed fine. In the early 1990s numbers were low but increasing. Things were positive. Then came the summer of 2006/2007. There was a population crash, reason still unknown, and on both islands, albatross numbers plummeted.

These albatrosses don't breed until they at least eight-years-old, only breed every two years, and tend to mate for life. Since the crash, Gibson's albatross numbers have come back slightly, but Antipodean albatross numbers continue to decline.

And adult birds, especially females, are still going missing.

Hooks don't discriminate

Tuna fishing boats use a method called surface longlining to catch their prey. The lines can be up to 100 kilometres long, with thousands of hooks.

Squid is used as bait, a tasty morsel for tuna. Unfortunately, albatrosses agree.

Using satellite tags Graeme and Kath have watched missing albatrosses' paths overlap with those of boats, and in one case, in which leg bands and the satellite tag were returned to them, follow the path of the boat.

Listen as science journalist Rebekah White explores the albatross bycatch problem, and what we could do about it. …

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New Zealand once led the world in marine protection. Now it looks like we will fail to meet our international promise to protect 30 percent of our ocean estate by 2030. Why is stopping fishing so politically fraught? How might our ideas about marine protection need to change? And why, when our seas are in need, is it taking us so long to learn to talk to each other?

This is an updated excerpt from the July - August 2023 New Zealand Geographic feature article 'Taking on water'.

In 1975 five square kilometres from Cape Rodney to Okakari Point was made a marine reserve, the first in New Zealand, and possibly, the world.

"Nothing to do at Goat Island anymore," declared the local newspaper.

Three hundred thousand people now visit every year. And research indicates that this small, protected patch is helping to contribute fish to surrounding areas.

Lunching on experiments

The Marine Reserves Act was created in 1971 in response to campaigning by the late Bill Ballantine, among others. He was director of the University of Auckland's Leigh Marine Laboratory which was established in 1964. But staff and students soon discovered people were eating their experiments.

So that's what the Act was created for: 'the purpose of preserving, as marine reserves for the scientific study of marine life, areas of New Zealand that contain underwater scenery, natural features, or marine life, of such distinctive quality, or so typical, or beautiful, or unique, that their continued preservation is in the national interest.'

Today, with our ocean ecosystems under increasing pressure from commercial and recreational fishing, sedimentation, pollution, and warming, we need our marine protection to do more than preserve small areas for scientific study.

But it's not an easy task. Most marine protection proposals face extensive push back that delays the process for years, sometimes decades.

"It's really, really hard to manage it appropriately," says Professor Chris Hepburn, marine scientist at the University of Otago. "It's land, sea. It's different user groups, it's rights, it's things like the settlement, it's people not understanding each other's points of view."

The act that ignored the Treaty

'The settlement' is the Treaty of Waitangi (Fisheries Claims) Settlement Act 1992, an attempt to restore some of the rights taken from Māori when it comes to fisheries…

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Kuaka bar-tailed godwits make the longest non-stop flights, and researchers are using hi-tech tags to solve the mystery of how and when they sleep.

Godwits hold the record for non-stop long-distance flight - and scientists are wondering when they find time to sleep on the wing.

The long-distance godwit migration

Eastern bar-tailed godwits or kuaka spend up to six months every year in Australasia. At last count, in 2020, the total summer population was estimated at 126,000 birds - 78,000 birds were in New Zealand and the rest in eastern Australia.

After spending the summer feeding on rich intertidal mudflats in the southern hemisphere, the godwits fly north in March. They follow a route known as the East Asian-Australasian Flyway, which takes them to Alaska, via the Yellow Sea. From New Zealand they take seven or eight days to cover the 10,000-or-so kilometres to reach large areas of tidal mudflats in China, Taiwan and Korea. They feed here for four to six weeks, before moving on to the Alaskan tundra, where they breed.

In October they return south, and it is these journeys that have catapulted the godwits into the record books.

Long-haul champions

Godwits make the longest non-stop migration of any bird. We only discovered this when satellite trackers got small enough to be used on them.

In 2007, a female known as E7, set the first record: 11,680 kilometres non-stop. With no breaks for food or rest, she flew for more than eight days, over the open Pacific Ocean, from Alaska to New Zealand.

E7's epic migration has since been eclipsed by the 13,560 kilometre non-stop journey made by bird B6 in 2022. B6 was tagged as a juvenile in Alaska and was just 5 months old when it made its first-ever 11-day flight to Tasmania. Scientists do not know how these young birds find their way to New Zealand and Australia on that first flight - they fly in flocks, and perhaps these flocks include an adult guide?

Sleep in birds

If you've ever taken a long-haul flight from New Zealand you've probably experienced sleep deprivation. Now imagine you're a small bird, flapping your wings continuously, unable to land or feed, on a flight that will take anywhere from 8 to 11 days. When and how do you sleep?

How godwits sleep during their epic flights is the focus of a new research project involving 45 godwits from the Motueka sandspit.

This sleep project involves ornithologist Jesse Conklin, from the United States, and Bart Kempenaers, Mihai Valcu and avian sleep expert Niels Rattenborg, all from the Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence, in Germany. …

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The Bounty Islands are tiny in terms of area - just some bits of granite jutting out of the ocean. But they are huge in terms of seabirds. James Frankham joins a team researching the erect-crested penguins who breed in this remote archipelago. Recent counts suggest the penguins of the Bounties are doing fine. But this is not the case on the Antipodes Islands, and the researchers desperately want to know why.

The Bounty Islands jut out of the water like giant granite fins. Steep and sheer, with no greenery in sight. They are covered instead by a mottled white - guano or bird poo from the tens of thousands of penguins and albatrosses that come here to breed.

The least studied penguin

The Bounty Islands is one of two remote, subantarctic island groups home to the erect-crested penguin. Stout and handsome, with bright yellow crests that look like elaborate punk rock hairdos, their remote breeding sites means they've not been studied in depth.

But Dr Thomas Mattern of the Tawaki Project plans to change that.

Good news and bad

Using drones to make photo mosaics of all the Bounty islands, Thomas has counted each penguin breeding pair and arrived at a number that suggests the Bounty Island population of penguins has remained relatively stable since the mid-1990s. Good news.

Not the case for their other breeding sites at the Antipodes Islands, where early evidence suggests a significant decline.

But these island groups are a mere 200 kilometres apart - a hop, skip and a jump in penguin swimming distance. How is one group seemingly doing fine while the other is in trouble?

New Zealand Geographic's James Frankham joins an expedition to these remote and wild islands as the scientists begin to unravel this mystery.

Learn more:
Read the accompanying New Zealand Geographic article by James Frankham , with photography by Richard Robinson. As part of this expedition Claire Concannon also visited the Antipodes Islands to learn how they have fared since mice were eradicated.
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What roles do our ocean ecosystems play in capturing carbon? Kate Evans speaks to iwi Māori working to improve the health of an estuary in the Bay of Plenty, and to scientists studying the fiords of New Zealand's southwest coast. There's potential for huge amounts of carbon to be locked away, if we don't mess it up.

To avert the worst of the climate crisis we need to reduce our emissions. One way is to phase out fossil fuels, to leave forms of carbon like oil and gas locked up in the ground. But we can also look at ways to lock up more carbon, long term. And some options for this are in our oceans.

The champ of champs

Between 6-10 metres of rain falls in Fiordland each year. An incredible amount. It's part of what powers the forest-to-fiord carbon storage pump that makes Fiordland exceptionally good at locking away large amounts of carbon long-term. Something scientists are only beginning to understand.

Return of the wetland

Luckily, National Park status on land and marine protection in part of the sea have meant that Fiordland has remained relatively untouched.

Not so for some of our other carbon-burying ocean ecosystems. Salt marshes and seagrass meadows in estuaries have taken big hits. But Te Whakapū o Waihī, a collective of local iwi and the Bay of Plenty Regional Council, are fighting back.

Listen as Kate Evans learns about Fiordland's secrets, the plans to restore Waihī wetlands and estuary, and what this all means for our blue carbon potential.

Learn more:
Read the accompanying New Zealand Geographic article by Kate Evans , with photography by Richard Robinson. Alison Ballance previously reported on the work of the Cawthron Institute to collect and grow seagrass seeds. Justine Murray joined Professor Kura Paul-Burke out on the Waihī estuary mud flats last year to learn about tohu (signs), nana (seagrass) and tuangi (cockles). Parts of the Southern Ocean also acts as a carbon sink , but there are concerns this might change.
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People and livestock gobble so much fish that the seas soon won't keep up. Is the answer to grow fish on land? Kate Evans meets scientists figuring out the puzzles of how to farm some of New Zealand's iconic ocean creatures.

Many of our fisheries are under pressure. At the same time people are eating more fish. Could farming iconic New Zealand species be the future? And what are the advantages of growing fish on land?

A new lease of life

Ocean Beach used to process lambs, a record of 20 000 in one day, but now it's gullies and troughs run with seawater, not blood. Home to the New Zealand Abalone company and Manaaki Whitebait it's become one the frontiers of New Zealand aquaculture - growing fish indoors.

Pāua puzzles and whitebait mysteries

It's not an easy task. Growing fish on land means taking responsibility for their needs throughout their life cycle. First you must identify those needs, account for them in an indoor setting, and make the whole process as efficient as possible so you can still turn a profit. It takes trial and error, and patience.

Learn more:
Read the accompanying New Zealand Geographic article by Kate Evans , with photography by Richard Robinson. Seaweed is also being farmed in a specialised warehouse space in Tauranga. Recently the green light has been given for an open ocean salmon farm in the Cook Strait
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Kina numbers are exploding on some of our reefs, decimating seaweed habitats. Could this problem be solved by eating them? Kate Evans investigates the potential of kina-nomics.

The kina are out of control. As many as 40 urchins crowd into a single square metre of rock, devoid of other life.

A kina barren is a symptom of an ecosystem out of balance. Could we eat our way to a solution?

Kina zombies

Kina numbers have exploded as we've eaten too many of their predators - like big snapper and crayfish - that usually keep them in check.

The urchins munch through kelp and seaweed, leaving bare rock and little else. The kina themselves end up suffering too - they persist in these zones as zombies, eating little and barely producing any roe.

Luckily, these barrens can be reversed and kelp forests restored when the kina are removed.

Putting kina on the table

Kina-nomics involves taking starving kina off reefs, fattening them up and selling them to an East Asian market.

But how can the kina be made more consistently tasty? And can economic and conservation goals really align?

Listen to the episode to dive under the water with a kina harvester, taste some kina, and untangle whether a commercial harvest of these spiky taonga can really fix kina barrens.

Learn more:
Read the accompanying New Zealand Geographic article by Kate Evans , with photography by Richard Robinson. Check out another effort to restore kelp forests with the Love Rimurimu project in Wellington, profiled in a recent Our Changing World episode . Jesse Mulligan spoke to another researcher studying kina removal in the Marlborough Sounds.
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Crackle, pop, woof, crunch, click. In the ocean, an undersea orchestra is in full swing. Journalist Kate Evans discovers who's playing in it and why, and what happens when human noise drowns out this symphony in the sea.

Symphony in the sea

Journalist Kate Evans and presenter Claire Concannon discover a world of snapping shrimp, singing whales and barking John Dory.

Researchers Professor Craig Radford and Dr Jenni Stanley are uncovering more about the orchestra harmonising under the waves - who's playing in it, and why they are making these sounds.

Plus, what impact is our human noise - like boats - having on ocean creatures?

Learn more:
Read the accompanying New Zealand Geographic article by Kate Evans , with photography by Richard Robinson.
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A collaboration between Our Changing World and New Zealand Geographic, the Voice of Tangaroa series explores the state of our oceans, and the extraordinary variety of life that calls it home.

93% of New Zealand is covered in salt water. 80% of our biodiversity is in our seas. And yet this is the part of our realm we understand the least and treat the worst.

A collaboration between Our Changing World and New Zealand Geographic, the Voice of Tangaroa series explores the state of our oceans, and the extraordinary variety of life that calls it home.

From kina-nomics, to the undersea sound, from growing fish on land, to the debates around our marine reserves - science journalist Kate Evans has been diving into the complexities of how we think about, enjoy, manage and use our oceans, and what this means for the creatures that live in it.

Now, with production help from RNZ's Our Changing World team, and original music composed by Wellington band Grains, you will be able to hear the voices of the characters involved and experience the sounds of our underwater realm.

Voice of Tangaroa is a joint production between RNZ's Our Changing World and New Zealand Geographic.

Reporting for this series is Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ On Air. You can learn more and read the articles for free at www.nzgeo.com/seas

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A group of young New Zealanders and two meteorologists travel to South Georgia Island in the southern Atlantic Ocean to collect weather observations - continuing the scientific legacy of early Antarctic explorers like Shackleton.

Clarification: In this episode there is a discussion about comparing notes about icebergs taken by Shackleton's team aboard the Aurora to that of the current expedition. What this fails to clarify is that the Aurora expedition travelled through the Ross Sea, not the Weddell sea, where ice activity is notably different.

It's home to one of Earth's most spectacular gatherings of wildlife, with millions of penguins, seabirds and seals crowding the shores.

South Georgia, in the far reaches of the Southern Atlantic, is a wild and isolated island. It's also the final resting place of famed Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton.

To commemorate the 100th anniversary of Shackleton's last journey, 22 young New Zealanders travelled with the Antarctic Heritage Trust's 9th Inspiring Explorers Expedition to South Georgia.

In the wake of Shackleton

One hundred years ago, Shackleton's untimely death at the age of 47 marked the end of the 'heroic age' of Antarctic exploration. The period left us inspiring stories of courage and survival - as well as an enduring scientific legacy, which continues to be built upon today.

As part of their expedition to South Georgia, the young New Zealanders continued Antarctic explorers' tradition of meticulous data collection, by recording rare weather observations from this remote and seldom-visited destination.

Accompanied by Kelly Davenport and Peter Fisher, two meteorologists from MetService, the Inspiring Explorers science team conducted regular and comprehensive weather reports using the same equipment, terminology and methods that would have been used in Shackleton's time. But they also brought some state-of-the art weather equipment, which can collect more data than a heroic-era meteorologist could ever have dreamed of.

Lots of data is important for weather and climate science today. Data feeds into global weather models - complex simulations of the planet's atmosphere that assist the near-term prediction of weather patterns worldwide. Data collected from remote locations such as South Georgia is particularly impactful, as it helps us fill in the blanks in the map of Earth's weather.

South Georgia: A barometer for change? …

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An ambitious project to rid the remote Antipodes Island of introduced mice proved successful in 2018. Claire Concannon visits the spectacular subantarctic island to meet the locals - from penguins to megaherbs - and the people studying the wildlife. Plus, we learn about what's at stake in the next island eradication challenge for New Zealand.

Excitement rises on board the expedition yacht Evohe as the largest of the Antipodes Islands appears out of the mist.

These subantarctic islands are wild and remote - some 860km southeast of Rakiura Stewart Island. Their isolation, in a far-flung corner of the South Pacific, means they're some of the most untouched islands in the world.

They're also brimming with wildlife.

A wildlife hotspot

Department of Conservation rangers Jemma Welch and Erin Patterson will soon be landing to meet some of the wildlife and start their task: a whole-island count of the Antipodean albatross. Erin dreams of romping through megaherbs, while Jemma, a self-confessed seabird nerd will be in her element - 21 seabird species breed here.

It's an incredible landscape. Tussock growing in pillars up to two metres tall, pipits and snipe and parakeets roaming, albatrosses and petrels floating overhead, fur seals and elephant seal pups hauled up in the rocky coves.

With great biodiversity comes great responsibility

The Antipodes Islands, like the other subantarctic islands, have their own cultural and social history, alongside their incredible natural history.

In the early 1800s gangs of sealers decimated the fur seal population on these islands. Along the way mice were introduced. Remarkably - and fortunately - rats never established.

But the mice were enough to have a major impact. Their population swelled to huge numbers (an estimated 200,000 across the 21 km2 island). This multitude of mice munched their way through a large portion of the native invertebrates on the island - many of which are endemic, meaning they're not found anywhere else.

This drop in invertebrates had a knock-on effect: it reduced the amount of food available for insect-loving birds like the pipit and snipe. The mice themselves also disrupted burrowing seabirds. And there was another fear of what might be to come as gruesome footage emerged from other islands where mice had developed the disturbing behaviour of eating live albatross chicks as they sat on the nest. …

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How fast - and how completely - could Antarctica's smaller western ice sheet melt in a warming world? An international science team, led by Aotearoa New Zealand, set out to investigate whether two degrees of warming could already be a tipping point for the frozen continent.

Antarctica is losing ice at an accelerating rate, particularly in some parts of West Antarctica.

How did the small and more vulnerable West Antarctic Ice Sheet behave during past periods of natural warming? Geological evidence is sparse, but an ambitious sediment-drilling project aims to change that.

Drilling back in time to explore past periods of warming

SWAIS2C - short for Sensitivity of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet to 2°C - is an international collaboration, co-led by Aotearoa New Zealand. During its first season this summer, the team set up camp close to the grounding line of the Ross Ice Shelf, where the world's largest slab of floating ice is at its thickest. Below more than 580 metres of ice, only about 50 metres of ocean separate the bottom of the ice from the ocean floor.

The team used hot water to thaw a hole through the ice to reach the seafloor where layers of mud and rock have been accumulating for millennia, building up one of Earth's memory banks of environmental conditions at the time they were deposited.

Saving the world's largest ice shelf

The SWAIS2C team successfully retrieved the longest sediment core ever extracted from the remote Siple Coast, which holds clues about the ice sheet's more recent past. Next season, the team hopes to drill deeper and further back in time to the last interglacial period, some 125,000 years ago, when Earth was around 1.5°C warmer than pre-industrial temperatures - similar to the warming we are approaching now.

The goal is to track whether the grounding line of the Ross Ice Shelf retreated or advanced during this and even earlier periods of natural warming, and what that tells us about the risk of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet breaking up partly, or even completely, in the future.

If the floating Ross Ice Shelf were to melt, it would have no impact on sea levels. But the ice shelf acts as a buttress, holding the West Antarctic Ice Sheet in place. If the shelf goes, the ice sheet would likely follow - and the consequence could be 3-5 metres of sea level rise. …

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Allergenic pollen is a big trigger for New Zealand's high rates of hay fever and asthma. But for 35 years, we've had no current data on pollen levels. Until now. Justin Gregory talks to a team who want to change that.

The view is what you notice first.

It's takes time to get up to the roof of the Auckland War Memorial Museum Tamaki Paenga Hera but once you're there, it's worth it. A 360-degree turn takes in all the major sights of central Auckland. If you weren't looking for it, you might not notice a green, medium-sized metal device placed just so to catch the breeze. This device, a clockwork volumetric spore trap, is the key to learning more about pollen levels in this country - a major cause of asthma and hay fever.

New Zealand's first pollen trap in 35 years

Asthma affects approximately one in eight adults and one in five children in New Zealand, with rates higher than those in Australia or the UK. Yet, for the past three decades, the country has operated without a single pollen trap - until now.

Associate professors Stuti Misra and Amy Chan from the University of Auckland co-lead a team operating the country's first pollen trap in 35 years. Since July 2023, the team has been trapping pollen and spores, identifying and counting them. Their mission is to update the data on New Zealand's pollen and understand its correlation with the country's soaring asthma and allergy rates.

Climate change sends pollen rates soaring

Their research is funded for just a year, but good data is already emerging about seasonal variations in pollen. The team already know the number of high pollen count days has increased by 75 percent over the last 30 years, likely due to climate change. This increase not only signifies an earlier onset of the grass season but also a higher volume of pollen in the air - posing a greater threat to those with respiratory issues.

Amy is running a related clinical trial, developing real-time prediction tools and smart devices to avoid asthma attacks. Using individualised data like sleep patterns, breathing rate, weather information, medication use and weather, she hopes to determine what information can most accurately predict an attack and develop tools to warn sufferers.

Listen to the episode to learn more about why pollen levels are rising, what technology is emerging to measure those levels and how smart phones and watches could be key to managing and preventing asthma attacks. …

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Giant kelp is disappearing from Wellington Harbour. Love Rimurimu is aiming to restore lush underwater kelp forests with an ambitious and collaborative replanting effort. Claire Concannon dives in to the wonderful world of seaweeds.

The aquarium room at NIWA is awash with sound. A pump system hums, clicks and splashes as it circulates water through large tanks like the Wellington bucket fountain.

Inside, tiny seaweed fronds tied onto rocks dance in the currents.

Growing kelp

These fronds might be small - a few centimetres at most - but they can grow into lush forests. Giant kelp (Macrocystis pyrifera) starts out in a lab as microscopic spores, before it is coaxed through each phase of its life cycle by staff from the Love Rimurimu project and phycologist Dr Roberta D'Archino.

After growing a few more centimetres, the kelp will be returned to the wild, part of an ambitious effort to restore the seaweed ecosystems of Wellington harbour.

Love Rimurimu

Love Rimurimu began as an educational programme delivered by Mountains to Sea Wellington, says project lead Zoe Studd. Local rangatahi were encouraged to learn more about seaweed, to get into the ocean and have a look around, and to learn about why kelp was disappearing.

But when students from Kura Kaupapa Māori o Ngā Mokopuna suggested that they should be actively growing kelp to plant back out, Love Rimurimu took on a new direction.

Now, the project is piloting plant-outs to help regenerate the giant kelp forests that are so vital to a healthy underwater ecosystem, working with Taranaki Wānui ki Te Upoko o Te Ika, NIWA, Victoria University of Wellington, the kura, and the local community.

Listen to the episode to learn about the stressors impacting kelp, to hear how giant kelp is grown in a lab, and to meet some of the Love Rimurimu team who have been planting out kelp in their blue backyard. …

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In the final instalment of the summer science series, science communication students tackle two controversial topics: medicinal cannabis, and AI consciousness.

In our final instalment of the summer science series, we have two more stories from science communication students.

Each year, science communication students at the University of Otago's Department of Science Communication are tasked with producing a podcast on a controversial science topic.

In this episode, we hear two of those stories - on artificial intelligence and medicinal cannabis - from Marika Ljunberg and Rhys Latton.

The engineer and the ghost

In June 2022, Blake Lemoine, a software engineer at Google's Responsible AI division, decided to go public. For a period of time, he had been talking to his executives about his firm belief that the chatbot they were developing, LaMDA, had gained consciousness. But Lemoine's executives were convinced he was mistaken.

How can we know whether an artificial system is conscious? What should we do if we realise we have created artificial conscious entities? And should we try and create them at all?

According to neuroethicist Dr Michele Farisco, conscious AI is the only way we can make sure that AI is developed safely: by giving it a moral sensibility. But not everyone agrees that this is a good idea.

Listen to the episode to learn more about ethics and artificial consciousness, and explore the question: what's humane for the non-human?

Music credits:
Contemporary New Age Theme 9 by Mac Squier (BMI) CAE/IPI#420010737, publisher Mac Squier Music (BMI) Busy by Lenny Williams (BMI) CAE/IPI#195221668, publisher Harry L. Williams Music Publishing (BMI) Background Info by Lenny Williams (BMI) CAE/IPI#195221668, publisher Harry L. Williams Music Publishing (BMI) Clock Mallets by Lenny Williams (BMI) CAE/IPI#195221668, publisher Harry L. Williams Music Publishing (BMI) Gentle Harp Underscore by Lenny Williams (BMI) CAE/IPI#195221668, publisher Harry L. Williams Music Publishing (BMI)
Medicinal cannabis: the hazy world of evidence and efficacy

Medicinal cannabis is a now legally available treatment option in Aotearoa through your GP, but many doctors are hesitant to prescribe it due to a lack of solid evidence of its efficacy.

One of the reasons cannabis is controversial is that there is no single condition where cannabis is the preferred, first-line treatment option, says Dr Peter Radue from the Department of General Practice and Rural Health at the University of Otago. …

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Should we intervene to prevent hybridisation between an endangered species and its common relative? In this week's summer science episode, two students from the Department of Science Communication at the University of Otago tell stories of science controversy: the conservation conundrum of hybrids, and the relationship between western science and mātauranga Māori.

Each year, science communication students at the University of Otago's Department of Science Communication are tasked with producing a podcast on a controversial science topic. In this episode, we hear two of those stories - on the issue of hybrids in conservation, and on mātauranga Māori - from Janice Huang and Jodie Evans.

How should we manage hybrid species in New Zealand?

Hybridisation is the mixing of genes from different species or subspecies. Throughout history, humans have harnessed this powerful force to create desired crops and domesticated animals.

But in the field of wildlife conservation, hybridisation can threaten some species with extinction.

In New Zealand, one example is the kakī or black stilt, a nationally critical, all-black wader bird that lives in the braided rivers of the Mackenzie basin. Kakī can hybridise with their closest relative, the poaka or pied stilt.

The kakī population, numbering around 156 wild adult birds, is closely managed to prevent hybridisation.

Listen to the episode to hear contrasting opinions on the plight of the kakī and other organisms threatened by hybridisation.

In defence of mana: Mātauranga Māori and science

Mātauranga Māori translates to Māori knowledge. It's a system that evolved before European contact as Māori encountered new climates, geography, flora and fauna in Aotearoa.

Over the past few years its comparison to western science has ignited significant controversy within the scientific community. The debate came to a peak in 2021 when seven University of Auckland professors signed an open letter to the Listener opposing the integration of mātauranga Māori with secondary school science.

Fostering mātauranga Māori is not about replacing science, says Professor Georgina Stewart, who studies the relationships between science, education language and knowledge.

Increasing mana (respect) for the subjects of research - materials, beings or places - will improve Aotearoa's science with better outcomes for all scientists, says Gemella Reynolds-Hatem, a wāhine Māori student who is passionate about her whakapapa and the value it brings to her study.

Listen to the episode to hear Georgina's expert commentary and the lived experiences of Gemella as she navigates academia…

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The summer science fun continues with an episode from RNZ podcast Voices. Meet Gaia Dell'Arriccia, a scientist originally from the south of France who studies the seabirds that live around Auckland's coastlines.

A seabird colony at night is a noisy place. But it's also an incredible experience to have thousands of birds flying around you, says seabird scientist Gaia Dell'Arriccia.

The summer science series continues this week with an episode from Voices, an RNZ podcast that tells the stories of the one-quarter of New Zealanders born overseas.

Host Kadambari Raghukumar meets Gaia at the Ōrākei Basin, where she is monitoring a shag breeding colony.

Listen to hear about Gaia's work studying the seabirds around the Auckland coast and offshore islands, and her journey from the Mediterranean to Aotearoa.

Learn more:
Scientists are also studying the feathers of museum specimens to figure out how Auckland's seabird populations are changing: What feathers can tell us about the past lives of seabirds . Meet another passionate seabird scientist, Edin Whitehead, in For the love of seabirds . Visit one of Auckland's seabird hotspots in our two-part episode on the Noises Islands: Part 1 and Part 2 . Head out onto the streets of Auckland with the petrel patrol in search of crash-landed seabirds.
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Kākā numbers are skyrocketing in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington thanks to conservation efforts. The summer science series continues with a walk through Zealandia to find out why you shouldn't feed these inquisitive parrots.

Our summer science series continues with a story from Samantha Lloyd-Evans, a student from the Centre for Science in Society at Victoria University of Wellington.

Samantha takes us for a walk in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington, where kākā numbers have skyrocketed in recent years, thanks to conservation efforts.

This increase in kākā has led to an increase in human-kākā interactions, as people learn how to live with these large endemic parrots.

For the most part, encounters with these inquisitive birds are positive. But seemingly helpful actions such as feeding kākā can have unintended consequences, says Ellen Irwin, lead conservation ranger at Zealandia Ecosanctuary.

Why feeding kākā is a bad idea

Wellingtonians feeding kākā in their backyards can cause a nutrient imbalance in the diet of kākā chicks, Ellen explains. This can lead to metabolic bone disease and other complications, and the chicks often die in the nest.

There are other risks to bird feeding as well, such as attracting pests or accidentally giving the kākā too many calories, similar to getting a toddler hyped up on sugar.

These risks are why Zealandia and other conservation groups are pushing to educate locals on how to safely interact with native wildlife.

Planting natives in your garden, practising responsible pet ownership, and joining your local trapping group are actions you can take to help native birds like kākā. Ellen also encourages the use of apps like iNaturalist to keep track of the birds seen in Wellington.

Join Ellen for a stroll through the lush ngahere forest of Zealandia while discussing Wellington's booming kākā population and how you can help them.

Learn more:
Kākā have also made a comeback in Õtepoti Dunedin thanks to Orokonui Ecosanctuary. In Wellington, it's not just kākā too: urban bush birds are doing well in the capital, Alison Ballance reported in this 2018 episode . Meet some of the non-bird residents at Zealandia Ecosanctuary with Claire Concannon in this episode from May 2023 .

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The summer science series kicks off with an episode from award-winning podcast Black Sheep, about a backyard inventor called Victor Penny who sparked sensational headlines about death ray inventions in 1935.

In 1935, a series of extraordinary newspaper articles claimed a backyard inventor called Victor Penny was trying to build a death ray for the New Zealand government.

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Welcome to the summer science series from Our Changing World. We're kicking off the holiday season with a science-themed episode from award-winning history podcast Black Sheep.

Victor Penny was a self-taught engineer and inventor who worked with early radio technology - and at a secret government laboratory on Matiu/Somes Island.

Listen to find out the truth - and the science - behind the sensational 'death ray' headlines.

Learn more:

Hear the story of the first radio broadcast in New Zealand in 100 years of radio and the spectrum of light.

Listen to more Black Sheep episodes.

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This week on Our Changing World RNZ podcast producer, and occasional dinosaur correspondent William Ray visits Ngā Taniwha o Rūpapa Dinosaurs of Patagonia, a special exhibition at Te Papa Museum to discover the surprising link between the giant dinosaurs of Patagonia, and prehistoric New Zealand.

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This week on Our Changing World, RNZ podcast producer and occasional dinosaur correspondent William Ray visits Ngā Taniwha o Rūpapa Dinosaurs of Patagonia, a special exhibition at Te Papa Museum, to discover the surprising link between the giant dinosaurs of Patagonia and prehistoric New Zealand.

An ancient giant of Patagonia

One hundred and one million years ago, an astonishingly large animal breathed its last breath on a muddy riverbank in what would eventually become Patagonia in Argentina.

We don't know exactly how it died. Possibly it just got stuck in the mud, a potentially fatal prospect for an animal that weighed as much as eight African elephants.

Its 2.4-metre-long, 600-kilogram femur was eventually unearthed by an Argentinian farm worker, and later inspected by paleontologists from Argentina's Museo Paleontológico Egidio Feruglio. The femur was identified as belonging to a massive long-necked sauropod dinosaur dubbed Patagotitan mayorum, which ranks among the largest animals to ever live on land.

Our Changing World producer William Ray discovers the story of how these enormous animals evolved - and their surprising link to Aotearoa New Zealand.

Special thanks to Te Papa Museum and the Department of Conservation for the soundscape in this episode.

Learn more:

Earlier this year, William reported the story behind another dinosaur exhibit: a pair of Tyrannosaurus rex fossils at Auckland Museum.

For more fossils of ancient giants, check out our episode about the huge penguins that once roamed Aotearoa.

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Off the coast of New Zealand, deep underwater, the seafloor shifts in landslides and slow-motion earthquakes. Claire Concannon meets two researchers investigating geological phenomena that could pose a tsunami risk to Aotearoa New Zealand.

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Underwater landslides: out of sight, but not out of mind

One million years ago something triggered an underwater landslide in the Tasman Sea off the coast of Taranaki. A massive amount of sediment, 32 times the volume of Mount Ruapehu, thundered down a slope.

But if the land slides underwater and there's nobody there to see it, does it have an impact?

Early modelling suggests yes - it's likely to have caused a large tsunami that would have hit the west coast of Aotearoa.

So today, with our populated coastlines and our underwater communication cables, what's the likelihood of it happening again?

That's what GNS senior marine geohazard researcher Dr Suzanne Bull is keen to answer.

Figuring out the where and why

Just like on land, any sloped area under the sea has the potential to slide - but underwater landslides tend to be far more massive.

Understanding what triggers them is tricky, says Suzanne, because you can't easily survey after an event.

For example, in the aftermath of Cyclone Gabrielle more than 140,000 landslides have been documented from on-the-ground reports and aerial imagery, but doing a similar assessment underwater is far more expensive and time consuming.

Earthquakes could be another potential trigger. One natural disaster that woke scientists up to the potential hazard of such landslides was when a 7.0 magnitude earthquake off Papua New Guinea in 1998 resulted in an unexpected tsunami. Investigations indicated that it was caused not by the earthquake itself, but by a large underwater landslide.

Listen to the episode to hear Suzanne explain how she and her colleagues have been investigating a group of large landslides in the Tasman Sea in the hopes of learning more about the potential risks to Aotearoa.

Homing in on the zone

Of course, Aoteaoroa is also at risk from tsunamis generated in the more 'classic' way: large earthquakes occurring underwater.

Off the North Island's East Coast, the Pacific Plate dives under the Australian Plate in an area known as the Hikurangi subduction zone.

Such subduction zones have been responsible for extremely large earthquakes around the Pacific Ring of Fire, says GNS scientist Dr Stuart Henrys, so he and others are keen to understand the Hikurangi area in as much detail as possible. …

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Go behind the scenes at the National Geohazard Monitoring Centre, where a team of analysts are on alert 24/7 for earthquakes, volcanic activity, tsunamis and landslides. What happens when a natural disaster strikes?

It could be the headquarters for a rocket launch, or the control centre for a highly coordinated operation. One wall is full of large monitors, information updating in real time. Cameras, maps of the Pacific, incoming streams of data. A room that never sleeps, that's always on alert.

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24/7 operation

This is the National Geohazard Monitoring Centre (NGMC). Based at GNS Science in Lower Hutt in Wellington, it's part of GeoNet - the programme tasked with New Zealand's geohazard monitoring and response, operated in partnership with Toka Tū Ake EQC, Toitū Te Whenua Land Information New Zealand and GNS Science

Kimberly Presow has worked here for five years, since this new 24/7 version of the centre opened in 2018. She's a shift leader now, responsible for one of the teams of geohazard analysts that constantly scan the monitors for any changes that might indicate a significant geohazard event.

Four main geohazards

While keeping an eye out for earthquakes is the bread and butter of the NGMC, they are also on alert for three other geohazards: landslides, tsunamis and volcanic activity. A network of seismometers, underwater pressure sensors, coastal gauges, cameras and international monitoring stations constantly feed data into this room, where the geohazard analysts are wary to any changes in the patterns.

A pager will sound for anything greater than a magnitude six earthquake, but the geohazard analysts will be on alert for any change they see in the incoming data. And once something is identified, they will work quickly to assess and update the information, sometimes correcting errors in the automatic system - which may, for example, see one earthquake when there were two.

Coordinating the response

When a large event occurs the NGMC goes into response mode.

The analysts alert civil defence, and the on-call duty scientist will be looped in to give their assessment. From there, depending on the scale of the hazard, an entire panel of expert scientists might be assembled. In the meantime, the incoming data is being constantly assessed and updated, to fine-tune the information about the location, scale and repercussions of the event, to further inform civil defence. …

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Mohua are bright yellow forest birds - but despite their eye-catching plumage, they can be tricky to spot flitting high in the forest canopy. Claire Concannon visits the Makarora mohua population, where a team of conservationists and scientists are testing acoustic machine learning to identify individual birds.

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A 'rat plague' has come to the beech forest near Makarora, and Jo Tilson is worried for the little population of mohua who call this area home.

The 'bush canary'

In the 1800s mohua were one of the most abundant forest birds, found in different forest types. Their bright yellow heads (hence their common English name, yellowhead) and yellow-feathered bellies led them to being dubbed the 'bush canary' by European settlers.

But - and you know this story - forest clearance and introduced predators reduced their population and range significantly. These little songbird insectivores nest in holes in trees, and so are vulnerable to stoats and ship rats. Some mohua have been transferred to predator-free offshore islands where they are doing well, but on mainland New Zealand there remains just a few small, scattered populations living in South Island beech forest.

One of these can be found just north of Makarora, near Cameron Flat, in the silver beech forest that lines the west side of the Makarora River as it runs alongside State Highway 6 through the Haast Pass.

It takes a village

Jo works as a biodiversity coordinator for Southern Lakes Sanctuary, focused on species and predator monitoring for the Mātukituki and Makarora hubs. Southern Lakes Sanctuary is essentially an umbrella organisation that has wrapped around existing conservation groups to enable a regionwide effort.

In this area, that includes a highly motivated group of 60 or so trapping volunteers from the Central Otago Lakes Branch of Forest & Bird. With the first trap lines established in 1998, the group has been "sustainably harvesting predators," as volunteer Mo Turnbull puts it, for more than 25 years, to help the local mohua population hold on.

But it's not about dead rats, Mo says, it's about live mohua. So how are they doing?

Cryptic in the canopy

Transects run by the Department of Conservation and the sanctuary across the years indicate that the mohua numbers in the area are declining. But without a complete census it's hard to have the full picture of what's going on. …

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Varroa mite parasites cause major problems for honey bees - and beekeepers. Now, New Zealand researchers are investigating a new type of RNA-based treatment that could make treating varroa mite infestations easier, as well as better for the bees and the environment.

Varroa destructor mites are bad news for honey bees.

Not only do they attack the bees by chewing on a vital organ called the fat body, but they also introduce problematic viruses to the hive - such as deformed wing virus, which does exactly what it says on the tin.

Beekeepers worldwide must treat for varroa mites several times a year just to keep their numbers in check. They mostly use pesticides, which can have damaging effects on the bees and environment. The mites are also beginning to develop resistance to pesticides, but a new treatment method may be just on the horizon.

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RNA interference

This is what PhD candidates Zoe Smeele and Rose McGruddy have been researching. Under the supervision of Professor Phil Lester, they've been working with US biotechnology company Greenlight Biosciences to investigate how their new treatment for varroa mites works.

The treatment is based on a technique called RNA interference. An interesting bio-hack that researchers have figured out is how they turn a natural virus defence mechanism in the cell against one of the mite's vital proteins.

Greenlight Biosciences were able to identify a working treatment that reduced mite numbers in field trials in the states but turned to the New Zealand researchers for help in uncovering exactly how it works.

Mini-hive experiments

In one of the research labs in the School of Biological Sciences at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington, Zoe and Rose have been conducting mini-hive experiments. Their participants are larval stage bees taken from the hives on the roof of the building, infected with varroa mites.

The nurse bees that feed the larvae are given plastic pouches full of sugar water with the RNA interference treatment inside. What the team has discovered is that instead of killing the mites, what the treatment does is severely impact the mites' reproduction.

But what about real beehives?

Initial field trials with New Zealand beekeepers have showed some promise, but also highlighted that there's much to learn in terms of the dosage per bee. A next round of trials is just getting underway, and this will also include RFID tagging of bees to monitor any impacts at the individual bee level. …

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

New video series: A turning point in the fight to preserve Aotearoa's natural environment.

If you enjoy listening to Our Changing World, we reckon that you might be keen on a new video series just released on RNZ.

The Turning Point is about the new generation of kaitiaki across Aotearoa taking on the challenge of protecting and restoring our natural environment, paving the way to a more hopeful future.

Each of the six episodes follows one person, giving a glimpse into the communities they work with and telling the story of their journey into conservation. They look at how they got to where they are now, what their day-to-day jobs look like, the challenges facing the affected species and the impact of their work.

Caring for penguins, growing native plants, battling wilding pines, protecting kōkako, helping migratory fish and bridging the gap between science and mātauranga Māori - these young conservationists are making a positive change for te taiao.

Watch the The Turning Point on the RNZ website, or on the RNZ YouTube channel.

To learn more:

The Turning Point focuses on conservation roles funded under the Covid-19 Jobs for Nature fund. Our Changing World has told several stories of projects also supported by this fund - such as creating a home for inanga outside Hokitika and replanting near Pūnakaiki.

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Claire Concannon meets GERALDINE, the Gigantic and Extremely Radical Atmosphere-Lacking Device for Interesting and Novel Experimentation. Plus, a team of scientists and engineers designing plasma rocket thrusters for space travel with super-conducting magnets.

GERALDINE loiters at one end of the giant lab space. Metal, shiny, round and very large, she's been purposely built to help scientists and engineers test plasma rocket thrusters in the vacuum environment of space.

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New frontiers

As senior scientist Dr Ben Mallett explains, GERALDINE's full name is the Gigantic and Extremely Radical Atmosphere-Lacking Device for Interesting and Novel Experimentation. And you can't really get more novel than the current project he is working on. It's the Paihau - Robinson Research Institute's first foray into space, and they are looking to test a brand-new superconducting magnet and flux pump design to see if it can make the plasma rockets more efficient.

Plasma rockets

Actually, the full and correct name is 'applied-field magneto plasma dynamic thrusters'. These kinds of rockets don't produce a huge amount of force - for some, the thrust they produce is equal to the weight of a piece of paper on your hand. However, they are extremely efficient. In the frictionless vacuum of space, over time, they can help spacecrafts build up great speeds and travel long distances.

Plasma is charged gas, and in these kinds of electric space thruster, electromagnets are used to direct the plasma so that it fires out the back and pushes the rocket forward. But the weight and power requirements of current magnets used in these thrusters is a barrier.

Enter Paihau - Robinson, known for their work with high-temperature superconducting magnets. Superconducting materials conduct electrical current with no resistance, so they can create very powerful electro-magnets when a current is passed through them. They do come with baggage though - a cryocooler to keep the magnet at -200oC and a flux pump to send current through the magnet to power it up. All of these parts need to be carefully designed and then tested.

But space is tricky....

There's a lot to think about when making equipment to be used in space. There's the shaking of everything as it gets launched through the atmosphere and then there's the lack of atmosphere once it's up there - the vacuum, the radiation, the different temperature effects - all have to be considered. …

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A Moriori musician, an ethnomusicologist and the Hokotehi Moriori Trust are part of a team helping to revitalise Moriori culture with 3D-printed replicas of traditional bone flutes from Rēkohu the Chatham Islands. Claire Concannon finds out more about the Moriori, music and manawa project.

A born and bred Chatham Islander, from the largest island, Rēkohu, musician Ajay Peni says the wildness, the ocean, the ruralness all feeds into his music. Through his nan's side Ajay can trace his hokopapa, his genealogy, back to indigenous Moriori who first settled these islands.

Today he is playing his part in the revitalisation of Moriori culture, by bringing traditional Moriori songs, rongo, into contemporary times.

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Rongo

Through collaboration with the Hokotehi Moriori Trust Ajay has already been part of the creation of two collections of rongo - Hokotehi Me Rongo - featuring Ta Rē Moriori lyrics long ago recorded by Alexander Shand and Hirawanu Tapu.

He is currently working on another collection of rongo with the Trust, and alongside this, creating music for the Moriori, music and manawa project based at the University of Otago, with fellow musician Alistair Fraser.

Two remaining Moriori bone flutes

Dr Jennifer Cattermole is one of the co-leads of this project. An ethnomusicologist, she studies music in its social and cultural contexts. After scouring different sources of information, two remaining Moriori bone flutes were identified: one in the Canterbury Museum in Christchurch, the other in the Bishop Museum in Hawai'i.

But careful preservation of these mīheke oro (treasured musical instruments) in museums means that no one can touch them with their hands or play them. So how can they be used as part of the Moriori cultural revitalisation that has been happening for many years now?

Enter modern technology.

Careful CT scanning the two flutes meant that the tiny, nuanced details of their carving could be captured in digital form, and then translated into a 3D print design. As well as allowing experimentation of different materials to recreate the look, feel and sound of the flutes, the 3D-printed versions were used to guide a carving wānanga, where copies of the flute were made from what was likely the original material - albatross or hopo bone.

Multi-sensory exhibition …

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In the last week, Hurricane Otis hit southern Mexico with little warning, and Cyclone Lola set a record for the earliest category five cyclone in the southern hemisphere. Climate change is making work tricky for weather forecasters. What might be in store for our upcoming El Niño summer?

Last week in southern Mexico Hurricane Otis made landfall near the city of Acapulco as a category five hurricane. With wind speeds estimated at around 266 kph (165 mph) it caused huge amounts of damage and loss of life.

In part because there was so little warning.

Just 24 hours beforehand the US National Hurricane Centre modelling of then tropical storm Otis predicted max winds of about 112 kph (70 mph).

But the rapid and unexpected intensification of Otis caught everyone off guard, including the weather models.

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Is the forecasting game changing?

"You can never really attribute, you know, one single weather event to climate change. It's very difficult to do that," says NIWA meteorologist Tristan Meyers. But, he says, different recent extreme weather events in New Zealand do have the "fingerprints of climate change" all over them.

As part of his job, Tristan works on a number of different forecasts: from on demand 'now-casts' to look a few hours ahead - maybe to help Fire and Emergency New Zealand deal with spreading fires - through to seasonal forecasts across a few months to help those dependent on the weather for their livelihoods prepare for what's to come.

But the impacts of climate change are making his job trickier.

El Niño is here

There's a large patch of ocean in the Eastern Pacific along the equator where sea surface temperatures are monitored closely. Think of it as extending out from Ecuador in South America, into the middle of the Pacific.

When this patch of ocean is warmer than normal, and the air above the ocean responds, that's when the El Niño Southern Oscillation is in effect. Wind and ocean currents change, and when these changes spread out across the Pacific, it generally means more westerly winds for Aotearoa.

With El Niño officially declared as an important climate driver for this summer season, we can look at past seasons to forecast what might be coming: westerly winds that bring rain to the west coast but a drier outlook for the east of the country.

Overlapping climate drivers …

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Could your burger one day come with a plankton patty? Alison Ballance visits the Cawthron Institute's collection of more than 750 different strains of microalgae, where scientists are investigating these teeny organisms for new food ingredients and powerful painkillers.

Imagine a future where your burger comes with a plankton patty.

Or where you are prepped for a hospital operation with an algal anaesthetic.

If Cawthron Institute researchers have their way, this microalgae-themed future for food and pharmaceuticals could be just around the corner.

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The Cawthron Institute research is based on a culture collection of microalgae, also known as phytoplankton. The collection goes back more than three decades, and now contains more than 750 isolates or different strains of microalgae, collected from New Zealand, Antarctica and the Pacific. It includes marine and freshwater species.

The collection differs from Aotearoa's other significant national biological collections - think herbariums containing dried specimens of plants, for example - in that it is a living collection.

Curator Sarah Challenger has the job of keeping the collection alive and healthy. The microalgae require light of the right wavelengths, nutrients, and a suitable temperature to survive. Every three weeks Sarah carefully replaces the water and nutrients in the small plastic pottles in which the living samples are maintained.

Sarah says it is a much easier job to care for some of the freshwater microalgae, which can survive cryopreservation - or freezing - to very low temperatures and be brought back to life later as needed.

The Cawthron Institute's Chief Science Officer, Dr Cath McLeod, says the collection began with a monitoring programme for toxic phytoplankton blooms in the Marlborough Sounds that were having an impact on shellfish farms. The collection grew as the researchers realised that phytoplankton was a vast untapped resource which could potentially provide ingredients for food and pharmaceutical products.

Developing new food and drugs

Andy Selwood and Dr Matt Miller are currently screening about a hundred of the different strains to identify which ones might produce useful bioactive compounds. They grow each strain in a series of one-litre bioreactors, exposed to slightly different combinations of light and nutrients. This allows the researchers to identify optimum growth conditions and work out which strains are producing what kinds of bioactives and in what quantities. …

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In the ever-shifting streams and channels of a braided river, creatures must adapt to change. Claire Concannon joins a researcher on the spectacular Cass River near Tekapo for a spot of electrofishing and bird counting - part of a project seeking to understand this complex ecosystem and the threats it faces.

It's a blue-sky spring day in the Canterbury high country. The sun beams and the wind is whipping down the wide gravel plains of the braided Cass River.

To the left is the Gamack Range. To the right, the vivid turquoise of Lake Tekapo. Black-fronted terns call out as they drift above the weaving and winding water channels, on the hunt for fish to deliver as gifts as part of their courtship.

And standing in the middle of one of the streams, water up to her knees and a heart-shaped metal wand stuck into the fast-flowing water, is University of Canterbury PhD candidate Holly Harris. She is electrofishing.

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Changing channels

Braided rivers are rare worldwide. In New Zealand they are classed as naturally rare habitats, but we are lucky in comparison to other countries. There are a few in the south of the North Island, but most can be found in Te Waipounamu.

If you've flown over the South Island you'll have seen them in all their glory - silver snaking braids of water in wide gravel floodplains making their way from the Southern Alps to the ocean.

They are complex and dynamic ecosystems. There are springs that feed side streams, and water can flow through the gravel under the surface to pop up in other places. As the seasons change, floods wash out main braids and give life to side braids. The gravel shifts and the channels can change course. It's an intricate dance that the creatures that live here have learned to adapt to.

Life and death

As in every ecosystem, in braided rivers there is an interconnected web of things eating other things. The freshwater invertebrates eat the algae that grows on settled river stones. The fish eat the invertebrates. The birds eat the fish, lizards and terrestrial invertebrates.

As part of Holly's PhD she wants to better understand the elaborate interplay between life in the river: how it is interconnected, and how it can move and adapt to the changing channels. She uses isotopic analysis of different species to investigate this. …

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Giant penguins weighing up to 150 kilograms once roamed the waters around New Zealand. Claire Concannon speaks to a palaeontologist and learns about penguin evolution, extinct species that dwarfed today's emperors, and why Aotearoa is such a great place to study these birds that 'fly' through the water.

Evolution spins out some crazy designs.

Bats that can hunt in the dark using echolocation, spiders that use water surface tension to detect prey, and rugby-ball-shaped birds who look like they are wearing formal attire as they dive through the water to hunt.

Marching penguins, dancing penguins, surfing penguins. These birds have found their niche in both the oceans, and on our movie screens.

What made penguins the beloved birds that they are today?

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From flying in air, to flying in water

Our story begins 62 million years ago. "I recognise that that's just a number," says Dr Daniel Thomas, of Massey University. "But to put that into context - at 66 million years, that is when the non-avian dinosaurs disappeared from the planet."

Once a dinosaur-obsessed kid, Daniel continues to follow his passion, now with a focus on one of the descendants of avian dinosaurs. He studies penguin fossils and their evolution across time.

The earliest penguin fossils come from right here in Aotearoa, from North Canterbury. Dated to a mere four million years after the dinosaur extinction event - a blink of the eye in geological time - these bones indicate that early proto-penguins had already committed to life in water, although they may not have been very efficient divers.

Birds that fly in the air - like the once-ancestor of the penguin - have hollow bones. But these early fossil bones found in Canterbury are dense, better suited to diving under water.

Across the next 6-13 million years, the wings of these birds underwent significant changes. No longer were they able to tuck back in after a stroke, instead the joints would stiffen so that they effectively became fixed paddles, driven by the shoulder.

The time of the giants

Penguin evolution is constrained by many factors: the difficulty of 'flying' in dense viscous water, the issue of constant heat loss, the need to also go on land to breed. But that didn't stop evolution from testing all the penguin size and shape possibilities within these constraints. And early on in penguin evolution, something interesting happened - penguins get very large. …

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What happens to our muscles as we age? Claire Concannon finds out why muscles get weaker as we get older, and speaks with a researcher investigating why Olympic athletes live up to three years longer than the general population. Claire also meets a scientist studying what happens to muscles in children with cerebral palsy, seeking clues that could help.

'Use it or lose it!' is the rallying cry to exercise. But what happens to our muscles as we grow and as we age?

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In this episode, Claire Concannon explores these questions.

With World Cerebral Palsy Day fast approaching, she speaks to a researcher looking at muscle development in young patients.

Plus, evidence overseas shows that former Olympic athletes live up to three years longer than the general population. A New Zealand study is investigating how former athletes' lifelong commitment to exercise is good for their bodies.

Cerebral palsy and muscle development

Cerebral palsy is the most common cause of physical disability for children in Aotearoa. It results when impairment in the developing brain either during pregnancy or shortly after birth leads to problems with movement and posture.

Dr Geoffrey Handsfield of the musculoskeletal modelling group at the Auckland Bioengineering Institute wants to understand what is happening in the muscles of children with cerebral palsy across time.

To do this, he is working with Mātai Medical Institute in Tairāwhiti on a longitudinal MRI study of children both with and without cerebral palsy.

He hopes to figure out how muscle development is impeded in those with cerebral palsy and perhaps find some clues for how to help.

Muscle changes as we age

At the other end of the life spectrum, Dr Lara Vlietstra of the School of Physical Education, Sports and Exercise Science at the University of Otago is interested in what happens to our muscles as we age.

There are physiological changes that occur - while we only lose a little bit of muscle mass, the muscle fibres themselves change.

Over time, many of our Type 2, or fast-twitch, muscle fibres (related to power and speed) change to Type 1, or slow-twitch.

On top of this, communication between the nerves and the muscles gets impeded.

Reduced physical activity, along with these physiological changes, can result in loss of function in older adults, and susceptibility to falls.

Lifelong commitment to exercise

These changes are both preventable and treatable, says Lara, with - you guessed it - exercise…

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The southern New Zealand dotterel is a true underdog of the bird world, with just 126 individuals at last population estimate. Claire Concannon tags along with a team of researchers attaching trackers to the birds. Their mission is to figure out where the dotterels go to breed, so these "plump little tomatoes" can be protected from introduced predators.

As the tide closes in on Awarua Bay in Southland, a collection of wading birds gathers closer together, pecking away at the last stretches of sandbar and seagrass.

Grey plovers, knots, bar-tailed godwits, banded dotterels, oystercatchers, and a single Terek sandpiper, nicknamed Derek.

And among the crowd, a little flock of southern New Zealand dotterels clusters together - at a quick count: 54 birds. Just under half of the total population.

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Declining numbers

"Since 2010 the dotterel population has more than halved," says Daniel Cocker, a member of the Department of Conservation (DOC) Southern New Zealand Dotterel recovery team. The annual count in April of this year revealed that the population has dropped to just 126 birds.

Plump and handsome - especially when sporting their red-chested breeding plumage - these little birds would once have been widely distributed and bred on mountaintops around Southland. Now, they are restricted to breeding on some of the peaks of Rakiura Stewart Island.

The breeding site secret

It's during this breeding phase that they are most vulnerable to predation, and the main culprit is feral cats. Daniel, and the rest of the recovery team based on Rakiura, are focused on predator control in the areas that these birds are known to breed. But they only know the breeding locations for about 20 percent of the birds - most of them go to mountaintops unknown.

That's why DOC staff and researchers from the University of Otago have teamed up to attach satellite tags to some of the southern New Zealand dotterels in Awarua Bay. When not breeding, the birds flock here, and in a few other bays on Rakiura, feeding up on the bugs in the sand.

Master's student Oscar Thomas is hoping that by adding these tags to the birds, the team will be able to discover where they go.

Listen to the episode to get to know this Southland underdog, hear the story about how Daniel first got involved in their conservation at age 14 and learn how the satellite tags are fitted to the birds.

To learn more: …

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Broccoli and chocolate. Prawns and vanilla. According to food pairing theory, these culinary matches should go together as well as macaroni and cheese, or peanut butter and jam. But do they really? Senior producer Justin Gregory meets two researchers digging into the sensory science of food.

Hungry? How does a nice meal of milk chocolate and asparagus sound?

Or maybe prawns and vanilla? Kiwifruit and gorgonzola cheese?

If scientific theories about the science of food pairing are right, these should be delicious flavour combinations.

Maybe they are. Maybe they aren't... but there's certainly more to it than we currently know.

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Food pairing theory works on a pretty simple chemical basis: foods that share more flavour compounds (mostly smell) will taste better together than foods that don't.

For example, ham and eggs. Macaroni and cheese. Perhaps less obviously, caviar and white chocolate.

But there's a big geographic and cultural hole in this theory.

"Research has shown that there is this tendency for western cuisines to comprise recipes that are combining different ingredients that have shared these flavour compounds', says Dr Rebecca Jelley, a research fellow in the School of Chemical Science at the University of Auckland.

"But in fact, the complete opposite was seen for east Asian cuisines."

And there's another element this theory might be overlooking.

"They seem to have forgotten about the sensory aspects of food," says Dr Danaé Larsen, who is a lecturer in the School of Chemical Science.

By sensory, she means the texture, sound and sight of food and it is this area that the two have begun a research project hoping to find some better answers.

They want to know if adding sensory stimulation while chewing texturally complex foods adds enjoyment and a feeling of fullness after eating.

To test this, the pair are running a series of experiments using New Zealand foods with shared aromatic compounds. Danaé is in charge of the sensory aspects of the study while Rebecca analyses the chemical compounds of the foods used.

The hope is to one day have a local food pairing network backed by solid science - which Central Otago Pinot Noir goes best with which local cheese, for example.

There's also a possibility of positively affecting the way people feel about healthy foods they may not enjoy eating. One day, there might even be a healthier chocolate bar!

To learn more:…

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The Great Ireland vs. New Zealand Bird-off returns for part 2 to decide once and for all which island nation boasts the best birds. Our avian aficionados return to argue their case in front of judge Claire Concannon. Who will fly to victory? Listen to find out - plus learn about the crazy life cycle of the cuckoo and the weird feathers of the kiwi, among many fascinating facts and tales from the world of birds.

Aotearoa New Zealand may call itself the land of birds, but numbers-wise, the title doesn't stack up.

There are just over 200 bird species breeding here in Aotearoa. But Ireland has more than twice as many at over 450 species.

Then why the title? Is it because birds here fill interesting ecological niches that elsewhere are taken up by various mammals? Is it because many of the birds are endemic - found nowhere else on earth?

Or is it simply birding bluster?

There's only one way to find out.

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Welcome back to the Great Ireland versus New Zealand Bird-off. A sporting contest against Ireland taking place this spring that New Zealand actually has a chance of winning.

Last week's opening salvos saw the white-crested sea eagle defeat the moa - on account of not being extinct - and the kea outsmart the northern raven.

Tītipounamu was gifted a win over the goldcrest, in a move Ireland might yet regret, and we finished up with a mighty showdown - Sirocco the kākāpō versus the swallow, herald of summer.

In a controversial decision prompted by childhood memories, the swallow was given the win, to leave everything tied up at two all.

And so, we are back. To sort this out once and for all. We've brought back our two avian aficionados who have answered their nation's calls.

Ireland - Ricky Whelan

Biodiversity officer at Offaly County Council, and co-host of the In Your Nature podcast with Niall Hatch and Birdwatch Ireland, Ricky has been working with birds and in conservation for over 15 years. He is a walking encyclopaedia of bird facts and conservation concerns - and can also bring the smack talk.

If you haven't had your fill of Ricky bird facts after listening to the episode you can find some more on X (Twitter) or Instagram.

New Zealand - Jamie McAulay …

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Welcome to the great Ireland vs New Zealand bird-off. Two islands, a world apart - but which country has the better birds? Two bird nerds champion their nation's birds across four categories in an avian battle for the ages, with Claire Concannon judging the best of the feathered best. Which country will emerge victorious? Listen to find out.

Two islands, a world apart.

One sits at the edge of the Atlantic, cosy and close with its European neighbours. One spun out into the wild Pacific, with 2,000 kilometres of ocean between it and Australia.

New Zealand and (some of) Ireland were once both part of the super continent Gondwana before they went very separate ways.

Cue millions of years of plate movements, of ice ages and warming, of mass extinctions and evolution.

Which leads us to the most important question of our time: which nation ended up the richer, the weirder, the better off for birds?

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Welcome to the Great Ireland versus New Zealand Bird-Off. Undoubtedly the most important contest between these two nations likely to happen any time soon.

In a unique and unknowable competition format and scoring system, representatives from each nation will put forward candidate birds for each category to be judged by presenter Claire Concannon.

Let's meet the representatives.

Ireland - Ricky Whelan

Hailing from the very centre of the country, Ricky is the biodiversity officer at Offaly County Council, and has been working as a conservationist and ornithologist for over 15 years. He likes long walks in the bog, topping up his bird feeders and extolling the virtues of crows to whoever will listen to him.

Ricky also co-hosts the In Your Nature podcast with Niall Hatch and Birdwatch Ireland. Ask him your corvid questions on X (Twitter) or Instagram.

New Zealand - Jamie McAulay

A conservation biologist based in Te Anau, Jamie loves big mountains, deep fiords and lots of rain. Oh, and birds. He really likes birds. Out on the front lines of conservation, Jamie's got tales of cuddling kiwi, catching tītipounamu in the snow, and crazy kea antics.

Jamie posts about his research and conservation work on Instagram and you can learn about his research on alpine pests on YouTube.

The match-ups

Ireland and New Zealand birds will be put head-to-head to compete for each category. Which bird is the smartest - the northern raven or the mischievous kea? The biggest? The smallest? Which is the most connected bird that brings their nation on to the global stage?

Points will be awarded; a winner will be crowned. …

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We've probably all experienced a little bit of tinnitus, or ringing in the ears, at some stage in our lives. But for some people this phantom sound in their brain can be loud, and permanent, and completely debilitating. Claire Concannon speaks to a group of scientists at the University of Auckland who've been researching ways to help for years, and have developed a digital therapy with promising trial results.

Imagine the whistle of a kettle boiling, turned up to full blast, permanently on.

In your head.

How would it affect your mood? Your attention and focus?

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"It's difficult to describe but it just has such an impact on every facet of your life. You know, your sleeping habits, your mental health, your relationships with other people."

Emily Lane was born with a hearing disability and has had tinnitus on and off all her life. But in 2006 it turned up permanently, and it was loud. "It's like a chorus of cicadas living permanently on full blast inside my head."

Many of us will experience a form of tinnitus at some stage in our lives, what Professor Grant Searchfield terms 'nightclub tinnitus'. After a loud night out, we might wake in the morning with a ringing or buzzing in our ears, but it's likely to fade after a few hours.

Head of Audiology at the University of Auckland, Grant became interested in tinnitus when, as a practising audiologist, he didn't have any answers for patients who came to him for help.

Since then, he has been investigating how to help chronic tinnitus sufferers - people who have experienced this phantom sound for more than six months, and whose lives are significantly impacted by it. And one thing has become very clear - this is a condition that varies widely from person to person, therefore the treatment must also vary.

And it's not just the sound that varies, but also the person's response to the sound, and to treatment. This idea underpins the design of the digital therapeutic the team have developed to help tinnitus sufferers. Users get an app on their phone that allows them to select what they need - whether it's nature soundscapes to help the person relax, complex sounds to help them get relief from their tinnitus, or active sound-based games to help retrain the brain.

The team ran a trial using a prototype of this digital therapy and found that, after twelve weeks of use, 65% of patients showed a clinically meaningful change in how badly their tinnitus impacted their lives. This was compared to 43% in the other group, which was given a popular sound therapy app…

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Dr Kate Thomas has exercise on the brain. As an exercise physiologist, she researches how exercise and fasting can change the energy sources our brain uses. And as an ultramarathon runner, she chases that runner's high on gruelling mountain races.

Dr Kate Thomas is a self-described "exercise evangelist". An exercise physiologist, she spends her time researching the impacts exercise has on the body.

But she also practises what she preaches.

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Based at the University of Otago, Kate is investigating what energy sources the brain uses when you put the body under stress due to exercise and/or fasting. While glucose is the preferred energy source for the brain, it can switch things up if glucose is depleted, and this opens different metabolic pathways and products.

"As we age our brain's ability to use glucose declines and that's even more the case in neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's," Kate explains.

"What is important is that the brain can actually use other fuels. And some of these for example are ketone bodies produced during fasting and lactate produced during high intensity exercise.

"One of the theories and what we're trying to explore in this study is whether if we provide the brain with alternative substrates, how it chooses to use those and what that does for the brain's environment. We think that by switching the brain away from using glucose as its main fuel to one of those other substrates, ketone bodies or lactate, that that triggers a bunch of pathways in the brain that help promote neuroplasticity, cognitive function and general resilience to stress."

In particular, Kate is trying to figure out what combination of fasting and exercise might trigger release of a protein called BDNF - brain-derived neurotrophic factor. BDNF plays a role in preserving existing nerve cells and encouraging the growth of new ones. Our levels of BDNF decrease naturally as we age, and in some chronic neurological conditions such as Parkinson's disease.

Dr Kate Thomas monitors data during an exercise experiment.

Study participants are asked to do a series of four trials - the hardest of which involves a three-hour cycle and a three day fast - while Kate monitors effort, blood glucose, products of metabolism and cognitive ability. In this mechanistic study, Kate is "pulling the levers" as she terms it, to figure out which conditions promote greater production of BDNF. …

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How can swaying buildings help diagnose breast cancer? Katy Gosset meets a team of engineers taking inspiration from earthquake engineering to design a new, cost-effective device to help detect breast cancer. Listen to find out how the device works, and how it could help more women get tested sooner.

Every year, more than 3,000 people are diagnosed with breast cancer, according to the Cancer Society.

Eligible women aged between 45 and 69 can get free mammograms, but younger women must decide whether to fund the test themselves.

Researchers might have found a cost-effective way to screen for breast cancer earlier than we do now. Their inspiration? Earthquake engineering.

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"When you're looking at the motion of buildings, you can identify the underlying ground tissue properties," says Dr Jessica Fitzjohn from the University of Canterbury. "By looking at those vibrations, you can know what the soil properties are underneath."

So, why not apply that same concept to breast tissue?

The team have developed a low-cost tool that applies a small vibration and analyses the resulting surface motion. Cancerous tissue is around 4-10 times stiffer than healthy tissue.

The hope is that this device will give more New Zealand women early access to breast screening.

Senior producer Katy Gosset pays a visit to the research team to find out more.

To learn more:

Listen to other episodes from the Our Changing World catalogue on treating and detecting cancer, including this 2022 episode on new cancer immunotherapies and this 2021 episode on medical detection dogs trained to sniff out cancer.

Katy Gosset previously spoke to Professor Geoff Chase about his work with student engineer Francis Pooke on designing a new device that helps tracheostomy efficiency.

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

This year marks the 75th anniversary of the rediscovery of the takahē. Claire Concannon sits down with former Our Changing World presenter and takahē superfan Alison Ballance to chat about her new book, Takahē: Bird of Dreams. Plus, we replay Alison's 2018 episode marking the 70th anniversary of the momentous rediscovery, and discuss what's happened in takahē conservation since.

On 20 November 1948, Dr Geoffrey Orbell and three friends headed into a hidden valley in Fiordland's Murchison Mountains with a dream in mind: to find the thought-to-be-extinct takahē.

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When he and the group returned victorious, it made headlines around the world.

November 2023 will mark the 75th anniversary of this rediscovery. So, what's happened in the time since?

Someone who has been following the fortunes of the takahē closely is former Our Changing World producer and presenter, natural history book author, and lover of birds, Alison Ballance.

In November 2018 she joined the celebrations of the 70th anniversary, which involved the release of two takahē into Takahē Valley, the place where they were rediscovered, with family members of the original party who found them.

Alison has just released her latest book: Takahē - Bird of Dreams.

She sits down with Claire Concannon to talk about writing the book, her experiences of seeing takahē in the wild, and how the takahē have fared in the five years since the last celebration.

Listen to hear the recent interview with Alison Ballance, and a replay of the 2018 episode she produced.

To learn more:

Alison also spoke to Kim Hill about the rediscovery and recovery of the takahē.

Turnaround in takahē's fortunes covers the inital release of takahē into Kahurangi National Park in 2018.

Looking for more bird conservation stories? Listen to the Voice of the Kākāpō series - produced by Alison Ballance, all about the rollercoaster ride of the 2019 kākāpō breeding season.

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

Every year, tens to hundreds of seabirds fall out of the sky across Auckland city. Disoriented by the bright lights, Cook's petrels crash-land and collide with buildings - but a dedicated group of volunteers hit the pavement to rescue them. Join us on 'Petrel Patrol' and go behind the scenes at a bird hospital, where squid smoothies and bath time help the seabirds find their wings again.

The concrete jungle of inner-city Auckland is no place for a seabird.

But that's where many Cook's petrels, or tītī, end up every year: crash-landed in urban areas after becoming discombobulated by the bright city lights.

Luckily, the Petrel Patrol is on hand to rescue lost seabirds.

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Ariel Heswall, a PhD candidate at the University of Auckland, is the brains behind the volunteer Petrel Patrol, which hits the pavement on early mornings across a few weeks in Autumn to search for grounded seabirds. She was inspired to start the patrol after seeing hundreds of Cook's petrels come into the Birdcare Aotearoa hospital as patients.

Cook's petrels - or "Cookies", as Ariel affectionately calls them - once lived on mountaintops across Aotearoa. But now, they are restricted to three offshore islands. One population lives in the south, on Whenua Hou Codfish Island off the coast of Rakiura. The other lives in the Hauraki Gulf, with most breeding on Hauturu-o-toi Little Barrier Island and a few more on Aotea Great Barrier Island.

The Hauraki Gulf Cook's petrels forage for food in the Tasman Sea, which means they have to fly across the Auckland isthmus to find a feed. With city lights creating disorienting light pollution, this journey is perilous - especially for young fledglings making the trip for the first time. It's these inexperienced birds that often fall victim to the lights - or even collide with buildings - and end up at Birdcare Aotearoa.

Join us as we tag along on a Petrel Patrol, and then visit Birdcare Aotearoa to meet recovering Cook's petrels and learn about what it takes to rehabilitate seabirds from wildlife rehabilitation expert Lynn Miller. Plus, Ariel explains her research into why light pollution affects seabirds like Cook's petrels.

To learn more:

Ariel has started the Protect our Petrels website which includes info on how to safely rescue a grounded seabird.

We have lots of seabird-themed episodes in our back-catalogue, including this one from 2022 on the Karioi Project helping ōi grey-faced petrels near Whāingaroa Raglan, and this interview with seabird scientist Edin Whitehead on seabirds of northern New Zealand.

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

Are all snowflakes really unique? What makes some snow better for skiing? And what's the difference between snow and hail? Join Alison Ballance and Katy Gosset as they hit the slopes of Mt Ruapehu and discover a science wonderland of snow.

You've probably heard the poetic fact that every single snowflake is unique.

This might be true on a molecular level, but doesn't quite pan out for macro snowflake shapes, Alison Ballance and Katy Gosset discover in this episode of 'The science of...'.

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Alison and Katy trace the journey of a snowflake from its inception high in the atmosphere to its fate on Aotearoa's mountaintops, and discover why snow is not just important for skiers and snowboarders.

Join us as Alison and Katy hit the slopes of Ruapehu to dive into the fascinating science of snow.

To learn more:

Visit the original episode webpage for The science of snow.

Discover more "cool" science in Physics on ice and Glaciers as barometers of climate change.

Listen to this episode about using historic weather records and machine learning to predict future weather.

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

Nuclear fusion is a holy grail for researchers seeking clean energy. This week we head to the south of France with ABC science journalist Carl Smith in this episode from the Strange Frontiers series. Here, a multi-billion-dollar collaboration between several countries called ITER is trying to make industrial-scale nuclear fusion a reality.

What if we could create bountiful supplies of energy with near-zero carbon emissions? That's the promise of nuclear fusion - a reaction where atoms merge.

Fusion is the reaction happening at the centre of the sun and other stars. Unlike nuclear fission or splitting atoms, it doesn't produce radioactive waste.

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Last year, scientists announced a fusion "breakthrough", with one experiment producing more energy than had been put in - generating just enough energy to boil 60 kettles.

Many challenges remain on the journey to achieve large-scale nuclear fusion. At the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) in the south of France, a team from several countries are working to secure the "holy grail" of energy at industrial scale.

Carl Smith from the ABC goes behind the scenes at ITER for this episode of the series Strange Frontiers. Listen to hear more about the potential of nuclear fusion and the multi-billion-dollar quest to make it a reality.

Strange Frontiers is a seven-part series taking you to remarkable, hard-to-reach and off-limits places where scientists work. Listen to all episodes on the ABC website.

To learn more:

Read Carl's article about ITER on the ABC News website.

Listen to an interview with one researcher behind the "breakthrough" on Nine to Noon.

This Our Changing World episode features Kiwi research aiming to improve solar panels.

The RNZ podcast Elemental features episodes on elements relevant to nuclear energy (both fusion and fission) including Hydrogen, Plutonium and Thorium.

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

Tauranga-based producer Justine Murray dons some gumboots and meets some teeny-tiny cockles as she joins a team surveying the Waihi estuary. Professor Kura Paul-Burke is weaving mātauranga Māori and western science together to address questions that local iwi have about the health of the estuary, and what can be done to improve it.

There are many signs in the taiao (natural world) if you look close enough. Like when the tōrea (oystercatcher) strikes at low tide looking for food; these birds love shellfish, crabs and tuangi (cockles). But how long does it stay? And what is the relationship of the bird to what's around it?

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That's just a glimpse into the tohu surveys (observations) that Professor Kura Paul-Burke and her research team are carrying out as part of the research project 'Tāwharautia te wahapū o Waihi - Protect the Waihi estuary' supported by Our Land Our Water and led by Te Rūnanga o Ngāti Whakahemo.

For generations this estuary was used as a mahinga kai (food gathering place) but over the years the water quality has declined, due to increased pathogens and sedimentation, much of which comes from four neighbouring water canals. Kura, the country's first wāhine Māori Professor of Marine Science and Aquaculture, based at the University of Waikato, argues the straighter the canals are, the more likely pollutants or paruparu makes its way into the estuary.

As the water quality declines, the loss of species also means the loss of mātauranga Māori. Kura and her team draw on both western science and Māori knowledge systems in this study.

Integral to the harbour is the nana (seagrass) meadows. Nana is a kōhanga (nursery) and a foraging habitat for young snapper and trevally, but it is decreasing at an alarming rate.

In 1943 nana meadows were plentiful in the Pukehina district. Today there are just two discrete beds left - this impacts the feeding habits and survival rates of tuangi (cockles).

Kura and her team are on a mission to assess the health of the estuary and figure out what needs to be done. Producer Justine Murray joins the team at Pukehina to learn more.

To learn more

Justine Murray spoke to another of Kura's PhD students last year about the resilience of crayfish in Tauranga Harbour.

Listen to 'Collaborating to move freshwater species' to learn about weaving mātauranga Māori and western science together for conservation translocations.

Hear more about using these two knowledge systems together in 'A bridge between science and mātauranga Māori' and 'The science of Matariki'…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

Have you ever had a catchy tune you just can't get out of your head? Most of us can imagine sounds - music, voices, environmental noise - to varying degrees. But about 1% of people can't imagine sounds at all. This lack of auditory imagery is called anauralia. Claire Concannon meets a team of researchers investigating this newly described phenomenon, and speaks to a musician who experiences anauralia.

If I asked you to play your favourite song in your head, how clear would it be? Would you hear all the different instruments - the tone of them, the timbre? Or would it be just a basic melody, as if played from a distance?

Or is this something you just cannot do at all?

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Most people, over 99% of us, can imagine sounds in our head - environmental sounds, music and our own voices. Some of us imagine better than others. But there is a small proportion of people, estimated at just less than 1%, who can't imagine sounds.

This lack of 'auditory imagery' has recently been given a name by psychologist Professor Tony Lambert, based at the University of Auckland, and his colleague. They call it anauralia.

Tony first became intrigued by the idea after reading about people who lack visual imagery. This phenomenon was called aphantasia by Professor Adam Zeman in 2015, whose work was widely reported.

But from Tony's point of view, while aphantasia was getting its day in the sun, a lack of auditory imagery had gone largely unstudied. So, he decided to change that.

The key questions that Tony and his team now want to answer centre around how anauraliacs (people who experience anauralia) process and store information in the present, create and recall memories, and imagine the future. Previous research has linked these particular functions of the brain to auditory imagery, so what strategies do people lacking imagined sound use instead?

PhD candidates Zoé Schelp and Gage Quigley-Tump have used results from the New Zealand Attitudes and Values Survey to start investigating. The survey included questions asking about auditory and visual imagery. Zoé recruited some of those who reported experiencing anauralia to her study of working memory. She uses a simple memory test to challenge both anauraliacs and control participants, and then interviews them about the different strategies they employ. …

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

In September 2022, two New Zealand patients became the first in the world to participate in a phase 1 clinical trial testing a new therapy for a rare neurogenetic condition called myotonic dystrophy. Claire Concannon learns about the trial, and how a new Neurogenetic Registry and Biobank covering 70 conditions is helping to connect New Zealand patients with international research.

Our genes control part of our makeup. And we know that variations in different genes can impact whether we are more susceptible to get certain diseases - cancer say, or dementia. This can include multiple different genes and can be tricky to untangle.

But for some people cause and effect are more of a straight line. For neurogenetic conditions, a variation in just one gene results in neurological symptoms - affecting the brain, nervous system or muscles.

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Neurogenetic conditions are the focus of Associate Professor Richard Roxburgh's research at the Neurogenetics Research Clinic at the University of Auckland. Also a practicing neurologist at Auckland hospital, he has seen hundreds of patients that suffer from these diseases.

Being able to give a diagnosis can be a big help for patients, he says. Because these are genetic based and passed down from generation to generation, patients will often have witnessed other family members experience the same symptoms and disease progression.

'Neurogenetic conditions' is an umbrella term covering conditions like Huntington's disease, different muscular dystrophies, Friedreich's ataxia, spinal muscular atrophy - the list is long. They are rare conditions, each with their own underlying genetic cause and range of symptoms and severity.

Their rarity makes them difficult to study, and to develop effective therapies for. Which is why, Miriam Rodrigues, acting on the request of patients, set up a New Zealand Neurogenetic Registry. Now called Pūnaha Io, the registry, and associated biobank, covers around 70 different conditions, with approximately 1300 registered patients out of an estimated 4000 in the country.

It was this registry, and associated research, that attracted the attention of a US based company Dyne Therapeutics. Dyne were scouting for suitable locations for a phase 1 clinical trial into their therapy aimed at helping those with a condition called myotonic dystrophy.

Two New Zealand patients were the first people in the world to take part in this trial in September 2022. …

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

Here in Aotearoa, it's the winter solstice: the shortest day (and longest night) of the year. We're marking the occasion with an episode celebrating the starry night sky. Podcaster Max Balloch looks up in search of stories told through constellations, and finds that light pollution is smudging out the stars for many New Zealanders. What can be done to restore our connection with the night sky?

For humans all over the planet, and all across time, the night sky has been a catalyst for storytelling. Different cultures paint the dark with their own stories of the stars, about where they are, who they are, and what they believe.

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This isn't some ancient, forgotten art - it's alive, and it's organic. Victoria Campbell, a passionate educator of Mātauraka Māori and Māori astronomy says the most special star to her is Rehua.

"Rehua in particular is associated with knowledge. And as an educator, I find a really special connection there to be able to bring forth kōrero, or dialogue and discussion, about knowledge for the benefit of us going forward as a nation, and as a population," she says.

Rehua is part of the constellation known in some cultures - including Greek mythology - as Scorpius. In Polynesian cultures, it's known as Māui's fishhook. And in Java, Indonesia, it's referred to as "the brooded swan". These are three interpretations (among many) of the same pattern of stars, illustrating the connection between stars and storytelling that transcends culture, time, and space.

New Zealand has some of the most pristine skies on the planet. Those living in rural areas bathe in the lights of the universe and embrace the warm hug of the Milky Way that streams across the sky.

But for most people on Earth, the sky is being smudged out.

Light pollution, which occurs when excess light is reflected into the sky at night, is experienced by 83% of Earth's population. This yellow haze outshines the stars and melts the Milky Way out of view.

While many New Zealanders enjoy darkness, over half are left blinded by the light. Fifty-six percent of kiwis cannot see the Milky Way in the night sky, due to the light pollution leaking out from urban environments.

But it can be stopped, and we could have dark skies once again. Steve Butler, an award-winning DarkSky advocate, is one of the many kiwis fighting for the night.

"We sell ourselves as, you know, 100% pure. So, my view, is that to achieve 100% pure we should be looking after the night as well, so that's 50% of our environment," he says. …

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

Rats giggle. Dogs wag their tail. How do other animals express joy? You can't ask them, so researchers have to find other sneaky ways of figuring out animal emotions. Professor Ximena Nelson is studying how curious and intelligent kea, New Zealand's alpine parrots, might show positive feeling.

Some rats giggle when their bellies are tickled. Researchers have known it for some time now, though it requires special microphones to detect this - they giggle at an ultrasonic frequency.

It's just one way that one animal expresses joy. How might others be doing it?

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Negative emotions are a bit easier to study, says Professor Ximena Nelson from the University of Canterbury. The animal might yelp or flinch, retract a limb, or shy away. But positive emotions are trickier. You can't ask the animal, and you can't look for those telltale signs in humans - a smile or crinkle around the eye, especially if the animal has completely different facial muscles, as is the case for kea.

It's a multi-step puzzle. Starting with: is the animal even likely to experience positive emotions? For kea, Ximena had her own anecdotal observations of them playing in the mountains as the first clues that they can be joyful. From there, she and her team investigated the different calls that kea made, and then analysed the different behaviours of the kea as they made these calls, to try to discern their functions.

This proved extremely difficult, but one call did seem to be strongly linked to play - the warble call, or kea laughter as it is called. To confirm this, the next step was a series of playback experiments. Design a kea-proof speaker, bring it high into Arthur's Pass, and then investigate what the kea do when you play different calls and other sounds to them.

Turns out the warble call is like a play contagion. Kea were more likely to start playing after hearing the call, and to warble themselves.

Ximena is now focused on trying to determine if this is a reflection of positive emotion such as joy, and if so, does it influence the bird's decision making, as it does in humans? This trickier second step will have to be done using captive kea that can be trained to take part in a glass half-empty or half-full experiment.

Listen to the episode to learn about the how and the why of studying positive emotions in animals.

To learn more:

Listen to this episode from Alison Ballance, who visited Ximena's spider lab to learn about jumping spiders

Listen to 'Kea get a helping hand' which covers citizen science efforts to help curious kea

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

There's nothing like a good birthday party, especially one filled with games and fun activities. The Auckland Bioengineering Institute might have missed their 20th birthday due to Covid-19, but they were determined to throw a good ole shindig. Claire Concannon visits to find out what they've been up to for the past 20 years, and what the plan is for the next two decades.

How do you throw a good birthday party?

Have a nice big venue. Invite everyone. Fill it with music, lights, balloons, holographic displays of the respiratory system, computers you can control using your mind, interactive surgery games, giant inflatable colons.

Okay, so maybe the Auckland Bioengineering Institute's 20th birthday party is a little bit different to the usual.

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"The ABI turned 20 at the start of Covid. We wanted to celebrate - of course we couldn't, so now we are putting on this event and inviting the public in," says Professor Merryn Tawhai, deputy director of the Auckland Bioengineering Institute (ABI).

Merryn explains that, although celebrations were pushed back a few years, they wanted to mark their two decades of research with style. So, they filled The Cloud on Auckland's waterfront with displays, games and activities based on the work they do from 9 -14* May and opened it up to everyone.

The 'Bioengineering the future' event was a celebration of what the institute has been working on, and what it is working towards. Their research is wide ranging - from fundamental research into how the body works, to developing instruments to improve diagnosis and treatment of disease, to biomimetics and biorobotics.

One idea that they've been working on for some time is the concept of a 'digital twin'. This would be an online model of a person, created using real data and tuned to exactly how that person's body works. This means you would be able to 'test' things in advance on this digital twin. For example, testing if certain drugs work to help an individual, or not.

To create a digital twin - which models how all the body's systems work together - you need fundamental understanding across molecular, cellular, tissue, organ and system scales.

Working to understand the heart at cellular, tissue and organ level is Dr JC Han. JC is focused on how the heart muscle contracts to pump blood around the body, and specifically how much energy it uses to do this. Working with rat animal models and a specific instrument developed at the ABI, JC wants to understand the efficiency of the heart muscle system, and what happens when things go wrong…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

In Aotearoa we talk a lot about mammalian predators attacking our native wildlife, but other insidious pests are quietly taking over - weedy plants. Tackling these weeds using chemical and mechanical means only gets us so far, so researchers and conservationists also look towards the plants' natural enemies to help. Claire Concannon visits a group of Manaaki Whenua - Landcare Research scientists investigating biocontrol agents to assist in the fight.

Aotearoa is in the weeds.

There are around 2300 species of native New Zealand plants, but an estimated 25000-30000 species of plants from overseas.

And many of them have gone rogue.

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Without their natural predators, which co-evolved with them to keep them in check, some of these plants have escaped out of our houses and gardens.

The worst of weeds grow rapidly, spread voraciously and smother and kill native plants. Traditional chemical or mechanical control methods - spraying herbicides or pulling out the weeds - are expensive, time consuming and short-lived. So, what else have we got in the toolbox?

One option is biological control, or biocontrol for short. This involves finding a natural enemy of the weed from its host country to keep it in check. Some insects, mites and plant pathogens have evolved to be extremely plant specific, and these are the agents that Dr Angela Bownes is keen to recruit.

Angela is a senior researcher in weed biocontrol at Manaaki Whenua - Landcare Research. Based on their research campus in Lincoln, she works closely with fellow senior research Dr Ronny Groenteman to investigate different agents that might be helpful in the battle against weeds.

The research they do is to aid the National Biocontrol Collective - a consortium of regional councils, unitary authorities, and the Department of Conservation. The National Biocontrol Collective funds the applied weed biocontrol research that takes place at Manaaki Whenua and has worked with them to develop a weed prioritisation tool to build a hit list of the top weeds to target.

At the Lincoln campus the researchers work in the specially designed invertebrate containment facility to put the biocontrol agents through their paces. Arnaud Cartier manages the facility, ensuring all the restrictions are in place so that no agent escapes before it is approved for release.

Listen to the episode in which Claire Concannon visits the facility to learn more about biocontrol agents, how researchers ensure they are safe to release, and the hurdles an agent must clear before approval

To learn more: …

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

This week we're digging up the dirt on the surprising complexity of soil. From top-notch compost to dung beetles to kauri dieback, join us on a fascinating tour of the world beneath our feet with presenters at the Wild Dunedin Festival of Nature.

Professor Amanda Black is a big picture thinker. She likes the idea that we are just tiny dots in a vast universe. Little surprise then that her science career led her to studying soil, one of the most complex and varied ecosystems there is.

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Amanda is the director of the Bioprotection Aotearoa Centre of Research Excellence. Formerly known as the Bio-Protection Research Centre, it was re-funded in July 2021 with a new approach in mind for how to tackle the tricky job of protecting New Zealand's productive landscapes.

Her own research has led her from investigating how movement between landscapes affects the kauri dieback pathogen, to re-establishing land-sea connections in the hopes of increasing soil resilience to this disease.

Based at Lincoln University, Amanda was one of the visiting speakers to the 2023 Wild Dunedin Festival of Nature. In its eighth year, the theme for this year's festival was whenua. More than 120 events across ten days celebrated the land and soils.

As every other year, the festival began with the 7 x 7 Wild Talks event. Seven speakers are given seven minutes to talk about their chosen topic. University of Otago PhD candidate Emma Curtin used her time to talk about the insect she studies: dung beetles. These beetles are a relatively new arrival to Aotearoa, and Emma is investigating the benefits they might deliver for farmers.

Another visiting speaker was Jim O'Gorman, known as the Dirt Doctor. Across composting workshops and talks, Jim shared his knowledge about how to create healthy, productive soils.

Listen to the episode to hear more about Bioprotection Aotearoa, Amanda's research work, and about dung beetles and composting!

To learn more:

Our Changing World has extensively covered kauri dieback disease.

Jim O'Gorman previously featured on Country Life.

The connection between seabirds and the land is something the team at Auckland War Memorial Museum is also investigating in the Noises Islands in the Hauraki Gulf.

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

Claire Concannon meets the latest addition to the Zealandia ecosanctuary family - toitoi, or common bully. Zealandia CEO Dr Danielle Shanahan explains why these little fish will be an important part of the freshwater ecosystem, and what their ambitious 100 year plans are to restore the mouri or lifeforce of the entire Kaiwharawhara catchment.

The native birds are loud and proud at Te Māra-a-Tāne, Zealandia.

They flit amongst the canopy, call from the branches, preen on their perches, and even stroll across the paths.

But today we look past the manu, and instead focus on the humble freshwater fauna living their quiet lives amongst their boisterous feathered brethren.

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Most of Zealandia's freshwater areas are in fact manmade. The Karori upper and lower dams, completed in 1908 and 1878, were in use as drinking water reservoirs until the 1990s, when they were decommissioned due to earthquake risk.

Now part of the fenced ecosanctuary, the team at Zealandia have taken on the task of restoring some of the native wildlife that once would have been present in this catchment.

The Kaiwharawhara stream is born at the top of the sanctuary, collects in the dammed upper reservoir, feeds down through a man-made wetland area to the lower reservoir and then winds its way through the western suburbs and down the Ngaio Gorge, finishing its journey at Wellington Harbour beside the ferry terminal. So, an incredibly modified, urban landscape.

To restore this valley to a hint of its former glory will take a lot of work. But CEO of Zealandia, Dr Danielle Shanahan, remains undaunted: "This is a 100-year vision of restoring the mouri or lifeforce of this absolutely incredible catchment." This collaborative project - Kia mouriora te Kaiwharawhara, Sanctuary to sea - will involve dealing with historic landfills within the catchment, providing fish passage for native ika to be able to move upstream, and advocating to ensure future developments are freshwater friendly.

For Danielle, it must start at home. She and the Zealandia team have been working hard to restore the upper reservoir (now called Roto Māhanga), the lower reservoir (referred to as Roto Kawau after the shags that hang out there), and the wetland area in between.

The most recent addition is toitoi, the common bully, to Roto Māhanga. These are cute speckled brown fish that are an important part of another freshwater resident's lifecycle. Kākahi, or freshwater mussels, sneeze out their larvae which then attach to the gills of fish like toitoi in order to disperse. …

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details