Basketball-sized alien bryozoan could threaten native fish habitat
Showcasing New Zealand’s stunning rocky reefs
The ocean’s own ‘tuatara’
Skeletons reveal New Zealand’s rich sponge biodiversity
Should marine biosecurity surveillance consider zooplankton invaders?
On safari for rare seaweeds in Northland
What effects do different land-uses have on the biodiversity of our lowland springs?
NIWA scientist Dennis Gordon with two of the alien bryozoans.
Scallop fishers in Golden Bay have been reporting large, brittle colonies of an unidentified bryozoan clogging their dredges. The species, which can grow to the size of a basketball, was first thought to be the endemic ‘cornflakes coral’ (Hippomenella vellicata) that forms similar colonies off nearby Separation Point.
Thirty authors contributed to the writing of this book, including many NIWA staff.
NIWA scientists Neil Andrew and Malcolm Francis discuss The Living Reef with the Minister of Fisheries.
From the vertical walls and caves of the Poor Knights Islands to the unlimited visibility and bizarre life forms under the sea ice of Antarctica, our coastal waters support an astounding array of marine organisms.
Gelidium allanii growing on mussels on a low intertidal reef.
Gelidium longipes
Red seaweeds belonging to the genus Gelidium are well studied around the world because they contain the commercially valuable polysaccharide agar. Agar is essential for many pharmaceutical, microbiological, and biotechnology applications, and is also used widely in the food industry.
World supplies of agar are completely dependent on harvesting it from certain species of red algae, which make it naturally as part of their cell walls.
NIWA is investigating new uses for New Zealand’s huge diversity of sponges, including their potential use in a range of biotechnological, cosmetic, and nutraceutical applications. Here we describe the various parts that make up the skeletons of different sponges. This information is essential in selecting those sponge species with potential uses.
Sponges are often the first invertebrates you see when diving in coastal New Zealand waters or peering under ledges on the rocky shore.
Spring habitats are at the interface of three very distinct ecosystems – groundwaters, surface waters, and land – and the diversity of organisms we find in them often reflects this interaction. For example, we often find multiple species of amphipods in single spring habitats, ranging from darkly pigmented surface-stream forms (top) to unpigmented and eyeless groundwater forms (bottom).
Springs often go unnoticed, yet they are everywhere, and form an important part of lowland landscapes wherever groundwater comes to the surface.
Tortanus dextrilobatus.
Asian planktonic copepod crustaceans have invaded coastal embayments of North and South America. It may be only a matter of time before they reach New Zealand waters.
Recent overseas studies suggest that alien zooplankton species may be less benign than previously thought.
New Zealand is known to have many non-indigenous benthic marine species and more are being discovered, for example, during the current Ministry of Fisheries port and harbour surveys.
Pleroma aotea
A species of ‘rock’ sponge previously thought to be extinct, and known only from fossils found at the Kakanui river mouth in North Otago, has been found living between about 400 and 900 m on seamounts off northern New Zealand.
The link between the fossils of Pleroma aotea, a tan rock sponge with a distinct flattened spherical shape, and the living species was made by NIWA scientist Michelle Kelly, Daphne Lee from the University of Otago, and John Buckeridge from Auckland University of Technology.
About 35 million years ago P.
