Science Centres: Aquatic Biodiversity and Biosecurity

NIWA scientist Alastair Suren with students from the Fijian Institute of Technology.

NIWA is developing a simple-to-use kit to enable people in the Pacific to assess the health of streams.

The kit (‘PacSHMAK’) is based on NIWA’s Stream Health Monitoring Assessment Kit (SHMAK) used by farming and community groups in New Zealand. The project is funded by the NZ Agency for International Development (NZAid).

One of the positive spin-offs so far has been the most comprehensive freshwater biological survey ever conducted in Fiji. NIWA scientists taught students from the Fijian Institute of Technology how to identify freshwater invertebrates, collect them, and survey their habitat. The students surveyed about 160 streams on Fiji’s main islands and collected a diverse range of animals. NIWA staff will use the data to help them produce PacSHMAK. The students, meanwhile, will be able to carry out commercial environmental monitoring work in Fiji in the future.