An international team of marine scientists returns to the Chatham Islands next week hoping to fit satellite tags on up to 13 great white sharks. The tags will allow the scientists to track the sharks' movements for up to nine months.
A NIWA scientist has used sophisticated sonar technology to reveal a ghost-like image of the Mikhail Lermontov lying in its watery grave in the Marlborough Sounds.
A major collaborative effort involving French and New Zealand researchers will be delving in mud beneath the seafloor this month, looking for clues about past and future climate change and its various effects on the seafloor.
Scientists from NIWA are diving in Waitemata Harbour to establish precisely how far an invasive sea squirt, known as the clubbed tunicate (or Styela clava), has spread.
Large areas of the ocean, such as the north Tasman and Mediterranean Seas, are low in nutrients with only limited growth of phytoplankton, the microscopic plant cells at the base of the food chain.
NIWA’s smaller research vessel, Kaharoa, leaves Wellington tomorrow (Thursday 21 April) on a 2-month voyage to deploy high-tech 'Argo' floats all the way to Hawaii and back.
Already, the crew of Kaharoa have deployed more Argo floats (141 so far) than any other vessel in the world. By the end of this trip, they will have deployed over 200 floats and clocked up over 40,000 nautical miles on Argo missions. That is almost the equivalent of sailing to the UK and back twice. (A round trip to the UK is approximately 24,000 nautical miles.)
New Zealand and American scientists have joined forces to explore some of the world’s most active undersea volcanoes along the Kermadec Arc, northeast of the Bay of Plenty.
Sustainable development of the coasts & oceans will be the focus of a new National Centre formed by the National Institute for Water & Atmospheric Research (NIWA).
The Centre will be launched today (24 November) on board NIWA’s deepwater research vessel, Tangaroa.
“Science has much to offer in helping guide exploration, management, and protection of coastal and marine resources,” says NIWA’s chief executive, Dr Rick Pridmore.
Go to the east coast of the North Island, and the climate will be about 1.2 degrees Celsius warmer, on average, than at the same latitude on the west coast.
The reason: subtropical water brought across the Tasman Sea on an ocean current known as the Tasman Front. It’s an extension of the East Australian Current – the playground of surfing sea turtles in the movie, Finding Nemo.
The NIWA vessel, Kaharoa, is setting sail on a 90-day voyage to deploy high-tech floats between New Zealand and Peru.
Kaharoa will carry 84 floats, which is the largest number ever deployed in a single voyage. Each float is worth about $20,000, making the total worth over $1.6 million.
The floats can help scientists measure global warming, predict the strength of tropical cyclones, and even get a better fix on the path of toxic algal blooms.
NIWA’s research vessel Tangaroa leaves Wellington tomorrow tonight for the Southern Ocean on one of New Zealand’s largest oceanographic research surveys. The 30 scientists on board, from 17 organisations in 6 countries, will study how the ocean controls climate through the uptake and release of crucial greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide.
A New Zealand research vessel will set sail from Wellington Harbour this Sunday bound for Chile as part of a major international project to understand and predict the phenomena influencing the world’s climate.
Two rare New Zealand seaweeds have been discovered in Northland, and they could have exciting commercial applications for the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries.
Scientists thought they had seen the last of a drifter buoy lost during an experiment in the Southern Ocean in 1999. But to their amazement, the buoy has turned up halfway around the world in the Falkland Islands – albeit looking a little worse for wear.
The NIWA research vessel Tangaroa, which rescued British rower Jim Shekhdar from the waters of the Southern Ocean earlier this week, had just finished mapping the shipping lanes of Foveaux Strait.
