One from the archives! By the 1990s Chatham Island tūī had all but disappeared from the main island. Slightly different to their mainland counterparts, these songbirds had survived on nearby Pitt and Rangatira islands. So a local conservation group decided to try bring them back. In this episode from 2010, Alison Ballance joins the ‘tūī team’ tasked with moving 40 birds from Rangatira island back to the main island.

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In this episode:

00:00 – 02:30 Introduction and background info
02:30 – 12:14 Catching tūī on Rangatira Island

12:15 – 12:24 Team has caught 40 birds

12:25 – 24:46 Moving the birds to main Chatham Island

24:47 – 25:55 Update on the birds…

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Smoke explosions. Fire tornadoes. Burning couches. It all happens in the fire lab: a purpose-built facility where researchers can safely set stuff on fire and study how it burns, for science. New Zealand experiences 4,500 wildfires every year, with the risk ramping up due to climate change. We visit the fire lab to watch a large gorse bush go up in flames and learn how this helps us prepare for future wildfires.

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In this episode:

01:54–09:39 – Watching a gorse bush burn in the fire lab
10:45–12:43 – Burning couches, smoke explosions and fire tornadoes
12:44–19:08 – Mini burn experiments and how research is preparing for wildfires of the future

19:08–23:32 – Kate's experience as a wildland firefighter in Canada…

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How do you go about dissecting the world’s rarest whale? In December 2024, images from a concrete room in Mosgiel, just south of Dunedin, spread around the world as a team of people spent a week doing a scientific dissection on a spade-toothed whale that had washed up five months before. Claire Concannon joins them to find out what’s involved, what they have learned, and how the arrangements between local iwi and visiting scientists enabled knowledge sharing.

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For nearly 30 years, researchers have been banding black petrel fledglings before they make their maiden migration to Ecuador. Only a handful of birds have ever come back. RNZ’s In Depth reporter Kate Newton travels to Aotea-Great Barrier Island to meet the birds, and the dedicated team trying to figure out the mystery of where they go.

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Learn more:

• Kate Newton wrote about the black petrel study in February.
• The previous Our Changing World episode referred to was from when Alison Ballance visited Aotea in 2015.
• Light pollution can discombobulate seabirds. Ellen Rykers tagged along with Auckland’s petrel patrol one morning in 2023. This group keep an eye out for crash-landed birds in the CBD.
• The Karioi project are determined to help the grey-faced petrel, or ōi, to return to their area, to improve the health of the forest.

Guests:

• Biz Bell, Wildlife Management International
• Cam Maclean, Wildlife Management International
• Maria Dussler, Victoria University of Wellington
• Dr Jamie Darby, University College Cork and University of Auckland

Further information:

• Presented paper from the researchers about interactions between black petrels and long line fisheries.
• DOC black petrel factsheet
• Black petrel monitoring reports.

Kate Newton’s travel to Aotea Great Barrier Island to report on this story was funded by WWF New Zealand (the World WideFund for Nature).

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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:

• Read the article that accompanies this episode: Studying Fiordland's iconic black corals
• 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. …

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