Science Media Centre

The authors of a report reconstructing the history of New Zealand’s fisheries catch – and finding it out of step with official figures – have responded to to some of the criticisms levelled at their research. You can read earlier expert commentary on the report collected by the SMC and a response from the Ministry […]

Updated: Response from MPI added A new study suggests that New Zealand’s total fisheries catch since 1950 is 2.7 times higher than officially reported. Between 1950 and 2013, 24.7 million tonnes of fish went unreported, compared to the 15.3 million that was officially reported to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, the international research led […]

Nearly five years after the ship Rena ran aground on Otaiti (Astrolabe Reef) and caused the worst oil spill in New Zealand history, a newly-published series of papers explores the lessons learned. In a new special issue of the New Zealand Journal of Marine and Freshwater Research, guest editors Chris Battershill, Conrad Pilditch, Philip Ross, […]

New research tracking the rapid decline and slow recovery of New Zealand’s southern right whale population has been widely covered in the media. The study, published this week in the journal Open Science, combined records from historic whaling logbooks and new genetic data to estimate changes in the the whale population over the last two […]

Relentless whaling decimated New Zealand’s southern right whale population to just a fraction of pre-whaling numbers by the start of last century, finds a new study. An international team of researchers combined historical records from whaling logbooks with modern genetic data to determine that around 30,000 southern right whales swam in New Zealand’s waters before […]

The wreck of the Rena container ship, its equipment and contents will remain on the Astrolabe Reef where it was grounded in 2011, following the decision of an independent panel commissioned by the Bay of Plenty Regional Council, released last week. In May 2014, the owners of the wreck made an application to the Council […]

By 2050 it will be almost impossible to find a seabird that hasn’t eaten plastic, predicts a new Australian study. The research, published in the journal PNAS, assessed how widespread the threat of plastic is for the world’s seabirds, including albatrosses, shearwaters and penguins. Based on analysis of published studies since the early 1960s, the […]

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The Hauraki Gulf is suffering from extensive environmental degradation due to a variety of factors, according to a report released this week. The report was produced  by The Hauraki Gulf Forum – a joint committee of the Auckland and Waikato councils, government departments and tangata whenua- which reports every three years on the state of […]

The first-ever global Census of Marine Life will officially conclude today at a news conference in London, after a decade of marine exploration. Image credit: Russ Hopcroft – Univ. of Alaska Fairbanks & CoML In one of the largest scientific collaborations ever conducted, more than 2,700 Census scientists from 80 countries spent over 9,000 days […]