They’ve been here 300 million years. They grow on rock, or in deserts, or underwater, or on dead animals—and they can survive ...

Last week, scientists and kaitiaki set to work to necropsy the rarest whale ever discovered—a spade-toothed beaked whale that washed up at the mouth of the Taieri River, south of Dunedin.

We learned a lot from last week’s reader survey. Mostly we were reminded that the things that are important to us are important to our readers as well.

Misinformation about the Treaty of Waitangi, its language and its intent is at the centre of the Treaty Principles Bill introduced to Parliament this week. If I could travel back in time, I’d visit ...

At Cooks Beach, waves at high tide overtopped the sea wall protecting the first row of baches. Behind the smooth blue curve of Cooks Beach, there’s a sandy road edged in rough grass, and then rows of ...

What would the beach be without red-billed gulls? We may be about to find out. Two huge colonies have already gone under and the next biggest, in Kaikōura, is failing fast. In December 2023, ...

Where do young sea creatures spend their first weeks? What’s at the root of oceanic food chains? Kelp forests are to Aotearoa what coral reefs are to other marine ecosystems. Or they used to be. South ...

People and livestock gobble so much fish that the seas soon won’t keep up. Is the answer to grow fish on land? After decades of research, scientists are cracking the secrets to commercially ...

How do animals know where they’re going? Humans have been puzzling over the mysteries of migration and navigation for centuries, and our ideas about it have gone from absolutely wild to only slightly ...

Hundreds of pest plant species—many of them garden escapees—run rampant in New Zealand’s biggest city. Now, its citizens are fighting back. Sweat drips down Richard Margesson’s brow as he rappels down ...

But information about the man behind the camera is scarce. And the one detail floating round the internet, that he was a visiting American photographer, is incorrect. Heinegg, articulate and ...

Most manta encounters take place in the area north of Te Hauturu-o-Toi/Little Barrier Island, but their ways are still a mystery, says Lydia Green, who coordinates a database of public manta ray ...