Geo News At last, a chance to examine the world’s rarest whale. 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.

Te Rōpū o te Matakite: the seers, the ones with foresight. That’s the name of the group that revered leader Dame Whina Cooper led on a 1000-kilometre march from the Far North to Wellington in 1975, protesting against more than a century of colonial laws designed to alienate Māori from their land. On the estuarine […]

Our summers are getting hotter, but electric fans are not always the answer—even if they make you feel cooler. Electric fans work by blowing cooler air across our skin and enhancing the evaporation of our sweat. Cheap and convenient, they often sell out in heatwaves. But on really hot days, a fan can flip from saviour to sauna—more convection oven than a …

In a land renowned for its unusual birds, the kākāpō—a giant flightless nocturnal parrot with a bizarre breeding system—has to be one of the strangest. Although it has been lingering perilously close to extinction for the past half century, there is renewed hope that this icon of conservation effort has a future after all. For […]

Sea-level rise doesn’t affect coasts equally—one bay may be drowned while the beach next door remains the same as ever. Predicting sea-level rise needs to take into account tectonic movement of the land, prevailing winds, coastal erosion and Arctic meltwater. Now, the first-ever detailed map of New Zealand’s coastlines shows what may happen.

Life in the subantarctic is difficult enough for those who arrive prepared. In 1864, castaways from two storm-wrecked ships, the Grafton and the Invercauld, landed on opposite ends of Auckland Island. Survival became a daily challenge. Each group tackled it differently: one fell to violence and cannibalism, while the other became a close-knit brotherhood.

Society The future of food. Most of New Zealand’s lowland areas are now devoted to food production. How we produce food for consumption, sale and export continues to shape our landscape and lives, but the 90 per cent of New Zealanders who live in cities have little contact with those processes and the social and environmental considerations they create.

Nov 14, 2018 · Using specialised 360-VR video technology, a team from New Zealand Geographic—with funding from Foundation North and NZonAir—has produced VR experiences across six sites from Niue to the Hauraki Gulf.

History The night Tarawera awoke. When Mt Tarawera and the surrounding area erupted in the early hours of June 10, 1886, the explosion annihilated the world-famous Pink and White Terraces, smothered a vast swathe of countryside with ash and killed more than 100 people.

In the late 19th century, news of a strange antipodean bird with beautiful tail feathers, orange wattles, and a long curved beak spread around the British Empire. To Māori, it was a tapu bird—a sacred treasure. And its song was about to be silenced forever. No one could have realised the implications of presenting the […]