Voice of Tangaroa

Journalist Rebekah White meets two people who have been counting albatrosses on remote islands in the subantarctic for more than three decades. Their research shows that at least one species is en route to extinction. A few changes to the way we fish could save it.Gibson's and Antipodean albatrosses are citizens of no one nation. They are ocean birds, living on the wind and waves, travelling massive distances, passing back and forth over the high seas and the imaginary boundary lines we draw on maps. But when they land to chat, to flirt, to lay an egg and raise a chick, they come to two of New Zealand's subantarctic islands. Three decades of albatross study And when they return, some of them meet with two familiar human faces. Across the last 34 years, Department of Conservation researchers Kath Walker and Graeme Elliott have been visiting these islands to count the birds, and to study them. At first everything seemed fine. In the early 1990s numbers were low but increasing. Things were positive. Then came the summer of 2006/2007. There was a population crash, reason still unknown, and on both islands, albatross numbers plummeted. These albatrosses don't breed until they at least eight-years-old, only breed every two years, and tend to mate for life. Since the crash, Gibson's albatross numbers have come back slightly, but Antipodean albatross numbers continue to decline. And adult birds, especially females, are still going missing. Hooks don't discriminate Tuna fishing boats use a method called surface longlining to catch their prey. The lines can be up to 100 kilometres long, with thousands of hooks. Squid is used as bait, a tasty morsel for tuna. Unfortunately, albatrosses agree. Using satellite tags Graeme and Kath have watched missing albatrosses' paths overlap with those of boats, and in one case, in which leg bands and the satellite tag were returned to them, follow the path of the boat. Listen as science journalist Rebekah White explores the albatross bycatch problem, and what we could do about it. …Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

New Zealand once led the world in marine protection. Now it looks like we will fail to meet our international promise to protect 30 percent of our ocean estate by 2030. Why is stopping fishing so politically fraught? How might our ideas about marine protection need to change? And why, when our seas are in need, is it taking us so long to learn to talk to each other?This is an updated excerpt from the July - August 2023 New Zealand Geographic feature article 'Taking on water'. In 1975 five square kilometres from Cape Rodney to Okakari Point was made a marine reserve, the first in New Zealand, and possibly, the world."Nothing to do at Goat Island anymore," declared the local newspaper.Three hundred thousand people now visit every year. And research indicates that this small, protected patch is helping to contribute fish to surrounding areas.Lunching on experimentsThe Marine Reserves Act was created in 1971 in response to campaigning by the late Bill Ballantine, among others. He was director of the University of Auckland's Leigh Marine Laboratory which was established in 1964. But staff and students soon discovered people were eating their experiments.So that's what the Act was created for: 'the purpose of preserving, as marine reserves for the scientific study of marine life, areas of New Zealand that contain underwater scenery, natural features, or marine life, of such distinctive quality, or so typical, or beautiful, or unique, that their continued preservation is in the national interest.' Today, with our ocean ecosystems under increasing pressure from commercial and recreational fishing, sedimentation, pollution, and warming, we need our marine protection to do more than preserve small areas for scientific study.But it's not an easy task. Most marine protection proposals face extensive push back that delays the process for years, sometimes decades."It's really, really hard to manage it appropriately," says Professor Chris Hepburn, marine scientist at the University of Otago. "It's land, sea. It's different user groups, it's rights, it's things like the settlement, it's people not understanding each other's points of view."The act that ignored the Treaty'The settlement' is the Treaty of Waitangi (Fisheries Claims) Settlement Act 1992, an attempt to restore some of the rights taken from Māori when it comes to fisheries…Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

The Bounty Islands are tiny in terms of area - just some bits of granite jutting out of the ocean. But they are huge in terms of seabirds. James Frankham joins a team researching the erect-crested penguins who breed in this remote archipelago. Recent counts suggest the penguins of the Bounties are doing fine. But this is not the case on the Antipodes Islands, and the researchers desperately want to know why. The Bounty Islands jut out of the water like giant granite fins. Steep and sheer, with no greenery in sight. They are covered instead by a mottled white - guano or bird poo from the tens of thousands of penguins and albatrosses that come here to breed. The least studied penguin The Bounty Islands is one of two remote, subantarctic island groups home to the erect-crested penguin. Stout and handsome, with bright yellow crests that look like elaborate punk rock hairdos, their remote breeding sites means they've not been studied in depth. But Dr Thomas Mattern of the Tawaki Project plans to change that. Good news and bad Using drones to make photo mosaics of all the Bounty islands, Thomas has counted each penguin breeding pair and arrived at a number that suggests the Bounty Island population of penguins has remained relatively stable since the mid-1990s. Good news. Not the case for their other breeding sites at the Antipodes Islands, where early evidence suggests a significant decline. But these island groups are a mere 200 kilometres apart - a hop, skip and a jump in penguin swimming distance. How is one group seemingly doing fine while the other is in trouble? New Zealand Geographic's James Frankham joins an expedition to these remote and wild islands as the scientists begin to unravel this mystery. Learn more: Read the accompanying New Zealand Geographic article by James Frankham, with photography by Richard Robinson. As part of this expedition Claire Concannon also visited the Antipodes Islands to learn how they have fared since mice were eradicated. Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

What roles do our ocean ecosystems play in capturing carbon? Kate Evans speaks to iwi Māori working to improve the health of an estuary in the Bay of Plenty, and to scientists studying the fiords of New Zealand's southwest coast. There's potential for huge amounts of carbon to be locked away, if we don't mess it up.  To avert the worst of the climate crisis we need to reduce our emissions. One way is to phase out fossil fuels, to leave forms of carbon like oil and gas locked up in the ground. But we can also look at ways to lock up more carbon, long term. And some options for this are in our oceans. The champ of champs Between 6-10 metres of rain falls in Fiordland each year. An incredible amount. It's part of what powers the forest-to-fiord carbon storage pump that makes Fiordland exceptionally good at locking away large amounts of carbon long-term. Something scientists are only beginning to understand. Return of the wetland Luckily, National Park status on land and marine protection in part of the sea have meant that Fiordland has remained relatively untouched. Not so for some of our other carbon-burying ocean ecosystems. Salt marshes and seagrass meadows in estuaries have taken big hits. But Te Whakapū o Waihī, a collective of local iwi and the Bay of Plenty Regional Council, are fighting back. Listen as Kate Evans learns about Fiordland's secrets, the plans to restore Waihī wetlands and estuary, and what this all means for our blue carbon potential. Learn more: Read the accompanying New Zealand Geographic article by Kate Evans, with photography by Richard Robinson. Alison Ballance previously reported on the work of the Cawthron Institute to collect and grow seagrass seeds. Justine Murray joined Professor Kura Paul-Burke out on the Waihī estuary mud flats last year to learn about tohu (signs), nana (seagrass) and tuangi (cockles). Parts of the Southern Ocean also acts as a carbon sink, but there are concerns this might change.Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details