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Wild Sounds: Voice of Tangaroa

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Wild Sounds: Voice of Tangaroa
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  • Voice of Tangaroa 08 | Turning the tide
    Kate Evans visits a passionate team as they carpet a remote volcanic island in Tonga with poisoned bait, hoping to eradicate rats. What does it take to complete this kind of project, what are the chances of success, and what will it mean for the island's ecosystems if they manage to remove the rats once and for all? This episode was first released 18 April 2024.Rat eradication from islands is a team sport. It's not a competition - but if it were, New Zealand would surely be up there. That's why on most pest removal teams around the world you can probably find one or two Kiwis right in the thick of things. It takes a village A team lined up to complete the rat eradication project for the island of Late in the kingdom of Tonga is no different. The New Zealand Department of Conservation is supporting the operation and have provided some skilled staff. The helicopter team (pilot, engineer, ground crew) are all Kiwi too. They're joined by a project manager from the NGO Island Conservation, and Tongan conservationists from the national environment department. Years of feasibility studies, finding funding, planning and logistics have come down to this - a second, and final, aerial application of poisoned bait across the island. Island paradise It may not be what you picture when you think of a tropical island, but its jagged basalt cliffs and remoteness has made volcanic Late a potential wildlife haven. Here you can find the Tongan whistler and ground dove, two rare birds on the IUCN red list of threatened species. And it has the habitat needed for the malau - the Tongan megapode - to breed. Malau don't incubate eggs by sitting on them, instead they bury them in warm volcanic soils and sands, and Late's smoking surface is perfect. Rat eradications elsewhere have allowed forests to rejuvenate, land birds to rebound and seabirds to return. The bird guano ripples the effect out further - feeding the coral reefs and allowing nearby ocean ecosystems to flourish. Science journalist Kate Evans joins the team on the last day of bait spreading, in what they hope will be the first day of a bright future for the island and its inhabitants. …Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details
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  • Voice of Tangaroa 07 | Summer 34
    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. This episode was first released 11 April 2024.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
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  • Voice of Tangaroa 06 | Taking on water
    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 episode was first released 4 April 2024.Updates/Learn more:Read the New Zealand Geographic article by Kate Evans, with photography by Richard Robinson.The proposed Hauraki Gulf marine protections had a last minute amendment by the government in October 2024 to allow some commercial fishing. A change that has drawn a lot of criticism from a number of parties. A judicial review was filed by the Otago Rock Lobster Industry Association Inc. with regards to decisions around the South Island marine reserves. As a result, they have not yet come into force. One of the new High Protection Areas proposed for the Hauraki Gulf is around The Noises Islands, which Our Changing World travelled to early in 2023. To learn more about the background of the now-extinct Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary, listen to this episode of The Detail from June 2023.Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details
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  • Voice of Tangaroa 05 | A tale of two islands
    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. This episode was first released 28 March 2024.Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details
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  • Voice of Tangaroa 04 | The stuff of life
    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.  This episode was first released 21 March 2024.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
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About Wild Sounds: Voice of Tangaroa

Exploring the state of our oceans and the extraordinary variety of life that calls it home. A collaboration with New Zealand Geograhic.
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