Marine Biodiversity of Aotearoa New Zealand

Cold Water Coral By-Catch from Bottom Trawling off New Zealand

The Census of Marine Life's results on Marine Biodiversity in New Zealand are published in the Public Library of Science's One Journal of 2 August 2010 here.

The Census recorded some 17,135 living species within New Zealand's 200 nautical-mile boundary of the Exclusive Economic Zone or EEZ. This diversity includes 4,315 known undescribed species in scientific collections. Total marine diversity in the EEZ is expected to equal that in the ERMS or European Register of Marine Species region despite  the European region being 5.5 times larger than New Zealand's EEZ, indicating New Zealand's marine diversity is much greater than that in the European region.

The threats to New Zealand's marine biodiversity are several, including fishing, mining, chemical pollution, coastal nutrient and sediment input, habitat loss, aquaculture, invasive species, harmful algal blooms, and climate change.

 Protected areas within New Zealand's EEZ

"Currently, there are more than 30 marine protected areas established in New Zealand waters. All are “no take” areas, administered by the Department of Conservation....They range in size from about 250 ha (within a harbor) to 745,000 ha (7,450 km²) (at the Kermadec Islands). Collectively, they protect 7.6% of New Zealand's territorial sea; however, 99% of this area is in two marine reserves around isolated offshore island groups (Auckland and Kermadec), and the sum of the areas of the remaining reserves in the mainland territorial sea is less than the area of the smallest terrestrial national park. Of New Zealand's total marine environment (EEZ), just 0.3% is protected in marine reserves. Currently the highest level of protection outside the territorial sea is through fisheries closures of trawling on 19 seamounts, initiated in 2001. Additionally, in 2007, the New Zealand government established 17 Benthic Protection Areas in deep water; these protect about 30% of the seabed in the EEZ from deep-sea bottom trawling and dredging activity. There are three marine parks, each having different regulations and generally affording a lower level of protection than marine reserves proper, for example, mainly protecting reef fish."

Much clearly remains to be done to manage the marine environment in a sustainable manner.

For our Australian friends and readers of this blog, you will find a similar Marine Biodiversity of Australia article compiled as part of the Census of Marine Life here.

Ernest Rutherford, New Zealand's First Winner of the Nobel Prize, 1908 - 2008

Ernest Rutherford (1871 - 1937)

10 December marks the centennial of Ernest Rutherford's receipt of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his investigations into the disintegration of elements and the chemistry of radioactive substances. A biography of Rutherford can be found here.

In 1898 at McGill University, in Montreal, Canada, he discovered that two quite separate types of emissions come from radioactive atoms, naming them alpha and beta rays. Beta rays were soon shown to be high-speed electrons. His research later moved to a study of the disintegration of radioactive substances which he discovered resulted from the transformation of the atom itself and thus the creation of new elements.

In 1919, Rutherford accepted the position of Director of the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University in the UK. In that role he supported a flurry of new scientific work by others at the Cavendish that included discovery of the neutron by Chadwick, the splitting of the atom by a particle accelerator, and discovery of the ionosphere.

Ernest Rutherford come from a family of modest means and was reliant on scholarships to continue his high school and university studies at Canterbury College then in the centre of Christchurch, New Zealand where the Rutherford Den, a rather make-shift lab, is re-created in what is now the Arts Centre.

Rutherford failed three times to obtain a permanent school teaching position in New Zealand upon graduation at a time when opportunities for physics research were virtually non-existent in the country.

Thus, Rutherford became one of the early examples of the New Zealand brain drain.

Nonetheless, he never forgot his Kiwi roots, returning to give public lectures, to encourage the government to preserve more native forests and expand scientific research as well as creating opportunities for younger New Zealanders to study and work at the Cavendish Laboratory.

Three New Zealanders have won the Nobel Prize. In addition to Rutherford, Maurice Wilkins won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1962 for his contribution to the discovery of the structure of DNA and in 2000 Alan MacDiarmid won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his contribution to the discovery and development of electronically conductive polymers.