Most of us have grown up without knowing much more about the Treaty of Waitangi than that it was signed last century by anaval captain called Hobson and a group of Maori chiefs. Yet today this piece of paper, regarded by some as a sacred covenant and by others as an obsolete reminder of our colonial past, is making its presence felt in all of our lives. Auckland journalist Ted Reynolds digs ...

Many birds migrate to escape the rigours of winter. Not so emperor penguins. Each autumn they march towards breeding sites on the edge of Antarctica, where they will raise their young in the freezing darkness of the harshest winters on earth.

For Paul, this was the beginning of a lifelong journey into the ways—and the contradictions—of the prepper. It was also the end of his career in real estate. When he got back to Ōtāhuhu, he quit on the spot. * Three decades later, Paul is living in Manurewa and working as a signwriter and vehicle wrap installer. I catch a train from Britomart out to meet him. Walking through an ...

Laura Ryan was studying the visual systems of fish when a spate of shark attacks at her favourite Perth surf spot got her thinking—why do these apex predators confuse tasteless humans with delicious seals? Great whites are by far the deadliest shark species to humans, though fatal attacks are extremely rare—there are only 59 recorded deaths in …

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.

At Lake Ellesmere/Te Waihora, Joe Harrison documents an era of change and uncertainty.

Preserved beneath three kilometres of frigid saltwater and up to five metres of floating sea ice, Sir Ernest Shackleton’s legendary ship “looks like it sank yesterday”, says Nico Vincent, an expert in ultra-deep-sea salvage who helped produce this remarkable new mosaic image. Vincent was part of the Endurance22 team that discovered the wreck in …

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 …

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.

Nov 26, 2020 · The 2020 Antarctic ozone hole is one of the largest and deepest of recent years, due to stratospheric weather conditions trapping cold air high above the frozen continent. This year also saw the first significant ozone hole appear over the Arctic. But overall, scientists say the ozone layer remains on a path to recovery. The thinning of the ozone layer over Antarctica each southern spring was ...