New Zealand Geographic

Time 2020-11-16 18:03:19

Web Name: New Zealand Geographic

WebSite: http://www.nzgeo.com

ID:118082

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Living World The whales are back Last century, southern right whales were hunted until there were none left—none that we could find. A small group of these whales, also called tohorā, hid from the harpoon. Deep in the subantarctic, the survivors birthed and nursed their young. Now, tohorā are returning to the coasts of New Zealand. Are we ready for them? Editorial A question of pronouns The last time I left New Zealand, I flew to Tonga, which is one of the few places in the world where it’s possible to swim with humpback whales. There, I learned two things: that it’s possible to get vertigo from snorkelling in water so clear and deep that the sea floor is visible far, far beneath your feet, as though you’re standing on the glass floor on a skyscraper. And that when a gigantic creature emerges out of the dark blue sea-gloom, awe overrides fear.Beneath it was a calf, nestling its head underneath its mothers chin—and that’s where I have to pause, because it seems wrong to describe a whale as “it”.We don’t have words to confer personhood or importance on things of unknown sex. So a whale is an “it”, the same word we use for objects like spoons or tyres or tennis balls. I often wonder if the lack of distinction in English between living and unliving things leads to a blindness in how we perceive the natural world. Whales are lumped in with the miscellany of “it”. But whales have sentience, culture.Native American botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer points out that we confer dignity to people in the way we use language. Imagine if I wrote about edmund hillary or kate sheppard; Kimmerer feels the same discomfort about the natural features of her home not receiving the same level of respect. “It would be laughable to write ‘Mosquito’ if it were in reference to a flying insect, but acceptable if we were discussing a brand of boat,” she writes. “This seemingly trivial grammatical rulemaking in fact expresses deeply held assumptions about human exceptionalism.” And so Kimmerer capitalises Maple, Heron, Sweetgrass. Those species represent qualities she wants to embody, lessons she wants to learn.This is connected to a question we often ask: what is the natural world good for? Does it cost us to reclaim a wetland, or does it better serve us as pasture? Which endangered species should we spend money on saving? Which species should we let die? Should ancient trees automatically be protected by law?Usually, we characterise the importance of nature in one of three ways: in terms of its beauty, its similarity to human intelligence (consider the kākāpō), or its importance to our wellbeing. Wetlands were once looked down upon as swamps, until we discovered they were  effective filtration systems.In Tonga, I read a book called How to Do Nothing, in which American artist Jenny Odell makes a case for turning one’s attention to useful, nourishing parts of the world. Living things, like birds, rather than inert things, like phones.Odell began birdwatching as a way of alleviating the anxiety she felt about the United States presidential election, learning to tell her local crows apart.“Even after years of observing the same crows,” she writes, “their behaviour is ultimately inscrutable to me, as much as mine must be to them. Nothing indicates that something exists beyond you as much as its departure in to the sky, as sudden and unceremonious as its arrival. All of this makes for a being that cannot be ‘understood’ or ‘interpreted’. And that which cannot be understood demands constant and unmixed attention, an ongoing state of encounter.”And so, as New Zealand welcomes in a new government, I’d like us to think about the natural world less in terms of the benefits it provides, but rather in terms of other lifeforms that live among us.It’s easy to dismiss this approach as a bit spiritualist, a bit woo-woo, but it’s just a shift in perception. A reminder to see the living parts of the world as living, even if our language does not remind us that they are so. Geo News Thunderstorm asthma Certain weather conditions can spread pollen fragments so small that some people experience severe asthma, even if they’ve never had it before.It begins when a significant storm arrives while pollen is abundant. Pollen grains are sucked into the storm clouds, where they absorb moisture and burst, shattering into smaller pieces. These tiny particles are dispersed by the storm’s downdrafts. They’re so small that they pass straight through the nose (where nasal hairs catch ordinary-sized pollen grains) and into people’s lungs, where they can trigger an asthma attack. It’s a serious condition—a Melbourne storm in November 2016 sent 8500 people to emergency departments and overwhelmed ambulance services. At least 10 people died of asthma-related causes.Thunderstorm asthma was thought unlikely to happen in New Zealand—weather patterns aren’t favourable. But Waikato Hospital saw a jump in acute asthma cases following a thunderstorm on December 2, 2017. They became the first people in New Zealand to be diagnosed with thunderstorm asthma. Geo News Kūmara flee climate change Worldwide, sweet potatoes are under threat from climate change—and a new international study has found that maintaining the crop’s genetic diversity will be key to ensuring you can get a fix of kūmara fries with your beer.Climate experts predict that by 2070, average temperatures in sweet-potato-growing areas will be one to six degrees warmer, and that heatwaves will be two to five degrees hotter. Researchers at the International Potato Center in Lima, Peru, tested nearly 2000 varieties of kūmara from around the world, including six from New Zealand—and found that 93 per cent of them would suffer under those warmer conditions.But the researchers also identified 132 extremely heat-tolerant varieties—6.7 per cent of the total. That’s great news, says the study’s lead author, Bettina Heider. “That gives farmers many options that can be used in breeding to make sweet potato even more resilient. Our options to adapt our food systems to climate change lie in the genetic diversity of crops.”Locally adapted heritage varieties of sweet potato performed better than commercial ones, and kūmara with orange flesh tended to handle hotter conditions better than those of other colours—probably because they are high in carotenoids, which are thought to protect plants against damage from heat stress.The New Zealand kūmara tested weren’t among the extremely heat-tolerant varieties, although one came close. In any case, higher temperatures are not necessarily as much of a problem for kūmara-growing here as they will be for tropical countries, says Plant Food Research scientist Steve Lewthwaite, as New Zealand is on the colder edge of the plant’s range. Global warming may actually make more areas of the country suitable for commercial kūmara production. But climate change doesn’t affect temperature alone, cautions Lewthwaite: erratic rainfall, more storms, or interactions between temperature and plant pests could pose other problems.Globally speaking, kūmara is likely to increase in importance this century, says Heider. “Sweet potato is a robust crop, it grows in marginal areas and under adverse conditions—and these areas will increase with climate change.” Geo News The saddest day in 12 years There have been significant low points in 2020, but researchers at one lab reckon that the saddest day in 2020 so far was May 31. According to them, that Sunday was more demoralising than any other day since the study began in 2008.A computerised algorithm called the Hedonometer measures global mood by sifting through messages posted to the social media site Twitter. Every day, it randomly gathers 10 per cent of all tweets in a dozen languages, then looks for specific words that have been ranked in terms of their positivity or negativity. Based on the frequency of those words, it calculates an average happiness or sadness level for that day.The Hedonometer was created by mathematicians and computer scientists Chris Danforth and Peter Dodds, who co-direct the Computational Story Lab at the University of Vermont.Events in the United States dominate the mood of the Hedonometer most of the time—but not always. In 2019, the lowest point occurred on the day of the Christchurch terrorist attacks. Every year, Christmas Day is marked by a massive spike in positivity. But aside from the plunges in mood in 2020, which correlate with Black Lives Matter protests as well as COVID-related events, the mood of the internet describes a gently fluctuating wave, always curving back to the centre. Photographer of the Year Photographer of the Year 2020 — Winners From nearly 6000 entries, judges whittled it down to just 40 finalists, then winners, runners-up and highly commended—each a new expression of the environment and society in which we live. These are the finest frames of 2020. Science Environment Eyes in the land New Zealand is a global hotspot for dune lakes, and nowhere has more of these freshwater gems than Northland. It’s here, in our country’s northernmost reaches, that iwi are reconnecting with these taonga and the stories that surround them. History The Sandow Season It was the sensation of 1902—a celebrity bodybuilder toured New Zealand encouraging locals to get ripped. History The day the Russians came The second-oldest collection of Māori artefacts in the world—exceeded only by the one amassed by James Cook—is held in Russia. These 200-year-old treasures have immense value to iwi at the top of the South Island, whose ancestors traded with Russian explorers. Now, there’s a movement to bring these taonga home. Science Environment How to fix the Marlborough Sounds Since human arrival, this landscape has undergone dramatic changes—mostly in the form of losses. Here’s how we can protect and nurture what remains. Geo News Measuring hate Are hate crimes becoming more common in New Zealand or less? And who is at risk of being targeted?It’s hard to say, because New Zealand authorities don’t keep records of this type of crime. University of Auckland researchers set out to investigate hate crimes using the data they did have: the media. Senior lecturer Chris Wilson and a team of students scanned reports of hate crimes between 2013 and August 2020 to create an overview of these incidents.In a hate crime, someone is assaulted physically or verbally because another person objects to their race, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation or disability. The team found hate crimes against Muslims in New Zealand increased 1300 per cent after the Christchurch terrorist attacks.International research shows that hate crimes can be precursors to more extreme violence. But figuring out the connection between the two in New Zealand is impossible without good-quality data.Wilson and PhD student Sanjal Shastri describe hate crimes against Muslims as “a perpetuation of the Christchurch attacks”, noting that the number of these crimes reported in 2020 is much higher than in years before the massacres. “Despite the best intentions of many in New Zealand,” they write, “the attacks have made the country more, not less, dangerous for Muslims and other minorities.” Geo News Plastic appeal Red, green and blue: albatrosses prefer these colours when selecting plastic debris from the ocean to feed to their chicks back at the nest. Albatrosses are more likely to choose brightly coloured plastic, according to a New Zealand study looking at which types of plastic were being consumed by different seabirds. Were there patterns in terms of shapes, colours and densities? The research suggests that luridly coloured fishing gear from operations around the Chatham Islands and off the coast of Chile may be the source of some of the plastic found at albatross nests.The researchers also looked at the stomach contents of sooty shearwaters killed as bycatch by fishers on the Chatham Rise, and found that these birds had mostly eaten plastic that was white, grey and round. These pieces were probably consumed by fish or other prey, which were in turn eaten by the shearwaters.Most seabird species will be regularly consuming plastic by 2050, according to estimates, either by eating it themselves or via the food chain. Living World When birds get sick Diseases can take a huge toll on wild animals and hasten rare species towards extinction. In New Zealand, scientists, vets and conservation volunteers are teaming up to try to beat the viruses, parasites and fungi threatening some of our rarest bird species. Geo News Hoiho need to eat better A study of penguin poo suggests Otago’s declining hoiho population are struggling to find food in their hunting grounds off the South Island coast.University of Otago PhD student Melanie Young collected 313 hoiho faecal samples, from the Moeraki Boulders to the Catlins. Some were obtained directly from the bird—“As soon as you hold a penguin it’s basically pooing on you,” says study co-author Ludovic Dutoit, also at Otago—while other samples were gathered from around the penguins’ nests while they were out fishing at sea.The poo also revealed that what the penguins eat has changed significantly since the 1980s, the last time their diet was studied. University of Otago professor Yolanda van Heezik conducted that research for her own PhD, which required a more interventionist approach—“I’ve made a lot of penguins throw up,” she says. Back then, the bones found in penguin spew showed the birds ate a varied diet of squid and small fish, including red cod, blue cod, āhuru, and opalfish.The new study showed the hoiho diet is now dominated by blue cod, and that many of those other fish, once common, are now gone. “There wasn’t a single penguin that hadn’t been eating blue cod,” says Dutoit. (Similar observations were made in other recent studies where a video camera was taped to a penguin’s back.)Blue cod might be the “snapper of the south” for humans, a sought-after commercial eating fish, but it’s not ideal for penguins, says van Heezik. Penguin parents feed their chicks “a lovely hot porridge of partially digested fish”, she says, and muscular blue cod doesn’t break down as easily as other prey. “It’s like trying to feed a baby huge chunks of solid food.”Large, powerful blue cod also take more effort to catch and swallow.The findings are concerning, because they suggest hoiho don’t have many dietary options. This could be part of the explanation for the species’ rapid decline on the mainland.“We’ve had starvation events,” says van Heezik. “Last year, hundreds of chicks were brought into rehabilitation because they were too thin. Clearly there’s something going on that means there isn’t enough food.” Geo News The virus goes wild Cats have had it. Dogs, too. Tigers and lions in a New York zoo came down with it, and so did minks in three European countries. This means humans need to protect animals from COVID-19 before it’s too late, write a team of scientists in the journal Mammal Review.Humans are infecting animals—and they’re passing the virus back to us. A study of infected dogs in Hong Kong found the pets probably caught the virus from their owners, while two of the COVID-positive minks infected other humans.A few species can be ruled out as disease vectors. It looks as though mice, pigs, chickens and ducks may be fine—a very small study found they didn’t get infected or spread the virus. But cats, ferrets, rabbits and hamsters can transmit the virus to others of the same species.That’s not even the worst that could happen. If the virus spread from captive or domestic animals into wild animal populations, some species could become a reservoir for it, making it even more difficult to contain.Animals acting as disease storage facilities are already a problem in New Zealand. Some introduced bird species carry avian diseases—they’re asymptomatic but infectious—and pass these on to native birds, which typically have fewer defences and are more susceptible (see page 70 for more).So how should we keep animals safe? The same way we prevent virus transmission between humans, whenever there’s a risk of COVID-19 transmission: masks, gloves and social distancing. Data The sinking city The Canterbury earthquakes changed the shape of Christchurch. Much of the city is built on sand and silt, with shallow water tables and active faults. This combination meant the ground was ripe for liquefaction. Saturated soils responded to prolonged shaking by behaving like quicksand.Waterlogged silt bubbled up from the ground to cover streets and gardens. Around 86 per cent of central and eastern Christchurch subsided. Most of this subsistence was caused by liquefaction. Some properties, especially along the Avon River, sank half a metre or more. Meanwhile, buried faults caused uplift in the Port Hills, the Avon-Heathcote Estuary and Woolston.This map shows how the land’s surface changed between a pair of surveys in 2003 and 2012. Most of the differences in elevation are due to the Canterbury earthquakes. Some uplift pockets, though, are the result of human activities, such as new housing developments and filling in salination ponds.How to readThe blue parts of the map sank between 2003 and 2012. The red areas lifted up. Geo News Kids more likely to survive COVID-19 A study of 627 children and teenagers who had been admitted to hospital for COVID-19 in the United Kingdom found they had less severe symptoms and were much less likely to die from the virus than other age groups. The study tracked patients at 260 hospitals in England, Wales and Scotland between January and July 2020, and was published in The British Medical Journal in August. Eighteen per cent of children and teenagers in hospital were admitted to intensive care, and six children died—the authors note that all had “profound” underlying conditions—putting the group’s fatality rate at one per cent. That’s dramatically lower than the fatality rate for all people hospitalised with COVID-19 during the same period, which was 27 per cent. For children admitted to hospital, the odds are extremely good—but the study underscores the vulnerability of young people with existing health challenges. Unlimited access to every NZGeo story ever written and hundreds of hours of natural history documentaries on all your devices. One-click sign-up $1 trial for two weeks, thereafter $8.50 every two months, cancel any time Already a subscriber? Sign in Signed in as . Sign out This page requires an NZGeo.com account. 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