Here is the seventh instalment in our series of blogs all about prion biology! This is in preparation for our upcoming Science Live event on Oct 22nd (today!) at 1:50 pm NZ time when you can accompany us into the lab via live streaming (a permanent link to the YouTube videoRead more
Here is the sixth instalment in our series of blogs all about prions! This is in preparation for our upcoming Science Live event on Oct 22nd at 1:50 pm NZ time when you can accompany us into the lab via live streaming (a permanent link to the YouTube video can beRead more
Here is the fifth instalment in our series of blogs all about prions! This is in preparation for our upcoming Science Live event on Oct 22nd at 1:50 pm NZ time when you can accompany us into the lab via live streaming (a permanent link to the YouTube video can beRead more
I’ve been enjoying our scientist’s fieldwork posts. We have scientist’s photographs from several historic field trips in the photography collection. My favourites are in this photo album from the 1907 Expedition to the Subantarctic Islands. The Expedition was initiated by the Canterbury Philosophical Institute with support from the Government, and studied plants, animals, soilsRead more
Te Papa’s curator of terrestrial vertebrates Dr Colin Miskelly tells the 11th instalment of the story of the emperor penguin that went where none had gone before. Previous blogs on the penguin were posted between 23 June and 12 September 2011. One of the unknowns regarding the emperor penguin thatRead more
I awoke on the morning of 6 March to discover that we had very rapid progress over night and were approaching the rugged columnular basalt cliffs of the Antipodes Island, crowned with green tussocks. The home to the Antipodean albatross,the Antipodes Island parakeet and the erect-crested penguin (to name justRead more
Our first sight of land since Antarctica in the dim small hours of the 3rd of March was Campbell Island. Campbell Island is home to more species of albatross than anywhere else in the New Zealand region with 6 species breeding here. The most conspicuous of these being the SouthernRead more
In the early hours of the 25th, we were awoken and called to the bridge to see the biggest wall of ice that I will probably ever see. The Ross Ice Shelf, and enormous slab faced Ice sheet stretching over 700km from Cape Crozier to the Bay of Whales. TheRead more
Not Lower and Upper Hutt, but instead the story of two attempts at the pole. That of Sir Ernest Shackleton and the voyage of the Nimrod, and Captain Robert Falcon Scott and the Terra Nova expedition. We awoke to another extraordinary day at anchor off Cape Royds. The lunar landscape,Read more
Scott Base, as South as we go: In a place where the sun sets at 12.30 and rises at 2.30 sights just get more and more incredible. At 1am the sea around the boat started to freeze, the water became grainy and and looked like grease, slowing as theRead more
After 6 days at sea, we finally sighted land, Franklin Island, with it’s glacial snow cap looked like Eden after the roller coaster ride of the Ross Sea. Franklin Island is home to a large colony of Adelie penguins and is the hangout for a few Weddell seals. Weddell sealsRead more
As we entered the Ross Sea we lef the band of large ice bergs behind us, and entered a fairly calm Ross sea. I kept a morning vigil on the bridge looking for whales. it was not until mid afternoon that we saw our first, a small and rapid antarcticRead more
Heading south from Macquarie Island we have had some relatively calm seas, pretty remarkable for this part of the world. Leaving the Roaring Forties which gave us a pretty slow rolling sea the fifties gave us a small taste of what it had to offer with some mild five-metre seas. PassingRead more
We arrived at Macquarie Island – the sheltered waters in the lee of the island provided a welcome relief from the open ocean we had crossed between here and the Auckland Islands. The cool subantarctic summer did not detract from the spectacular wildlife – elephant seals and penguins everywhere! Until 1920Read more
Te Papa’s curator of terrestrial vertebrates Dr Colin Miskelly tells the third part of the unfolding story of the emperor penguin that went where none had gone before (at least in the age of digital media). Colin accompanied Department of Conservation staff to Peka Peka Beach on the morning ofRead more
