A fossil discovery in New Zealand has revealed a new species of seal that once called Australasia home. Eomonachus belegaerensis is the first monk seal, living or extinct, ever found in the Southern Hemisphere. Its presence in our region turns the evolution of southern seals on its head. Curator Vertebrates Felix Marx talks about what this discovery means.Read more
What price are you willing to pay for food? For most of us, that’s a question about money. But what if the cost were actual pain, injury and death? For some seals and dolphins, this a real risk when hunting. David Hocking, Silke Cleuren and William Parker (Monash University, Melbourne, Australia) and Felix Marx (Te Papa) took a close look at a New Zealand (or long-nosed) fur seal that stranded at Cape Conran in southeastern Australia, and discovered it had numerous severe facial injuries. Read more
Here are a few, token animal photos to finish this account of our fieldwork. Other blog posts about our West Coast fern fieldwork cover: What we were doing. Where we went. Sticherus (umbrella ferns). New, problematic, and interesting species. Favourite photos.Read 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
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
After leaving the port of Bluff, we took our sunset cruise down past Stewart Island on towards the Snares, our first port of call in Our Far South. The first marine mammal spotting of the trip was a small pod of Southern right whale dolphins, these spectacularly sleek animals haveRead more
