For nearly two centuries, the origins of a Spanish whaler and trader who founded a dynasty on the east coast were a mystery. Manuel Jose’s descendants are New Zealand’s largest family, and have ...

Virtual Reality / 360 Video - NZ 360 Nov 15: Leigh Wharf The irony is that the camera can't see far enough to properly document the worst sites in the Hauraki Gulf—they're too turbid to see more than ...

Gardeners with a keen sense of history can now forge a botanical link with a plant which hasn’t been seen on these shores for millions of years. A species of Ecuadorian coconut has been success­fully ...

In the late 19th century, news of a strange antipodean bird with beautiful tail feathers, orange wattles, and a long curved beak spread around the British Empire. To Māori, it was a tapu bird—a sacred ...

Kairara: one blink and you will miss it. It’s nothing more than a few farms scattered at the base of Tutamoe Mountain, about 20 km north of Dargaville. Not a tourist in sight on the day I passed ...

In the South Island’s remote subalpine regions, a highly terrestrial songbird—one of two surviving species of New Zealand wren—has hopped, chirped and flown in the face of extinction. There are four ...

Sometime in the mid-1950s a young boy asked “Would you like to come for a ride in my boat?”, and the world has been saying yes ever since. The jet boat’s unrivalled performance in the shallowest of ...

The invasive seaweed Caulerpa brachypus was discovered in New Zealand just over a year ago, and it promises to ruin everything. On Aotea/Great Barrier Island, people are sacrificing their way of life ...

When the four-masted barque Pamir burst into Wellington Harbour out of the rolling vastness of the Southern Ocean on a cold and blustery day in late July, 1941, its captain, Verner Björkfelt, would ...

Tussock Tops near Pinnacle, in the West Coast’s Victoria Range. Full moon, the air crisp and still. I’m listening attentively for kiwi, hoping to hear a shrill whistle above the faint murmur of the ...

Most manta encounters take place in the area north of Te Hauturu-o-Toi/Little Barrier Island, but their ways are still a mystery, says Lydia Green, who coordinates a database of public manta ray ...

Moths can be regarded as a domestic inconvenience. They spin in awkward orbits about lamps, invade our cereal, snack on our woollens. But look closer; theirs is a remarkable world of gluttony, ...