We closed our North Island trip with a Haiku session summing up the themes of this excursion. Read on for some insight into the secrets of extremophilic life and other North Island phenomena.

Note that some of the contributions don’t adhere to the traditional 5/7/5 haiku format; after weeks on a bus, this is just one of the formalities that no longer seem to matter.

Catherine:

Cake
Or maybe
Death

Tim:

Not blue-green algae
Cyanobacteria
Our favorite slime

Tessa:

A fake starry night
Numerous silk filaments
Are they blue or green?

Thea:

Geothermal conservation
Corrosive vapor
Dynamic environment
Why should we bother?

Phil:

Ling
The grouse died
The heather survived
A mistake

Tim:

Heather covers the ground
Home for the gentleman’s grouse
A beetle might work

Becca:

Bad are the goldfish
For they eat the little trout
Stop Goldfish stop! Wait. . .

Thea:

Maori resource management

Stewards of the earth
Cling to romantic old ways
Cannibalism

Tim:

Trout in the river
eating the native mayflies
is fishing worth it?

Tim:

Volcanic lahar
Memories of Tangiwai
Mountain left untouched

Christina:

Microbe, where art thou!
I can’t discover thy truth
I will die, so hot

Christina:

The pH is low
Acidic and cloudy white
Let’s go swimming here

Niky (Niky Hughes is an American biologist doing a post-doc here at Victoria University; she joined us for this portion of the trip):

Kiwi blues 7/5/7
I can’t see past my own beak
My egg is a joke
Natural selection sucks

Kaisa and Naima:

Kaisa is a prawn
Crunchy, tasty, and fun fun!
I want to eat her

Kiely:

Sulphuric mud pit
Oh! How you sputter and spit
No, Nels! Don’t fall in!

Britta

Good old Shawn the Prawn
Entertaining seven wives
I would like to eat you

Niky:

Death Flight 7/5/7
Gannet face, gannet beak – fly
Fly towards Oz and die
15% not good odds

Zach:

What’s that eggy smell?
Geothermal Energy
Or Dani’s Chacos?

Logan:

I wish I could meet
A microbe’s mum; strange mother
Wrapped in foreign skin

Dani:

Poor White Island bee
No one wants to conserve thee
You are just a bug

Dani:

Polygamous prawns
Propagate prodigiously
They are hard to catch

Anne:

Hydrogen sulfide
Colored yellow, black and grey
Crater looms, waiting

Emily:

Waitomo glow worms
I could see the big dipper
Luminescent-as

Nels:

“Oh no!” said the whale
He contemplated his plight
Then said, “I’m beached as!”

Nels:

Casting down our threads
We shine into the darkness
A living night sky

Nels:

White Island
We walk on egg shells
Hoping our steps do not disturb
Rotten eggs below

Steve:

It was this big
Give me your hand a head
Invade against invasives
Dare touch God’s finger?

Micah:

So placidly poised
Overshadowed by mountains
Taupo breathes and sighs

Micah:

How to right our wrongs?
Killing for the greater good?
Caged, the hihi sings.

Robyn:

The Exemplification of Feminism by Extreme Life
Tussock in the rain
Windy mist of Alpine Fault
Fight the volcano!!


--Valeurie

North Island Tour

I noticed that after about six weeks of traveling it became hard to sustain the same level of curiosity, enthusiasm, and motivation. Micah summed it up one day about that time when he descended from the bus and announced: "That's it. I've had it. I can't take one more *&(*&*#@ beautiful thing." Another amazing geotechnic phenomenon? Who cares. More rare animals? Maybe later.

Fortunately, the itinerary is set, we are surgically attached to the group, and off we go anyway to see the next most incredible thing. And we're glad we did.

So here’s what we did on the final leg of our New Zealand experience:

March 16th we left Wellington very early in order to arrive at the Mt. Bruce Bird Sanctuary, to the north in the Wairarapa district. This is the location where takahe were bred after it was discovered in 1948 that they were not extinct after all. British naturalist and author Gerald Durrell has a great description of the challenges faced by “Operation Takahe” in his book “Two in the Bush.” Logistical hurdles of getting delicate eggs out of the extremely inaccessible reaches of Fiordland were surmounted in various creative ways and included a bantam chicken precursor to “Fear Factor.”

That evening we slept at a Maori marae, or communal meetinghouse. An elder of the tribe explained the ornamentation of the marae and the significance of each element. Ancestry and traditional stories are very important in Maori culture, and we learned some of the lore about the origins of the tribes as well as about some of the challenges facing the Maori people today as they try to hold on their culture and language.

Like many traditional cultures around the world, Maori culture has been eroding since Europeans came to New Zealand in the 1800's. Somehow it has held on, even through early 20th-century government attempts to ban use of the Maori language. Maori make up over 14% of the general NZ population. In comparison, Australian aborigines are less than 3% of Australia's population, and in the US Native Americans are less than 2% of the total population. Maori language is still hanging on and is an official language of New Zealand.

From the marae we visited the Cape Kidnappers Australasian gannet colony on Hawke’s Bay. These gannets are related to the blue-footed booby and this is the largest mainland breeding colony. For their very first flight, the chicks take off directly to Australia and don’t come back for two or three years; fewer than 25% ever make it back to breed. The colony is 5 miles down the peninsula and is only accessible when the tide is low, so we got a ride there via trailer pulled by a tractor over the beach and through the water, another one of those things like bungee jumping and zorbing that only a Kiwi would think of.

The next few days focused on geothermal sights around Lake Taupo and learning about extremophiles that thrive in very inhospitable environments, like super hot water and acid lakes. In this region of NZ the ongoing collision of the Pacific and Australian plates produce lots of unusual sights, including bubbling mud pits, geysers, multi-colored acid streams, ponds, and lakes. The ultimate was probably the visit to White Island, a very young volcanic landform off of Whakatane that is still in the process of becoming an island.

Between trips to see the effects of plate tectonics we learned more about the collision between NZ and humans. In Otorohanga we had probably our best view of kiwi and some of the other endemic birds, many of them highly endangered. Nearby we visited a commercial prawn breeding facility that doubles as tourist attraction and met Shawn the Prawn (the 19th). A few days later, we visited the trout (introduced in the late 19th century from California) breeding facility, somewhat puzzlingly run by the Department of Conservation.

With the arrival of the equinox here, we can certainly feel fall in the air, especially in the mountains as we returned to Wellington. Days here have been warm in the sun, but passing clouds or a step into the shade is a quick reminder that summer is over.

--Valeurie