For the first episode of the new season, we have a very special guest for you, Dr Vonda Cummings, one of the Principal Scientists for Aotearoa’s New Zealand’s National Institute for Water and Atmospheric Research, more commonly known as NIWA.

Her list of academic achievements and commitment to the greater scientific community, especially in the Antarctic science sphere is comprehensive. Vonda’s research is focused on the implications of acidification, climate change and other anthropogenically-derived changes to our oceans. I felt incredibly lucky to catch up with Vonda and record at NIWA headquarters in the capital city of Wellington, where in a short amount of time we delved deep into some fascinating and critically important research.

Together we demystified what usually come across as complex scientific ideas to the average citizen (like myself) around marine chemistry and condensed a lesson on ocean acidification into under 20 minutes. This is a model episode for our second season which hopes to serve as a crash course on the environment via the example of the last great natural science lab in the world - Antarctica.