Our Changing World

Every year, tens to hundreds of seabirds fall out of the sky across Auckland city. Disoriented by the bright lights, Cook's petrels crash-land and collide with buildings - but a dedicated group of volunteers hit the pavement to rescue them. Join us on 'Petrel Patrol' and go behind the scenes at a bird hospital, where squid smoothies and bath time help the seabirds find their wings again.

The concrete jungle of inner-city Auckland is no place for a seabird.

But that's where many Cook's petrels, or tītī, end up every year: crash-landed in urban areas after becoming discombobulated by the bright city lights.

Luckily, the Petrel Patrol is on hand to rescue lost seabirds.

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Ariel Heswall, a PhD candidate at the University of Auckland, is the brains behind the volunteer Petrel Patrol, which hits the pavement on early mornings across a few weeks in Autumn to search for grounded seabirds. She was inspired to start the patrol after seeing hundreds of Cook's petrels come into the Birdcare Aotearoa hospital as patients.

Cook's petrels - or "Cookies", as Ariel affectionately calls them - once lived on mountaintops across Aotearoa. But now, they are restricted to three offshore islands. One population lives in the south, on Whenua Hou Codfish Island off the coast of Rakiura. The other lives in the Hauraki Gulf, with most breeding on Hauturu-o-toi Little Barrier Island and a few more on Aotea Great Barrier Island.

The Hauraki Gulf Cook's petrels forage for food in the Tasman Sea, which means they have to fly across the Auckland isthmus to find a feed. With city lights creating disorienting light pollution, this journey is perilous - especially for young fledglings making the trip for the first time. It's these inexperienced birds that often fall victim to the lights - or even collide with buildings - and end up at Birdcare Aotearoa.

Join us as we tag along on a Petrel Patrol, and then visit Birdcare Aotearoa to meet recovering Cook's petrels and learn about what it takes to rehabilitate seabirds from wildlife rehabilitation expert Lynn Miller. Plus, Ariel explains her research into why light pollution affects seabirds like Cook's petrels.

To learn more:

Ariel has started the Protect our Petrels website which includes info on how to safely rescue a grounded seabird.

We have lots of seabird-themed episodes in our back-catalogue, including this one from 2022 on the Karioi Project helping ōi grey-faced petrels near Whāingaroa Raglan, and this interview with seabird scientist Edin Whitehead on seabirds of northern New Zealand.

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

Are all snowflakes really unique? What makes some snow better for skiing? And what's the difference between snow and hail? Join Alison Ballance and Katy Gosset as they hit the slopes of Mt Ruapehu and discover a science wonderland of snow.

You've probably heard the poetic fact that every single snowflake is unique.

This might be true on a molecular level, but doesn't quite pan out for macro snowflake shapes, Alison Ballance and Katy Gosset discover in this episode of 'The science of...'.

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Alison and Katy trace the journey of a snowflake from its inception high in the atmosphere to its fate on Aotearoa's mountaintops, and discover why snow is not just important for skiers and snowboarders.

Join us as Alison and Katy hit the slopes of Ruapehu to dive into the fascinating science of snow.

To learn more:

Visit the original episode webpage for The science of snow.

Discover more "cool" science in Physics on ice and Glaciers as barometers of climate change.

Listen to this episode about using historic weather records and machine learning to predict future weather.

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Nuclear fusion is a holy grail for researchers seeking clean energy. This week we head to the south of France with ABC science journalist Carl Smith in this episode from the Strange Frontiers series. Here, a multi-billion-dollar collaboration between several countries called ITER is trying to make industrial-scale nuclear fusion a reality.

What if we could create bountiful supplies of energy with near-zero carbon emissions? That's the promise of nuclear fusion - a reaction where atoms merge.

Fusion is the reaction happening at the centre of the sun and other stars. Unlike nuclear fission or splitting atoms, it doesn't produce radioactive waste.

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Last year, scientists announced a fusion "breakthrough", with one experiment producing more energy than had been put in - generating just enough energy to boil 60 kettles.

Many challenges remain on the journey to achieve large-scale nuclear fusion. At the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) in the south of France, a team from several countries are working to secure the "holy grail" of energy at industrial scale.

Carl Smith from the ABC goes behind the scenes at ITER for this episode of the series Strange Frontiers. Listen to hear more about the potential of nuclear fusion and the multi-billion-dollar quest to make it a reality.

Strange Frontiers is a seven-part series taking you to remarkable, hard-to-reach and off-limits places where scientists work. Listen to all episodes on the ABC website.

To learn more:

Read Carl's article about ITER on the ABC News website.

Listen to an interview with one researcher behind the "breakthrough" on Nine to Noon.

This Our Changing World episode features Kiwi research aiming to improve solar panels.

The RNZ podcast Elemental features episodes on elements relevant to nuclear energy (both fusion and fission) including Hydrogen, Plutonium and Thorium.

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

Tauranga-based producer Justine Murray dons some gumboots and meets some teeny-tiny cockles as she joins a team surveying the Waihi estuary. Professor Kura Paul-Burke is weaving mātauranga Māori and western science together to address questions that local iwi have about the health of the estuary, and what can be done to improve it.

There are many signs in the taiao (natural world) if you look close enough. Like when the tōrea (oystercatcher) strikes at low tide looking for food; these birds love shellfish, crabs and tuangi (cockles). But how long does it stay? And what is the relationship of the bird to what's around it?

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That's just a glimpse into the tohu surveys (observations) that Professor Kura Paul-Burke and her research team are carrying out as part of the research project 'Tāwharautia te wahapū o Waihi - Protect the Waihi estuary' supported by Our Land Our Water and led by Te Rūnanga o Ngāti Whakahemo.

For generations this estuary was used as a mahinga kai (food gathering place) but over the years the water quality has declined, due to increased pathogens and sedimentation, much of which comes from four neighbouring water canals. Kura, the country's first wāhine Māori Professor of Marine Science and Aquaculture, based at the University of Waikato, argues the straighter the canals are, the more likely pollutants or paruparu makes its way into the estuary.

As the water quality declines, the loss of species also means the loss of mātauranga Māori. Kura and her team draw on both western science and Māori knowledge systems in this study.

Integral to the harbour is the nana (seagrass) meadows. Nana is a kōhanga (nursery) and a foraging habitat for young snapper and trevally, but it is decreasing at an alarming rate.

In 1943 nana meadows were plentiful in the Pukehina district. Today there are just two discrete beds left - this impacts the feeding habits and survival rates of tuangi (cockles).

Kura and her team are on a mission to assess the health of the estuary and figure out what needs to be done. Producer Justine Murray joins the team at Pukehina to learn more.

To learn more

Justine Murray spoke to another of Kura's PhD students last year about the resilience of crayfish in Tauranga Harbour.

Listen to 'Collaborating to move freshwater species' to learn about weaving mātauranga Māori and western science together for conservation translocations.

Hear more about using these two knowledge systems together in 'A bridge between science and mātauranga Māori' and 'The science of Matariki'…

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Have you ever had a catchy tune you just can't get out of your head? Most of us can imagine sounds - music, voices, environmental noise - to varying degrees. But about 1% of people can't imagine sounds at all. This lack of auditory imagery is called anauralia. Claire Concannon meets a team of researchers investigating this newly described phenomenon, and speaks to a musician who experiences anauralia.

If I asked you to play your favourite song in your head, how clear would it be? Would you hear all the different instruments - the tone of them, the timbre? Or would it be just a basic melody, as if played from a distance?  

Or is this something you just cannot do at all?  

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Most people, over 99% of us, can imagine sounds in our head - environmental sounds, music and our own voices. Some of us imagine better than others. But there is a small proportion of people, estimated at just less than 1%, who can't imagine sounds. 

This lack of 'auditory imagery' has recently been given a name by psychologist Professor Tony Lambert, based at the University of Auckland, and his colleague. They call it anauralia. 

Tony first became intrigued by the idea after reading about people who lack visual imagery. This phenomenon was called aphantasia by Professor Adam Zeman in 2015, whose work was widely reported.  

But from Tony's point of view, while aphantasia was getting its day in the sun, a lack of auditory imagery had gone largely unstudied. So, he decided to change that. 

The key questions that Tony and his team now want to answer centre around how anauraliacs (people who experience anauralia) process and store information in the present, create and recall memories, and imagine the future. Previous research has linked these particular functions of the brain to auditory imagery, so what strategies do people lacking imagined sound use instead? 

PhD candidates Zoé Schelp and Gage Quigley-Tump have used results from the New Zealand Attitudes and Values Survey to start investigating. The survey included questions asking about auditory and visual imagery. Zoé recruited some of those who reported experiencing anauralia to her study of working memory. She uses a simple memory test to challenge both anauraliacs and control participants, and then interviews them about the different strategies they employ.  …

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In September 2022, two New Zealand patients became the first in the world to participate in a phase 1 clinical trial testing a new therapy for a rare neurogenetic condition called myotonic dystrophy. Claire Concannon learns about the trial, and how a new Neurogenetic Registry and Biobank covering 70 conditions is helping to connect New Zealand patients with international research.

Our genes control part of our makeup. And we know that variations in different genes can impact whether we are more susceptible to get certain diseases - cancer say, or dementia. This can include multiple different genes and can be tricky to untangle. 

But for some people cause and effect are more of a straight line. For neurogenetic conditions, a variation in just one gene results in neurological symptoms - affecting the brain, nervous system or muscles. 

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Neurogenetic conditions are the focus of Associate Professor Richard Roxburgh's research at the Neurogenetics Research Clinic at the University of Auckland. Also a practicing neurologist at Auckland hospital, he has seen hundreds of patients that suffer from these diseases. 

Being able to give a diagnosis can be a big help for patients, he says. Because these are genetic based and passed down from generation to generation, patients will often have witnessed other family members experience the same symptoms and disease progression. 

'Neurogenetic conditions' is an umbrella term covering conditions like Huntington's disease, different muscular dystrophies, Friedreich's ataxia, spinal muscular atrophy - the list is long. They are rare conditions, each with their own underlying genetic cause and range of symptoms and severity.  

Their rarity makes them difficult to study, and to develop effective therapies for. Which is why, Miriam Rodrigues, acting on the request of patients, set up a New Zealand Neurogenetic Registry. Now called Pūnaha Io, the registry, and associated biobank, covers around 70 different conditions, with approximately 1300 registered patients out of an estimated 4000 in the country. 

It was this registry, and associated research, that attracted the attention of a US based company Dyne Therapeutics. Dyne were scouting for suitable locations for a phase 1 clinical trial into their therapy aimed at helping those with a condition called myotonic dystrophy. 

Two New Zealand patients were the first people in the world to take part in this trial in September 2022.  …

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Here in Aotearoa, it's the winter solstice: the shortest day (and longest night) of the year. We're marking the occasion with an episode celebrating the starry night sky. Podcaster Max Balloch looks up in search of stories told through constellations, and finds that light pollution is smudging out the stars for many New Zealanders. What can be done to restore our connection with the night sky?

For humans all over the planet, and all across time, the night sky has been a catalyst for storytelling. Different cultures paint the dark with their own stories of the stars, about where they are, who they are, and what they believe.

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This isn't some ancient, forgotten art - it's alive, and it's organic. Victoria Campbell, a passionate educator of Mātauraka Māori and Māori astronomy says the most special star to her is Rehua.

"Rehua in particular is associated with knowledge. And as an educator, I find a really special connection there to be able to bring forth kōrero, or dialogue and discussion, about knowledge for the benefit of us going forward as a nation, and as a population," she says.

Rehua is part of the constellation known in some cultures - including Greek mythology - as Scorpius. In Polynesian cultures, it's known as Māui's fishhook. And in Java, Indonesia, it's referred to as "the brooded swan". These are three interpretations (among many) of the same pattern of stars, illustrating the connection between stars and storytelling that transcends culture, time, and space.

New Zealand has some of the most pristine skies on the planet. Those living in rural areas bathe in the lights of the universe and embrace the warm hug of the Milky Way that streams across the sky. 

But for most people on Earth, the sky is being smudged out.

Light pollution, which occurs when excess light is reflected into the sky at night, is experienced by 83% of Earth's population. This yellow haze outshines the stars and melts the Milky Way out of view. 

While many New Zealanders enjoy darkness, over half are left blinded by the light. Fifty-six percent of kiwis cannot see the Milky Way in the night sky, due to the light pollution leaking out from urban environments. 

But it can be stopped, and we could have dark skies once again. Steve Butler, an award-winning DarkSky advocate, is one of the many kiwis fighting for the night.

"We sell ourselves as, you know, 100% pure. So, my view, is that to achieve 100% pure we should be looking after the night as well, so that's 50% of our environment," he says. …

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Rats giggle. Dogs wag their tail. How do other animals express joy? You can't ask them, so researchers have to find other sneaky ways of figuring out animal emotions. Professor Ximena Nelson is studying how curious and intelligent kea, New Zealand's alpine parrots, might show positive feeling.

Some rats giggle when their bellies are tickled. Researchers have known it for some time now, though it requires special microphones to detect this - they giggle at an ultrasonic frequency. 

It's just one way that one animal expresses joy. How might others be doing it? 

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Negative emotions are a bit easier to study, says Professor Ximena Nelson from the University of Canterbury. The animal might yelp or flinch, retract a limb, or shy away. But positive emotions are trickier. You can't ask the animal, and you can't look for those telltale signs in humans - a smile or crinkle around the eye, especially if the animal has completely different facial muscles, as is the case for kea.

It's a multi-step puzzle. Starting with: is the animal even likely to experience positive emotions? For kea, Ximena had her own anecdotal observations of them playing in the mountains as the first clues that they can be joyful. From there, she and her team investigated the different calls that kea made, and then analysed the different behaviours of the kea as they made these calls, to try to discern their functions. 

This proved extremely difficult, but one call did seem to be strongly linked to play - the warble call, or kea laughter as it is called. To confirm this, the next step was a series of playback experiments. Design a kea-proof speaker, bring it high into Arthur's Pass, and then investigate what the kea do when you play different calls and other sounds to them. 

Turns out the warble call is like a play contagion. Kea were more likely to start playing after hearing the call, and to warble themselves. 

Ximena is now focused on trying to determine if this is a reflection of positive emotion such as joy, and if so, does it influence the bird's decision making, as it does in humans? This trickier second step will have to be done using captive kea that can be trained to take part in a glass half-empty or half-full experiment.

Listen to the episode to learn about the how and the why of studying positive emotions in animals. 

To learn more: 

Listen to this episode from Alison Ballance, who visited Ximena's spider lab to learn about jumping spiders …

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There's nothing like a good birthday party, especially one filled with games and fun activities. The Auckland Bioengineering Institute might have missed their 20th birthday due to Covid-19, but they were determined to throw a good ole shindig. Claire Concannon visits to find out what they've been up to for the past 20 years, and what the plan is for the next two decades.

How do you throw a good birthday party?

Have a nice big venue. Invite everyone. Fill it with music, lights, balloons, holographic displays of the respiratory system, computers you can control using your mind, interactive surgery games, giant inflatable colons.

Okay, so maybe the Auckland Bioengineering Institute's 20th birthday party is a little bit different to the usual.

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"The ABI turned 20 at the start of Covid. We wanted to celebrate - of course we couldn't, so now we are putting on this event and inviting the public in," says Professor Merryn Tawhai, deputy director of the Auckland Bioengineering Institute (ABI).

Merryn explains that, although celebrations were pushed back a few years, they wanted to mark their two decades of research with style. So, they filled The Cloud on Auckland's waterfront with displays, games and activities based on the work they do from 9 -14* May and opened it up to everyone.

The 'Bioengineering the future' event was a celebration of what the institute has been working on, and what it is working towards. Their research is wide ranging - from fundamental research into how the body works, to developing instruments to improve diagnosis and treatment of disease, to biomimetics and biorobotics.

One idea that they've been working on for some time is the concept of a 'digital twin'. This would be an online model of a person, created using real data and tuned to exactly how that person's body works.  This means you would be able to 'test' things in advance on this digital twin. For example, testing if certain drugs work to help an individual, or not.

To create a digital twin - which models how all the body's systems work together - you need fundamental understanding across molecular, cellular, tissue, organ and system scales.

Working to understand the heart at cellular, tissue and organ level is Dr JC Han. JC is focused on how the heart muscle contracts to pump blood around the body, and specifically how much energy it uses to do this. Working with rat animal models and a specific instrument developed at the ABI, JC wants to understand the efficiency of the heart muscle system, and what happens when things go wrong…

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In Aotearoa we talk a lot about mammalian predators attacking our native wildlife, but other insidious pests are quietly taking over - weedy plants. Tackling these weeds using chemical and mechanical means only gets us so far, so researchers and conservationists also look towards the plants' natural enemies to help. Claire Concannon visits a group of Manaaki Whenua - Landcare Research scientists investigating biocontrol agents to assist in the fight.

Aotearoa is in the weeds.

There are around 2300 species of native New Zealand plants, but an estimated 25000-30000 species of plants from overseas.

And many of them have gone rogue.

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Without their natural predators, which co-evolved with them to keep them in check, some of these plants have escaped out of our houses and gardens.

The worst of weeds grow rapidly, spread voraciously and smother and kill native plants. Traditional chemical or mechanical control methods - spraying herbicides or pulling out the weeds - are expensive, time consuming and short-lived. So, what else have we got in the toolbox?

One option is biological control, or biocontrol for short. This involves finding a natural enemy of the weed from its host country to keep it in check. Some insects, mites and plant pathogens have evolved to be extremely plant specific, and these are the agents that Dr Angela Bownes is keen to recruit.

Angela is a senior researcher in weed biocontrol at Manaaki Whenua - Landcare Research. Based on their research campus in Lincoln, she works closely with fellow senior research Dr Ronny Groenteman to investigate different agents that might be helpful in the battle against weeds.

The research they do is to aid the National Biocontrol Collective - a consortium of regional councils, unitary authorities, and the Department of Conservation. The National Biocontrol Collective funds the applied weed biocontrol research that takes place at Manaaki Whenua and has worked with them to develop a weed prioritisation tool to build a hit list of the top weeds to target.

At the Lincoln campus the researchers work in the specially designed invertebrate containment facility to put the biocontrol agents through their paces. Arnaud Cartier manages the facility, ensuring all the restrictions are in place so that no agent escapes before it is approved for release.

Listen to the episode in which Claire Concannon visits the facility to learn more about biocontrol agents, how researchers ensure they are safe to release, and the hurdles an agent must clear before approval

To learn more: …

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details