Our Changing World

Avocado seed powder to make snacks, fish waste skin for wound healing, and bioactive compounds made from brewer's spent grain - Claire Concannon visits a food lab at AUT turning food waste into wealth. Food is usually a no-no in a science lab, but this lab at the Auckland University of Technology is different. One fridge is labelled 'beer research'. There's a drawer full of stick bl...

Climate-change-induced sea level rise is happening. What will this mean for our low-lying wetlands? Will they get eroded away - releasing more carbon? Or will they grow at the same rate, and hold their ground? And what will this mean for the critters that live there? A team are investigating at an Otago wetland that might be the first in New Zealand to make this change. From Lake Waihola, not far...

We might think deep-sea squid look a bit strange, but if they have the capacity for it, they would likely consider us monsters! Claire speaks to a squidologist and a PhD candidate about their research trying to understand more about the lives of deep-sea squid. When you picture where creatures live on Earth, what do you see? A tropical jungle? A highland pasture? An inland lake? Maybe a rocky seas...

Jump onboard an alpine flight to photograph some glaciers! The annual snowline survey has been running since 1977, but today new techniques are allowing researchers to go beyond 2D photos to make 3D models of the glaciers. Claire Concannon joins the team for a long day of flying and photographing. It's a bright blue morning in Queenstown. Summer has been and gone, and the first hints of autum...

A new six-part video series highlights the state of our oceans, and efforts from researchers, Māori and other partners to develop sustainable solutions. Check out this new series of short video documentaries, Turning The Tide . Across six episodes, Turning The Tide shows what's happening beneath the ocean surface, and highlights mahi across the motu to restore marine ecosystems. We hear first...

Māori and Pacific peoples are three to six times more likely to develop stomach cancer than New Zealanders with European ancestry. Claire Concannon visits a research team taking aim at this disparity. Dr Tom Mules wears two hats. He's a researcher at the Malaghan Institute for Medical Research, but he's also a gastroenterologist at Hutt Valley hospital. It's there that he meets pati...

Aotearoa is a country plagued by pests, but conservationists are hoping advances in drone technology could turn the tables. Producer William Ray looks at how drones are being trialled in controlling everything from microscopic diseases to elusive wallabies, and wilding pine trees. A ghostly grey image appears on the laptop screen. "You see these deer?" asks Jordan Munn, pointing at a cor...

Caves created by rivers of lava underlie New Zealand's biggest city. A new research project is documenting Auckland's lava caves, hoping to protect this hidden geological heritage and understand what future eruptions might have in store. Known for its iconic maunga like Rangitoto and Maungawhau Mt Eden, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland is a city built on an active volcanic field that has erupted at least...

A deadly frog fungus has decimated frog populations around the world, but frog biodiversity hotspot Papua New Guinea remains untouched - for now. In this episode of ABC podcast Pacific Scientific, James Purtill discovers the amphibian treasures of the world's largest tropical island, and what conservationists are doing to protect them. Frog populations around the world have been decimated by a dea...

This week, Phil Vine dives into the science of climate attribution. How much is climate change affecting extreme weather events? And how can this new science prepare us for the future? For a long time when asked this question, climate scientists simply shook their heads. They had been telling people that global warming was making many storms, floods, and weather events worse - but when asked: &quo...

Could the answer to one of our most pressing health needs be hiding in Aotearoa's bush? On Our Changing World this week, Liz Garton heads out on a foray to discover some of our fungal gems, and she finds out what we're doing to uncover their potential antibiotic properties. Could the answer to the global problem of antibiotic resistant bacteria be in our backyard? It's a question being given...

A multi-year research project aims to find out the risks from two Bay of Plenty offshore island volcanoes: Tūhua / Mayor Island and Whakaari / White Island In the National Isotope Centre in Gracefield, Jacqueline Grech Licari is bent over half a sediment core section, carefully looking for a dark line of ash - a clue left behind by Whakaari, a volcanic island in the Bay of Plenty. Tracing the hist...

Meet two winners of the 2023 Prime Ministers Science Prizes. In the wake of the 2019 Whakaari eruption, Professor Ben Kennedy engaged communities with the science of volcano hazards - mahi that earns him the 2023 Science Communication Prize. Meanwhile, Future Scientist prizewinner 17-year-old Sunny Perry has developed a helpful soil map. When Sunny Perry decided to make a map identifying locations...

Kate Evans visits a passionate team as they carpet a remote volcanic island in Tonga with poisoned bait, hoping to eradicate rats. What does it take to complete this kind of project, what are the chances of success, and what will it mean for the island's ecosystems if they manage to remove the rats once and for all? Rat eradication from islands is a team sport. It's not a competition - but if...

Journalist Rebekah White meets two people who have been counting albatrosses on remote islands in the subantarctic for more than three decades. Their research shows that at least one species is en route to extinction. A few changes to the way we fish could save it. Gibson's and Antipodean albatrosses are citizens of no one nation. They are ocean birds, living on the wind and waves, travelling...

New Zealand once led the world in marine protection. Now it looks like we will fail to meet our international promise to protect 30 percent of our ocean estate by 2030. Why is stopping fishing so politically fraught? How might our ideas about marine protection need to change? And why, when our seas are in need, is it taking us so long to learn to talk to each other? This is an updated excerpt from...

Kuaka bar-tailed godwits make the longest non-stop flights, and researchers are using hi-tech tags to solve the mystery of how and when they sleep. Godwits hold the record for non-stop long-distance flight - and scientists are wondering when they find time to sleep on the wing. The long-distance godwit migration Eastern bar-tailed godwits or kuaka spend up to six months every year in Australasia....

The Bounty Islands are tiny in terms of area - just some bits of granite jutting out of the ocean. But they are huge in terms of seabirds. James Frankham joins a team researching the erect-crested penguins who breed in this remote archipelago. Recent counts suggest the penguins of the Bounties are doing fine. But this is not the case on the Antipodes Islands, and the researchers desperately want t...

What roles do our ocean ecosystems play in capturing carbon? Kate Evans speaks to iwi Māori working to improve the health of an estuary in the Bay of Plenty, and to scientists studying the fiords of New Zealand's southwest coast. There's potential for huge amounts of carbon to be locked away, if we don't mess it up.  To avert the worst of the climate crisis we need to reduce our emissions. One way...

People and livestock gobble so much fish that the seas soon won't keep up. Is the answer to grow fish on land? Kate Evans meets scientists figuring out the puzzles of how to farm some of New Zealand's iconic ocean creatures. Many of our fisheries are under pressure. At the same time people are eating more fish. Could farming iconic New Zealand species be the future? And what are the advantages of...

Kina numbers are exploding on some of our reefs, decimating seaweed habitats. Could this problem be solved by eating them? Kate Evans investigates the potential of kina-nomics. The kina are out of control. As many as 40 urchins crowd into a single square metre of rock, devoid of other life. A kina barren is a symptom of an ecosystem out of balance. Could we eat our way to a solution? Kina zombies...

Crackle, pop, woof, crunch, click. In the ocean, an undersea orchestra is in full swing. Journalist Kate Evans discovers who's playing in it and why, and what happens when human noise drowns out this symphony in the sea. Symphony in the sea Journalist Kate Evans and presenter Claire Concannon discover a world of snapping shrimp, singing whales and barking John Dory. Researchers Professor Craig Rad...

A collaboration between Our Changing World and New Zealand Geographic, the Voice of Tangaroa series explores the state of our oceans, and the extraordinary variety of life that calls it home.  93% of New Zealand is covered in salt water. 80% of our biodiversity is in our seas. And yet this is the part of our realm we understand the least and treat the worst. A collaboration between Our Changing Wo...

A group of young New Zealanders and two meteorologists travel to South Georgia Island in the southern Atlantic Ocean to collect weather observations - continuing the scientific legacy of early Antarctic explorers like Shackleton. Clarification: In this episode there is a discussion about comparing notes about icebergs taken by Shackleton's team aboard the Aurora to that of the current expedit...

An ambitious project to rid the remote Antipodes Island of introduced mice proved successful in 2018. Claire Concannon visits the spectacular subantarctic island to meet the locals - from penguins to megaherbs - and the people studying the wildlife. Plus, we learn about what's at stake in the next island eradication challenge for New Zealand. Excitement rises on board the expedition yacht Evohe as...