Down the microscope, the jar of seawater and zooplankton that Helen collected off the back of the ship has revealed larval jellyfish, tiny crabs, sea lice and microscopic organisms – things like ostracods, copepods and chaetognaths. These animals are all clues to how the wider Kermadecs marine ecosystem works. The Kermadecs is not an area [...]

This morning, I went snorkeling around the Meyer Islands – a small island group just off Raoul Island – with the expedition scientists. Libby Liggins, Clinton Duffy and Stephen Ullrich were collecting seaweeds, corals and starfish and Helen Bostock was hoping to gather some marine sediment. I saw a bright yellow grey drummer, a yellow [...]

“Whales on the starboard bow,” was piped throughout the ship this morning. Rochelle Constantine, a marine mammal specialist from the University of Auckland, raced to the armory to get her biopsy gun and camera. Within 20 minutes she and Clinton Duffy were in the RHIB in pursuit of the whales. From the bridge the Navy [...]

Kermadec petrels (Pterodroma neglecta) and Kermadec white-faced storm petrels (Pelagodroma marina albiclunis) have been landing on the deck of the ship. These seabirds breed on Raoul Island and the nearby Meyer Islands, and plummet down from their cliff-side nests to feed in the ocean. With a diet of small squid, fish and krill, they are [...]

Today, we circumnavigated the island in a RHIB, looking for dolphins and hoping for a few whale sightings. There was no sign of the little dolphin pod that greeted us the day we arrived and no whale signs but we’ll keep looking – people on Raoul island have been seeing whales every day. In the [...]

What was I saying about science and serendipity? On Thursday we had an unexpected haul of pumice fresh from an underwater volcanic eruption. Last night we went fishing for Galapagos sharks and found something better. Clinton Duffy, Department of Conservation shark biologist, is here to study Galapagos sharks, one of the top predators in the [...]

Last night, when Lieutenant Tim Oscar, the Officer of the Watch arrived at the bridge for his midnight to 4am shift (seriously, that’s what they do, all the lights on the bridge are turned off and they watch the sea) he noticed something strange. He turned the ship’s spotlights on and discovered the ship was [...]

I went outside at first light and found the ship in the middle of a heaving grey sea, with nothing but ocean and sky in every direction. Three dark-winged birds – probably petrels – swooped and dived amongst the waves. It might look like a great big nothingness, but there’s a lot going on in the ocean [...]

“You can’t escape the geology in New Zealand,” said Helen Bostock, a marine geologist on the voyage. “It’s in your face whether you like it or not.” It’s true. As we left Auckland this morning we were sailing away from two erupting volcanoes: Tongariro, in the middle of the Taupo Volcanic Zone, had just erupted [...]