The November 2011 edition of NIWA's flagship publication, Water & Atmosphere.

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NIWA's flagship publication returns after a year away, with features on water quality, farmed hapuka, the Hector's dolphin, great white sharks and bio-fuel from wastewater.

Marine biofouling creates a huge headache for New Zealand aquaculture. Read about a promising new technology for controlling biofouling.

RV Tangaroa in newly formed ice in the northern Ross Sea. Scientists from NIWA and other institutions travelled for seven weeks and covered more than 7000 nautical miles to sample Antarctic marine life. The back cover shows the ship’s track and sampling stations. Read about the voyage and see some of the finds in 'Back from the ice bearing scientific treasure'.

A moon jelly drifts past a line of cultured mussels while NIWA scientists set up experiments nearby. They are exploring the benefits of integrated co-culture, where the waste from one species is food for one or more other cultured species. Read more in 'Finding hidden treasue in aquaculture waste'.

A novel twist on existing technology gives NIWA scientists greater scope for using sediment colour to divine what’s happening at the microbe level. Read how this new technique is being used to track environmental damage and recovery in the article Colourful seafloor.

The first Waikato BioBlitz meant 24 hours of intense scrutiny of Hamilton’s riverside precinct. NIWA provided scientific expertise and entertaining education of young and old. Here, aquatic plant specialist Tracey Edwards shows students the invasive weeds hornwort and egeria. Read about the blitz.

Adult paua on coralline algae (and vice versa). Research is revealing the role corallines play in providing a hospitable habitat for paua spat to settle.

Pylons marching across the New Zealand landscape are a central part of our lifelines and energy-delivery infrastructure. NIWA research is helping to develop new sources of renewable energy and plan for our future energy needs.

Kiwi kids spend a lot of time outdoors, in and out of school. Scientists have begun to measure schoolchildren’s UV exposure and are compiling a database that can answer a lot questions. Read about it in "How much UV are New Zealand schoolchildren getting?".

NIWA scientists have documented a warming trend in the Tasman Sea using data collected as part of a collaboration with scientists from Scripps Institution of Oceanography (USA) and CSIRO (Austalia). We hypothesise a link with declining hoki stocks in Ocean variability and hoki decline.

Horse mussels growing on the sea bed. These shellfish are filter feeders and are vulnerable to the effects of suspended sediment in the water. For details of recent modelling work to assess these effects, see “Modelling the effects of muddy waters on shellfish”.

Stratocumulus clouds over Wellington. What weather did these clouds bring? New methods for predicting the weather mean that the accuracy of weather forecasts is improving. For more details, refer to "How good are New Zealand weather forecasts?".

The scleractinian coral Desmophyllum dianthus. This stony coral, known as the cup coral, is commonly attached to other corals and is found in deep-sea waters around New Zealand. Actual size: 3-5cm in diameter. NIWA’s work on corals includes determination of the ages of deep-sea species. For more details see “Chronicles of the deep: ageing deep-sea corals in New Zealand waters”.

Kim Thomas, NIWA’s southernmost technician, checking the solar tracker for the infrared spectrometer on the roof of the Arrival Heights laboratory, Antarctica, in October 2002. The infrared spectrometer – which measures a range of trace gases – is one of the instruments used in NIWA’s Antarctic atmospheric measurement programme. The programme includes tracking the progress of the ozone hole which forms in spring each year. See “NIWA’s southernmost technician and the 2002 ozone hole” for more details.

Soil erosion during heavy rainfall has resulted in the deposition of a thick layer of mud on an intertidal flat in this estuary, smothering much of the shellfish bed shown, and killing the shellfish. This is one example of how human activities in the surrounding catchment can impact on a fragile estuarine ecosystem. NIWA is developing and applying a range of modelling techniques to help understand and predict effects such as this. Examples are given in the news forum, Alien predator: freshwater jellyfish in New Zealand and Assessing human impacts on estuaries: it’s a risky business in this issue.