Photo / APN

What caused the death of Moko the dolphin remains a mystery after a post-mortem, the Department of Conservation (DOC) says.

Boat strike and drowning through net entanglement had been ruled out as potential causes in a report released today.

There were no obvious signs of extensive bruising or skeletal fractures, making blunt trauma an unlikely cause of death, and no usual signs of drowning were present, Massey University pathologists said.

The pathologists were “unable to establish cause of death due to post mortem decomposition”, the report said.

Read full article from The New Zealand Herald.

NOISY BEASTS: Gurnard communicate with each other using distinctive grunts.

By KIRAN CHUG – The Dominion Post
Last updated 05:00 07/07/2010

Under water grunts, chirps and pops recorded by an Auckland scientist have revealed a mysterious language used by New Zealand fish.

Audio recordings analysed for the first time in New Zealand to find out whether fish talk, will be played to an audience in Wellington today, presented by Auckland University researcher Shahriman Ghazali.

His study began two years ago, when he started listening to recordings taken by colleagues studying ambient noise in the Leigh marine reserve north of Auckland. They made an underwater microphone, with which Mr Ghazali decided to try to establish which sounds were being made by which fish.

“Bigeyes are producing something like a popping sound but they organise them temporarily so it’s like morse code.”

To discover which fish was making each noise, Mr Ghazali brought groups of individual species from the sea to a tank at the laboratory.

Using an easily obtainable hydrophone, or underwater microphone, he continually recorded crayfish to test if there was any basis to the commonly held belief they made sounds when divers approached.

Read full article from Stuff.

ON A MISSION: Grim has averaged 108km a day since being tagged off Stewart Island on March 29.

Researchers tracking a young great white shark are more concerned for its safety as it basks in Bay of Plenty than about a shark attack.

The 2.8-metre-long shark, named Grim by conservation scientists, surprised researchers who are tracking him with his reluctance to follow his peers and move north to the tropics.

In three months, Grim has travelled more than 2000 kilometres, averaging 108km a day on a journey that has taken him from Stewart Island to the shallow waters of Eastern Bay of Plenty.

Conservation Department marine scientist Clinton Duffy said the group had tagged six sharks in the summer, but Grim, a juvenile aged three to five years, was the only one staying around New Zealand.

He was possibly happy to stay where he found food. “He’s on a real tiki tour around the North Island.”

Yesterday, Grim was 7.5km off Te Kaha, the closest to shore he had been since setting off on his journey on March 28. Scientists were more concerned about Grim’s safety, than the risk of a shark attack. “The risk is greater to the shark the closer he comes to shore.”

Great white sharks were occasionally caught in gill nets, with some reported to have been caught off nearby Torere, which Grim had visited.

However, if sharks were alive when they were discovered in gill nets, they often had a good chance of surviving when they were freed, Mr Duffy said.

Great white sharks were protected under the Wildlife Act, and the DOC study was being carried out in conjunction with the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research to learn more about their movements.

Earlier in the study, another shark named Shack surprised the team for diving to a depth of 1200 metres while migrating from Stewart Island to Brisbane.

The sharks were tagged off Stewart Island and the Chatham Islands with an electronic device that records movement by sending information to a satellite.

(Paul The Octopus predicts Serbia’s shock win)

AAP – 10 hours ago

Disastrous news for England fans ahead of the crunch last-16 match with Germany on Sunday: an octopus in Germany with a perfect track record of predicting World Cup matches has predicted a German win.

Two plastic boxes containing tasty morsels, one with a German flag and one with an England flag, were lowered into the tank that houses Paul the octopus at his home in Sea Life in Oberhausen, western Germany.

Paul immediately climbed into the German box to a huge roar of approval from the crowd.

Earlier in the tournament, the mollusc medium correctly predicted Germany would beat Ghana and Australia in their group D matches and was also right to predict they would lose to Serbia.

Read full article from Yahoo.

NewsCore | June 21, 2010 10:00AM

TURKISH and Australian archaeologists have discovered a “museum under the sea” at Gallipoli.

The find includes the wreck of a barge that carried injured and dead Australian and New Zealand soldiers from Anzac Cove during the World War I Gallipoli campaign in Turkey,  The Dominion Post reported.

A sonar survey also found the wreck of British destroyer HMS Lewis, along with shrapnel from lead bullets fired by Turkish snipers at Anzac troops as they swam in the sea, the newspaper reported.

The survey covered the seabed adjacent to the beaches where Australian and New Zealand troops landed in the 1915 campaign.

Read full article from News.com.au.

An exclusive look at the oil spill with a dive team who explored how the oil is impacting the Gulf of Mexico.

View video on The New Zealand Herald.

Hundreds of convictions involving people arrested in undercover Fisheries Ministry paua sale operations since 1996 could be overturned following a High Court decision involving a major Wellington paua poaching bust.

High Court judge Ailsa Duffy issued a May 18 decision which found the law was so poorly worded it did not allow penalties to be imposed if illegal paua had been purchased from undercover fisheries officers.

Justice Duffy has recommended the law be rewritten.

“This is another occasion where the court has found that a drafting mistake in the Fisheries Act has had the result of making the enforcement of the offence provisions in the act ineffective,” Justice Duffy said.

The case involved a Manukau District Court conviction of Vietnamese woman Thin Thi Vu for aiding and encouraging Huong Ly to purchase paua from an undercover fisheries officer operating under the assumed name of Brett Stevens.

Read full article from Stuff.

Buyers beware, if you’ve bought a fish called Basa from the supermarket, it was probably catfish from the polluted Mekong Delta.

In the last year nearly 300,000kgs of frozen Vietnamese catfish was imported, much of it being sold at Countdown, Woolworths, and Foodtown.

At half the price of New Zealand fish, the Basa has been flying out the door, but supermarket giant Progressive is being slammed for failing to label where the fish is from, and for destroying the livelihoods of local fishermen.

Watch TV article on Close Up.

By Charlotte Tonkin

The Department of Conservation (DOC) is asking the public to be on the lookout and report any sightings of southern right whales, as they make their way north in their annual migration.

Right Whale

The number of sightings doubled between 2008 and 2009 and DOC hopes this year will be even better.

One hundred and forty-eight southern right whales were recorded during the 2009 migration season, when the DOC received 79 calls of sightings, up from 50 the year before.

DOC wants anyone who sees the coast-loving creatures over the next four months to let them know.

“The data helps us with putting together that bigger picture of the animals’ movements and the relationships between the populations,” says Laura Boren, DOC national marine mammal co-ordinator. “With this we can make better decisions, more informed decisions on how to protect these guys in the future.”

The southern right whale was hunted to near extinction during the 1800s and early 1900s. Because they spend so much time near the surface and float when harpooned, they were considered the “right” whale to kill.

DOC says it’s difficult to say how many are left. The last count was 936 back in 1998.

THE public awareness campaign launched by the Bay of Islands Maritime Park to highlight destruction of fisheries globally and the need to do something locally has picked up speed.

The Bay of Islands

A working group will meet tonight at 6pm at Island Life cafe, on the Paihia waterfront.

Under discussion will be a proposed timeline for the group’s marine reserve campaign and discussion about community consultation, which includes developing a genuine understanding of the possible effects of a marine reserve, having conversations with groups in the area and putting on events to help raise public awareness.

The Bay of Islands Maritime Park is the umbrella group for a number of working groups who are all focused on replenishing the Bay of Islands.

The focus is on establishing a network of no-take marine reserves in the bay.

Public consultation is under way to find out what the community thinks of the proposal.

There is a strong case for marine protection to boost tourism potential – illustrated at Leigh and Kaikoura – an aspect which is likely to draw support from the tourism industry.

Another local group, Experiencing Marine Reserves, is working closely with the Bay of Islands Maritime Park and aims to offer its programme to all schools in the Bay.

New Zealand has 31 mainland reserves. Establishing marine protected areas may not be easy but it’s not too hard, says the director of Victoria University’s centre for marine environmental and economic research Jonathan Gardner. He says he is a strong advocate of marine reserves. While there will always be someone who objects to a particular area being designated a protected area, the Fisheries Ministry and the Conservation Department are working more closely together and he is optimistic about the future, he says.

Fisheries scientists are concerned with stock management and commercial harvest, while marine biologists are concerned with protecting and restoring. But while they might disagree about the state of the marine environment, there is little dispute about the benefits of marine protected areas.

“Marine reserves are wonderful and they serve a social and conservation purpose but they won’t cure fisheries.

“However, ultimately, if there are enough of them and they are linked, they may make a larger contribution,” Dr Gardner says.

Read the full article here.