Our expedition team is back from the Three Kings Islands and ready to answer your questions about what they found and to show you some of the specimens they collected to help build their understanding of the marine environment.
The blog has been a fantastic chance to follow their discoveries but now you can meet them face to face and talk to them about their preliminary findings about marine life in the Three Kings.
In the few days since the team got back on dry land they've already identified that one of the fish they found is likely to be a new species. So who knows what tomorrow will bring.
You can meet four of the team - including University of Queensland PhD student Libby Liggins and one of the expedition's photographers Richard Robinson - tomorrow at 11am at the Auckland Museum. There are some more details of the session below and we've also got some more underwater footagREAD MORE...
A- Tom and Malcolm say ‘great question – and the answer is very important!’
Seaweed is home to all sorts of fish – it’s got lots of nooks and crannies and shady corners for them to hide and live in. For example lots of small fish need to hide from bigger fish that want to catch and eat them.
Some fish do eat seaweed – and only seaweed. One such fish is the Three Kings Islands butterfish, which is found only here at the Three Kings. It is a herbivore that eats seaweed and as there are heaps of different kinds of seaweed here I imagine it has a very varied diet. And lots of fish eat seaweed indirectly by feeding on all the small critters that in turn eat seaweed.
And in terms of what seaweed does for the planet – Wendy says seaweed is critically important. Every second breath we breathe comes from both the big marine algae that we call seaweed as well as all tiny plants (plankton) that float in the open ocean. Seaweeds are plants so just like grass and trees on land they produce oxygen for us to breathe. So, if there was no seaweed the world would be a very different place!
A- Tom and Malcolm say ‘great question – and the answer is very important!’
Seaweed is home to all sorts of fish – it’s got lots of nooks and crannies and shady corners for them to hide and live in. For example lots of small fish need to hide from bigger fish that want to catch and eat them.
Some fish do eat seaweed – and only seaweed. One such fish is the Three Kings Islands butterfish, which is found only here at the Three Kings. It is a herbivore that eats seaweed and as there are heaps of different kinds of seaweed here I imagine it has a very varied diet. And lots of fish eat seaweed indirectly by feeding on all the small critters that in turn eat seaweed.
And in terms of what seaweed does for the planet – Wendy says seaweed is critically important. Every second breath we breathe comes from both the big marine algae that we call seaweed as well as all tiny plants (plankton) that float in the open ocean. Seaweeds are plants so just like grass and trees on land they produce oxygen for us to breathe. So, if there was no seaweed the world would be a very different place!
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