A visit to NIWA: "Where water meets the sky"

The paua try to cling onto your hand! They are this lovely blue colour because they have grown up in a tank and have not been out in sunlight. If you look carefully you will see little yellow tags to identify its genetic stock. Other paua had red, green, yellow or blue tags.(The tags don't hurt the paua)
At NIWA they are running a paua breeding programme to produce a strain of fast growing and healthy paua.
Ms Harrison with a king crab. Ms Harrison invited us to NIWA as she is working there as a science fellow. She used to teach at Muritai School and says "hello" to anyone who remembers her!

A giant sea spider!

This is an isopod - a bit like a giant underwater slater! It crawls along the sea floor in parts of the Atlantic Ocean.

Each month the Wellington Primary Science Teacher Fellows visit one of the science organisations where one of us is hosted. Last week we visited NIWA. NIWA's focus is the atmosphere and water(marine and freshwater)and the life within.

Fossils, fossils fossils!

Marianna has just co-written and published 'The Kiwi Fossil Hunter's Handbook' which shows you how and where to find fossils around New Zealand. I will buy a copy for the Muritai School library.
Part of a New Zealand dinosaur! This one is a moasaur.
Here is a fossil of a prehistoric fish!

On a visit to GNS Science with my Wellington cluster group I was able to learn more about New Zealand fossils from John Simes, the collections manager and Marianna Terezow, a computer technician with a passion for paleontology. Paleontology is the study of fossils, which are usually the hard or bony parts of animals or plants that have been preserved in sand and mud (sediment) that has been turned into sedimentary rock over huge amounts of time (millions of years).

Learning about Rocks

Some of the samples were fossilised. Can you tell what these ones are?

Last week I learned about rock types by comparing similarities and differences of lots of samples.

Maui fishes up New Zealand.

Follow this legend to see what New Zealand might look like in 4 million years time!
I saw this storyboard while I was investigating the Wellington earthquake faultline.

Information via text message!

The generator is enormous and takes up a small room!

Last week I visited the Hutt Valley Emergency Management office in Lower Hutt. They are responsible for co-ordinating responses to emergencies such as tsunami,earthquake, flood and fire hazards. Muritai and all other schools are linked to their ReadyNet emergency preparedness network. If there is an emergency such as a tsunami alert they send the school a text message! They have their own generator to provide power if it has been cut off.

Mrs Ryan as a Scientist

Follow my activities while I am on my Primary Science Teacher Fellowship.

Kupe's Sail

Maori legend says that the great navigator Kupe won an argument with his rival Ngake about who could make a sail in the fastest time. Kupe won and the triangular shaped rock tilted at 45degrees represents the sail. The rock is about 15 million years old and was originally the flat bed of the ocean floor before massive earth movement tilted it upwards!

These fossil shells look very much like present day but are 6 million years old!

Hurupi Stream

At Hurupi Stream we went on a fossil hunt and I found fossil shells 6 to 12 million years old in the mudstone about 20 metres from the road! They are easy to find when an expert shows you what to look for!

Lake Ferry

The cliffs at Lake Ferry on the Wairarapa coast show layers of marine mudstone over 3 million years old! They contain fossils.

Wairarapa Rocks!

I have just been on a field trip to some key sites in the Southern Wairarapa to get some hands-on experience of geology in the field. The rocks and landscape of of the area show its geological history spanning hundreds of millions of years. I have been learning how to "read the rocks".
In 1855 a huge earthquake with a magnitude of 8+ rocked the area and caused the ground to move 18 metres horizontally and 9 metres vertically at this spot. If you look carefully at the photo you can see the bed of a stream that was cut off from its source and now intersects with a high bank.

While we were in Dunedin some of us ran up the steepest street!

Becoming a Leader

I have just arrived back from Otago University where I joined 20 other Royal Society of New Zealand Fellows to complete a Leadership paper. When we return to our schools we will develop exciting science programmes!

SAKHE transect line

This google earth map shows the positions on a line across the southern Wairarapa where we have placed seismometers.

Lectures begin!

Weeks 3 & 4
It has been an interesting 2 weeks for me... last week all the university students (and I) experienced 'Orientation Week'- a fascinating range of 'celebratory activities' on campus. Lots of support for new students, library tours etc as well! This week lectures are in full swing & I am sitting in a paper called ESCI 111, - an introduction to Earth Sciences. There were 240 of us at the first lecture! Laboratory work will be undertaken in 11 smaller groups thank goodness! The cool thing about this paper is that 13 lecturers, all experts in their field, facilitate it. Every week will be a new topic - fossils, rock types, plate tectonics, earthquakes, volcanoes, weather patterns, climate change, coastal processes etc. Khandu Patel, another RSNZ Science teacher fellow is considering taking it too - it would be great to have a "study buddy' to discuss new learning with so I've got my fingers crossed!

Last Tuesday I was lucky enough to be invited by GNS Science to join a symposium of 10 international researchers who were meeting to share current research papers that they are working on in the field of earthquake activity. Each did a 15-minute presentation then invited feedback. There was lots of questioning/validating/supporting and collaboration and the discussion related so well to the Inquiry process that we follow at Muritai School.

Seismic waves under the sea!

I was lucky enough to be invited to join a 3 week voyage on Roger Revelle, an American scientific research ship visiting New Zealand to haul up seismometers that had been recording seismic activity on the sea floor around the southern end of the South Island. Unfortunately I was unable to make the trip but managed to tour the ship on its return. The seismometers have a bright yellow casing and bob to the surface flying a flag for easy spotting!

My First 2 Weeks in the Geophysics Department at Victoria University!

My experiences so far... AMAZING!

My 2 hosts Dr John Townend and Professor Martha Savage are just fantastic and always have their doors open if I need to ask questions!
My days at present are mainly either fieldwork on the Wairarapa coast or quiet days in the office writing up the fieldwork notes!
The current project I am working on is called the Seismic Array HiKurangi Experiment.
This is a project to provide detailed images of the earth under the Wellington - Wairarapa region by collecting data from seismometers buried in the ground. I am helping to install and collect readings from a transect (straight) line of 50 seismometers stretching from Glendhu Rocks on the west coast out from Martinborough to Paekakariki on the east coast.

On fieldwork days 2 or 3 of us collect & check equipment needed from a store at Seaview and take the 4-wheel drive out to Martinborough. From there we 'scout' for suitable places to install seismometers. We have criteria to consider - land formation, soil type (look for bedrock), north facing to power the solar panels, far enough away from vandals, distance from each other etc etc. We take GPS co-ordinates & data is collected.
We usually install 1 seismometer per trip - dig down to bedrock - Mark the technician does most of that- mix up a concrete base for the seismometer, level it, make a protective shell, & bury it. We install a solar panel for power, install back up batteries and build an electric fence around it - I am getting really good at this! Then off to scout for more suitable sites using GPS - getting good at this too! We make contact with local farmers, explain our objectives & need their permission for using their land.
Some days we start at 8.30am & return at 9-10.30pm via a meal at the Martinborough Hotel
I have been sunburned, drenched in the rain, warmed by the sun, entranced by the amazing views, zapped by an electric fence (Just a little one - you only do it once), climbed dozens of steep slopes & loved every minute of it - (well maybe not the fence)
On office days we record all the GPS data on spreadsheets, check & enter co-ordinates, & write a field report for Professor Savage. Today I did this on my own - A week ago it was a daunting task!

What I have learned over the past 2 weeks:
Fieldwork:
Preparation is so important - check & recheck that all the gear is charged & working properly nothing is left to chance.
Health & safety nothing is left to chance here either!
Criteria for installing seismometers must be adhered to - near enough is not good enough
Data there is an amazing amount of data to be analyzed for every field day. So many files to download!
Take lots of duct tape & cable ties it’s amazing what you can mend!!

Mrs Ryan as a Scientist

I have had so many experiences since starting my Primary Science Teacher Fellowship!
I am based at the Geophysics Department at Victoria University and am investigating seismic (earthquake ) activity in the North Island.