AUT - What's New
- ArionWhere applying and enrolled students can access AUT course information, check your enrolment status, make fee payments, update your personal details and view your academic results.
- AUTOnlineOnline access to course resources and learning activities through AUT's central learning management system.
- UnicentralUniCentral is the AUT University Student Portal. Here you will find useful information about you as a student and quicklinks to all the important online systems you will need to use while studying at AUT University.
What's New
WHALE AUTOPSY VIDEO
S
Please be warned, graphic detail/imagery.
EOS staff have attended 6 out of 7 mass strandings of pilot whales in New Zealand throughout 2010 - an extremely bad year for cetacean strandings in New Zealand waters. There has been one mass stranding of pilot whales (that we are aware of) already in 2011 (January, in Parengarenga Harbour, north-easternmost New Zealand), in addition to numerous other single- and small-scale stranding events of other whale species.
To explain the sort of research that we undertake on these animals, to better understand why they strand, we have put together two brief videos (right) for two separate stranding events for pilot whales in 2010 (at Banks Peninsula (Christchurch) and Stewart Island); we work on many species of toothed whales that occur in New Zealand waters (not just pilot whales). We also have additional video for other stranding events throughout 2010, and many photographs, although these are not released here. (A modified version of these videos (with less text, using voiceover) is currently being edited, and will be released online in due course.)
The two videos presented here were prepared chronologically, and as such details within them will differ (such as the number of whale strandings that have occurred at the time the videos were prepared). Above is that for Stewart Island, and below that for Banks Peninsula.
We reiterate, please be warned that the content of these videos may be disturbing for some. It is disturbing for us! We would rather be working with live, healthy animals also, but we have to make the most out of such tragic situations to learn as much about these animals as we can, as and when the opportunity to do so arises. Our intention is to better understand why these magnificent animals strand in the first instance, and hopefully prevent such strandings in the future, and to determine aspects of their life history, ecology and feeding behavior.
The tissue sampes and organ systems that we collect are being worked on by Emma Beatson, as part of her PhD on long-finned pilot whales, and a number of other researchers throughout New Zealand. Given the number of stranding events in recent years, and the large number of samples that we have collected, many will take three or four years to process and report.
Be aware that we have permits that allow us to take these samples, and before we touch these animals we must consult with both the Department of Conservation (DOC) and with iwi for approval to do so; this is done on a case-by-case basis, and sometimes permission to sample these animals is not given. You must not, under any circumstances, touch these animals yourselves; it is an offence for anyone to do what we do to these animals without the appropriate DOC permits and iwi approval. There are protocols that must be followed!
Should you find a stranded whale on a beach you must not touch it. You must call the Department of Conservation immediately on 0800-362-468 (24/7).
In the event you could or would like to sponsor our research on these cetaceans, or find out more about our research, please contact either Associate Professor Steve O'Shea or Emma Beatson directly.
AUT UNIVERSITY
Health and Environmental Sciences
Why study at AUT? What does the Faculty of Health & Environmental Sciences do?
To learn more just click on the link (right).
EOS and the School of Applied Sciences offer degrees in many of the varied disciplines of Health and Environmental Sciences.
To enrol, or to find out more about what we do, contact either EOS (primarily for postgraduate matters of a marine nature) or the School of Applied Sciences for both post- and undergraduate matters in all research and study disciplines; the EOS Research Institute and School of Applied Sciences are seamlessly integrated.
SQUIDCAM IV
EOS was proud to present SQUIDCAM IV in 2010.
This feature is not presently running.
We kept baby squid, broad squid, known by the scientific name Sepioteuthis australis, alive in captivity a number of times before, and in 2005 launched our first SQUIDCAM. This was the fourth time we have done this, and we believe it is the only live SQUIDCAM in the world.
Keeping squid alive in captivity is not easy; it is almost a 24/7 exercise procurring sufficient live food, and they eat a lot of it! We hope to bring you many different species of squid, and one day maybe we will get an opportunity to go chasing the giant squid, Architeuthis dux, again. It has always been our dream to catch and grow the baby giant squid up.
Squid are extremely sensitive animals, have very fast growth rates, and many have a relatively short life span, not exceeding one year. These current squid are housed in the office of Dr Steve O'Shea in a large 400 litre tank. Surrounding this tank, that you cannot see, is a rather expensive support system of filters, chillers, sumps and pumps, all required to keep these animals live and healthy.
Broad squid are not uncommon in coastal waters around North Island, New Zealand; they lay their eggs in white sausage-like bunches that usually are attached to the sea bed or seaweed. Each bunch of eggs can contain upwards of 200 individual developing embryos; some egg masses can contain considerably more. We collect these eggs and then suspend them in tanks; development (from egg to hatching paralarva) normally takes about a month at 19° Celcius.
Finding sufficient live prey to keep so many squid alive is challenging. As these animals grow we release many, because there are only so many individuals that you can feed, or accommodate in the tank. For the first 20 days of their life we must feed them a particular species of mysid shrimp, Tenagomysis novaezelandiae, now quite scarce around Auckland; after 20 days we can feed them a larger and more common mysid species, T. chiltoni (but if we were to feed these to the squid when they hatched the mysid would eat the squid, as T. chiltoni is an extremely aggressive mysid species). After 40 days we can start feeding them shrimp, Palaemon affinis, and small fish, particularly the introduced mosquito fish Gambusia affinis; 60 days after hatching we can start feeding them juvenile yellow-eyed mullet, Aldrichetta forsteri. Finally, after about 80 days anything that moves, including each other, would be eaten; at about 120 days they will start eating pieces of dead fish, and we can all enjoy a much-needed break, because we're pretty tired by this stage. This simple 'recipe' for keeping squid alive in captivity has taken us years to develop. But there's a lot more to it than this.
If you want to get involved in our research, or even sponsor our research, please contact Dr Steve O'Shea. If you want to learn more about keeping octopus and squid alive in captivity, join us for discussion at The Octopus News Magazine Online (TONMO.com); we look forward to meeting you online.
MARECO cruise
Dr Kat Bolstad leaves us on Saturday 24 October, returning on 3 December 2009, to participate in a five-week multinational cruise to the Atlantic, aboard the research vessel RV Akademik Ioffe.
Kat was offered this wonderful opportunity just several weeks earlier, whilst attending the Cephalopod International Advisory Council (CIAC) conference in Spain, where she presented our latest research on cephalopods, Recent, and on the basis of their anatomy, implications of same for fossil cephalopod anatomy, particularly ammonites.
During this research cruise Kat will sample the water column and sea bed to depths of ~ 3000 metres, using a variety of equipment, such as conventional fine-meshed ring nets, and Isaak-Kidd and Sigsbee trawls. Her primary interest is in the cephalopod component of the catch, but all manner of other weird and wonderful, curiously bizarre life forms will be hauled from the deep as a consequence of this gear deployment.
Here's hoping you have an exceptionally rewarding research cruise Kat. We'll post updates here as we receive them.
You can learn more about this research and the collaborating parties here.
Monalisa Biodiversity database
The Institute is proud to launch a new biodiversity database, the Monalisa Biodiversity Database. Years in the making, this database now serves as AUTs central repository for all biodiversity data gathered by Institute, School and postgraduate researchers in surveys undertaken throughout New Zealand.
Currently biodiversity data include: intertidal (estuarine and marine), subtidal, quantitative and qualitative inventories of species, but these biological data shortly will be augmented with sedimentary (grain size, carbonate and organic composition), video and stills data for hundreds of subtidal sites that we have surveyed.
These biodiversity data are the most current and comprehensive of any thus far available online, and our spatial and bathymetric coverage expands almost on a daily basis. Database functionality has been tailored to serve the requirements of those organisations requiring accurate and current data on the distribution and abundance of species to ensure their appropriate management, and sustainable environmental management.