So it begins. The deadly bird flu has arrived in Aotearoa. Read Bill Morris's great piece on the latest here www.nzgeo.com/stories/dead... and to stay up to date, keep an eye on @nzgeo.bsky.social's new landing page here: www.nzgeo.com/bird-flu Crossing everything for our beloved birds and seals 🦭🦜🧪

Everything we know about bird flu

Avian flu has arrived in New Zealand, riding along with a sick skua. Scientists have been worried about this moment for decades. Here is everything we know...

nzgeo.com

More trauma in the science writing world 😔 There have been big moves impacting science writing (editing, etc) before, so this is "yet another" event knocking it back, going back quite a number of years now. #SciComm

Asher Elbein@asherelbein.bsky.social · last mo.

Employees at Scientific American were told today that the magazine has been sold to LabX Media Group, the outfit that runs Discover Magazine and IFLScience. And that means -- of course! -- editorial layoffs. The media mass extinction rolls ever onward.

Scientific American is being sold to LabX Media, publisher of Discover: group.springernature.com/gp/group/med... They've fired me and other union staff, ahead of June 26 vote ratification. My rates are suddenly more reasonable, if you need editing or reporting - Argonaut2026@gmail.com

The @smcnz.bsky.social 2026 Science Journalism Awards are out! Congratulations to @kiwifarah.bsky.social and Natasha Hill 👍 😊 #SciComm #SciCommNZ

Winners of 2026 Science Journalism Awards announced

The winners of this year's Science Journalism Awards have covered the damage feral cats unleash on Fiordland's wildlife, and an unexpected collaboration between Māori and Japan to save our tuna/eels. ...

sciencemediacentre.co.nz

In NZ and got opinions about the environment, trans rights, disability support, homelessness etc? You can easily submit to Parliament on upcoming legislation here: yeahnahbills.org

yeah, nah - nine bills, six minutes, quicker than a coffee

The government is rushing nine stink bills through Parliament. Yeah Nah builds you a personalised submission on every one - quicker than a coffee.

yeahnahbills.org

orionmagazine.org/article/why-... "They can shift colors, shape-shift, shoot electricity; they thrive in community, in solitude, in pressure that would crush us instantly; they can become invisible and create light out of darkness. They are liquid creatures. And this is who we came from." 🐟

Why Are Fish So Gay? - Orion Magazine

A conversation about finding community in the aquatic

orionmagazine.org

The % of scientists who think public engagement makes science better has gone up from 21% in 2006 to 64% now. That's huge.

Have done this - help out your favourite local authors.

Kate Evans@kategevans.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Hi friends, for 2 years your votes have gotten Feijoa into the Whitcoulls Top 100 Books list, & I’m convinced it makes a huge difference to getting in front of people who haven’t seen it before. Voting takes 1 minute and you could win $100 book voucher. www.whitcoulls.co.nz/top-100-book...

Hi friends, for 2 years your votes have gotten Feijoa into the Whitcoulls Top 100 Books list, & I’m convinced it makes a huge difference to getting in front of people who haven’t seen it before. Voting takes 1 minute and you could win $100 book voucher. www.whitcoulls.co.nz/top-100-book...

Great story! "The landscapes of New Zealand are palimpsests …, McIvor says, recording layer upon layer of lives in their soils and surfaces. We have paved over them, flattened farms into their contours, drained their swamps and forgotten their gardens. But beneath all that are rich histories …"

Kate Evans@kategevans.bsky.social · 3mo ago

500 years ago, people starting building pā all over northern NZ—fortifying their settlements with rows of palisades, cut from nearby bush. Why? What were pā defending—or trying to say? The trees themselves, combined with mātauranga Māori, tell a story. www.nzgeo.com/stories/the-... 🇳🇿🧪 #archaeology

Getting so many of these right now as well, they make me so mad

Naomi Kritzer@naomikritzer.bsky.social · 3mo ago

One of the current scams targeting writers is to send an e-mail that appears to be from a real editor, full of gushing (LLM-generated) praise for one of their books. There are a couple of very specific tells I want to flag for the vulnerable.

I am once again begging, praying, weeping for lists of written instructions rather than videos. I do not want to watch your two minute video in the hope of catching the two seconds where you whizz past what goddamn menu the thing is under. Write. It. Down.

Geologists in movies have a one-in-three mortality rate.

Murder, monsters, occupational hazards: Why movie geologists die so often

Cinematic geologists are usually good guys—sometimes gals—but they have a one in three fatality rate, a film analysis show

science.org

And also see excellent article by @kategevans.bsky.social www.nzgeo.com/stories/the-... Fortresses in the wetlands

The pā builders

Five hundred years ago, people starting building pā all over northern New Zealand—fortifying their settlements with rows of pointed palisades, cut from the surrounding forests. Why? What were pā defen...

nzgeo.com

Bernard Hickey@bernardchickey.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Restoring peat bogs! National security in a couple of ways.

500 years ago, people starting building pā all over northern NZ—fortifying their settlements with rows of palisades, cut from nearby bush. Why? What were pā defending—or trying to say? The trees themselves, combined with mātauranga Māori, tell a story. www.nzgeo.com/stories/the-... 🇳🇿🧪 #archaeology

The pā builders

Five hundred years ago, people starting building pā all over northern New Zealand—fortifying their settlements with rows of pointed palisades, cut from the surrounding forests. Why? What were pā defen...

nzgeo.com

Sad newsflash: Ned’s dead. 🐌I maintain that as a hermaphrodite, Ned is a they - not a him and certainly not an it! www.nzgeo.com/stories/neds...

Ned's dead

Sometime on the night of Wednesday, April 15, Ned the left-spiralling snail slid off this mortal coil. “He was inside his pāua-shell abode when he passed,” says illustrator Giselle Clarkson, who had b...

nzgeo.com

“Sunlight has to travel 93 million miles to reach the Earth, but none of those miles go through the Strait of Hormuz,” says @billmckibben.bsky.social. “That makes it a very appealing alternative, especially now that it’s cheaper than burning coal and gas and oil.”

Writers! Is anyone else is getting an absolute deluge of AI drivel marketing about your “books”? None of these titles ARE my books, in fact, though possible they are by some of the may to other Kate Evans’s out there. What was a trickle is now a flood… These three are just from this morning! 📚

Feijoaknödel turned out SPECTACULARLY (A twist on traditional Austrian Marillenknödel or apricot dumplings)

I would have hoped that a government in a period of national emergency would have realised that food supply for the population is a high priority. But if it needs that explained to it, I am glad someone explained that starving people is a problem. www.rnz.co.nz/news/politic...

Consumers urged to ‘completely avoid’ UK-caught cod as population plunges - @mcsuk.bsky.social warns that fish numbers have reached dangerous point of decline Story by @isaaqtomkins.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Consumers urged to ‘completely avoid’ UK-caught cod as population plunges

Marine Conservation Society warns that fish numbers have reached dangerous point of decline

theguardian.com

Jono Ridler recently made it to Wellington...by SWIMMING there from NORTH CAPE, a 1400km journey. I loved getting to chat to him for this piece for @patagonia.com. Please sign his petition against bottom trawling! 🏊🐟 www.patagonia.co.nz/blogs/storie...

A Swim For The Ocean - Patagonia New Zealand

After rounding Cape Palliser into the Cook Strait— one of the most testing stretches of water in the world—Jono Ridler is swimming stroke after stroke towards the finish line of the biggest challenge ...

patagonia.co.nz

listen folks if you're going to get mad that I, a reporter, convey information without always making my views about it explicit, that's an instant block -- you do not understand the function of journalism-as-fact-surfacing & you are part of the decay of our overall media ecosystem

Charlotte is my soul-sister for sure: thespinoff.co.nz/kai/03-04-20...

Why the feijoa is the true taste of Easter in New Zealand

Move along hot cross buns and chocolate eggs, the true taste of Easter in Aotearoa arrives with a gentle thud on the lawn.

thespinoff.co.nz

I absolutely adored meeting the lace artist Rowan Panther for an @nzgeo.bsky.social profile. We talked non-stop for 3 hours and it felt like such an exciting meeting of minds and spirits. Her work is absolutely stunning and her ideas about it fascinating. Read more here www.nzgeo.com/stories/the-...

The lacemaker

In the studio with textile artist Rowan Panther

nzgeo.com

NZ journalists -- don't forget to enter the Science Media Centre's science journalism awards. Entries close Sunday! www.sciencemediacentre.co.nz/awards/

Science Journalism Awards

The Science Media Centre is excited to open nominations for the 2026 Science Journalism Awards.  The Science Journalism Awards celebrate excellent reporting on science-related topics across all forms ...

sciencemediacentre.co.nz

Imagine, Aotearoa! 🙏

Hildur Knútsdóttir@hildur.bsky.social · 6mo ago

I regularly see people wondering how it's possible that there are so many musicians and writers and film makers and artists from a tiny nation like Iceland. And the answer is really simple: State funding for art education and artists. I literally get a salary from the government to write books.

Key part of this thread:

Mike Dickison@adzebill.bsky.social · 6mo ago

I said "Paul, I bet you $1000 there will be no 'functionally-equivalent' moa running around in ten years." We shook on it, witnessed by the Friends of the Museum audience. The talk will be on YouTube but not the questions, so you'll have to take my word that this happened.

I will watch with interest 👀

Mike Dickison@adzebill.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Today I heard Paul Scofield, Senior Curator of Natural History at Canterbury Museum, give a public talk on moa resurrection and the museumʻs partnership with Colossal Biosciences (the “dire wolf” people).