“Pfizer made $US 19 Billion in Q2 this year, or $211 million per day. Some known risks of their jab are blood clots and cardiomyopathy. Luckily for them they make Eliquis for treating blood clots – sales up 13%. They also make Vyndaqel to treat cardiomyopathy – sales are up 77%!”

Now we know what this is really all about.

(National Party media release)

If James Shaw was giving consolation gifts to Kiwis desperately trying to get home this Christmas he’d likely give them a lump of coal, having confirmed he plans to take 14 staff with him to the COP26 climate talks in Glasgow, National’s Climate Change spokesperson Stuart Smith says.

“In answers to our written questions, Minister Shaw has confirmed he intends to take an entourage of 14 people with him to Glasgow – nine from Wellington and a further five from offshore.

“At a time when thousands of Kiwis are unable to get into New Zealand thanks to our chaotic and unfair MIQ system, James Shaw feels he needs an even bigger entourage this time around than the one he took to COP25 in 2019.

“It is astonishing that the Minister is going to COP26 in the first place, let alone taking up 10 MIQ spots for himself and his onshore staffers when they return.

“Remember, this is the same Minister who was highly critical of holding an in-person Parliament, saying ‘it literally risks lives’.

“I would ask the Minister, ‘Does it literally risk lives travelling to Glasgow and back with nine officials from Wellington?’

“It’s odd, too, the staff he will be taking. The onshore staffers comprise a climate change ambassador, legal, policy and special advisers, as well as his private secretary. 

“Of the five officials from offshore, we have several more policy advisers and even an ‘events and logistics specialist’. It’s unclear why the Minister would need the latter in Glasgow, but perhaps he’ll explain.

“The Minister has failed to read the room on this.

“We have heard countless stories of New Zealanders wanting to come home but who are locked out because they can’t get MIQ spots.

“But that won’t be an issue for Minister Shaw and his entourage – they’ll be home in time Christmas with their families.”

Answers to Parliamentary Written Questions (WPQs) are below:

40684 – Question: Is the Minister planning to take any staff or officials with him to COP26, if so, how many and what are their titles?
Reply: Yes. I plan to take 9 officials from Wellington and 5 from offshore. Their titles are: Climate Change Ambassador, Legal Adviser, Policy Officers and Analysts, Special Adviser, Principal Analyst, and Private Secretary to the Minister for Climate Change. The 5 officials offshore will include Policy and Senior Policy Officers, as well as an Events and Logistics Specialist. However, the size of the delegation is not yet settled and will depend on the outcome of MIQ applications. Opposition spokespeople for climate change have also been invited, which is a long-standing practice started under the previous National Government.

40578 – Question: Did the Minister attend COP25; if so, how many of the Minister’s staff or officials attended COP25 with him, what were their titles; and what was the rationale for choosing them to go to COP25?
Reply: Yes, I attended COP25. 13 officials attended. Their titles were Climate Change Ambassador, Senior Legal Adviser, Policy Officer, Senior Policy Officer, Principal Analyst, Policy Analyst, and Private Secretary to the Minister for Climate Change. Each was chosen because of their expertise in the UNFCCC negotiations, or in supporting and advancing New Zealand’s interests at COP.

(CRU media release)

By the end of October 2020, the Council had finalized their contract of services to undertake a coastal hazard survey for Kapiti.  The first volume focusing on methodology was made public in late May 2021.  The second volume that identifies the hazard lines will be forthcoming in the next 2 to 3 weeks. 

In July 2021, Coastal Ratepayers United sent Council its own technical review of the coastal hazard survey identifying critical flaws in the methodology.

After the release of the IPCC (United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report in August, CRU sent Council an addendum to its technical review noting that the IPCC report provides a major update on climate related aspects of coastal processes, in particular Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 8.5, which Council has incorporated into their hazard assessment.

The IPCC have now confirmed that the RCP 8.5 scenario is implausible and should be used for comparative purposes only.  Consequently, the RCP 8.5 cannot be used for identifying hazard lines for planning purposes under the current Resource Management Act (RMA) and the New Zealand Coastal Policy Statement (NZCPS).  Both these legislative requirements are crucial for Council to proceed with their Coastal Hazard chapter (which had been previously withdrawn in its entirety), for any future district plan.

Both Council staff and elected officials have been made aware of these concerns.  However, numerous requests to engage staff and Councillors to discuss these issues has failed as their default position has been to use the Council led Coastal Adaptation Panel (CAP).  Unfortunately, CAP has yet to be formed.

What this means for affected homeowners is that Volume 2, the actual hazard lines, will be based on flawed science.  And the Council has every intention to put these flawed hazard lines on Land Information Memorandum (LIM) and continue to pursue policies such as managed retreat.

In other words, CAP will receive a coastal hazard report that is flawed, but it will be the Council not CAP which will make decisions about any plan changes and what goes on the LIMs.

Consequently, every Ratepayer in the Kapiti District has had the privilege of contributing $245,000 for the flawed science.  More importantly the Council have signaled that not only are they not interested in community consultation, but that they are not committed to good science and the IPCC findings.

As a district, we find ourselves in the same situation as 2012 when concerns about the science fell on deaf ears. Instead of working together with property owners, the Council decided to spend an exorbitant amount of our rates to go to Court, convene an independent science panel and an independent review of the Proposed District Plan, only to find the science was not fit for the purposes of planning.

The then Councillor Gurunathan wrote in the Kapiti News, “We have blown buckets of ratepayers money, alienated good people and caused the suffering of many. We have shown the rest of New Zealand how coastal management should not be done”

Addressing the issue of coastal hazards is long overdue, but when Council gets it wrong, the entire district pays.

by John Vickerman

With time for public submissions on the representation review rapidly closing in, many are still struggling to inform themselves of what it is all about.

At last, the public also has the opportunity to view the staff presentations to Councillors which resulted in a majority vote to proceed with the staff recommended option, to the public submission phase.

First sight impression is of a gallant desperate attempt to cloak a horse with the aura of rigorous analysis, far too late and too rushed for the consequences of the subject matter.

For Waikanae, geographic significance is undermined by reference to small scale communities of interest not aligning with geographic boundaries.  This issue is necessarily large scale as no sole community of interest is ever likely to align with 8,000 – 12,000 people per councillor.  In Waikanae there are distinct communities of interest but these also identify strongly with a collective geographic Waikanae identity – from the Beach, along roads aligned by the river, beneath the shadow of Te Au, and up the valley to Kapakapanui.

In the Small Ward option in the Council briefing presentation of 29 June 2021, the combination of the blue and pink areas identifies the Waikanae collective geographic identity very well.  With two councillors for this combined area the deviation rules are complied with.  The option given is linked with no community boards.  In the absence of an explanation this is puzzling particularly when some of the potential issues given would be mitigated by the presence of a Waikanae community board of suitable calibre.

With the mixed model it is not explained why the number of Ward Councillors has to be matched by an equal number of district wide councillors.  It is plain that with Wards, population per councillor is significant for equality of representation, but why do district wide councillors have to have the same population base per councillor when their main task is focussed on district wide issues?  Any number of district wide councillors will have an equal population base (the total population divided by the number of district wide councillors).  Their district wide responsibilities will be different to Ward councillor responsibilities, and it does not follow that workload and representation of each will be or need to be the same.  For example, why would the Small Ward option of 7 ward councillors and 3 district wide councillors not meet all the objectives of the review along with retention of the existing community boards?

The presentations convey a perception that ward councillors will be parochial and not do what is best for Kapiti as a whole.  While examples of this might be found, many would not see this as a general issue.  Most ward councillors do recognise all wards have differing concerns and needs and that collaboration works best for all.

One aspect of the proposal is the dissolution of 3/5 Community Boards.  In the Councillor briefings the benefits and alternatives to community boards are somewhat speculative and ill thought out.  The briefings essentially portray them as a barrier to representation.  One thing of great concern is that all briefing papers are silent on one very important role of a community board.  As set out in sections 51 and 52 of the Local Government Act 2002, a community board is not a local authority, and it is not a committee of the territorial authority.  One of the roles of a community board is to maintain an overview of services provided by the territorial authority within the community (S52(c)) and consider and report on …any matter of interest or concern to the community board. (S52(b)).

The community board has a role independent of council that councillors do not have.  If council does something poorly, then the community board has the legal authority to say so.  Unfortunately, this role has frequently been confused by council viewing it as criticism of staff and contrary to standing orders of elected members.  The standing orders have to be subservient to the Local Government Act.  If conflict exists it is interpretation of the standing orders that are the problem.

Council decision making has the Ombudsman as a check or balance but the practical working of this with the long delays gives a narcissist chief executive carte blanche.  Community boards have a lesser but more direct role as a check on what council is doing.  The disestablishment of a community board elevates the power and control of a chief executive.

The Chief Executive has the legal duty to fund and provide the administrative services a community board needs.  In this there is a duty to provide a meeting agenda, but the chief executive does not have the legal authority to refuse to put an item on the agenda that is of concern to the board.  For example, simply because he thinks it is not an appropriate forum to discuss something council has done poorly.  The Chair of a community board has an important role – under Remuneration Authority rules the chair (paltry as it is) gets double that of other members – the expectation is that the Chair will be doing far more than the other members.  In most cases the Chairs and the boards they are part of do well and provide significant democratic input for little cost.  The value of this and the check on Council is something generally poorly understood.  Don’t throw it away simply because the briefing papers never mentioned it.

This amazing interview with Robert Malone, the inventor of mRNA vaccine technology aired a week ago. It is a must watch! Long (75 minutes), but he explains so clearly how the ‘vaccine’ was supposed to work, what is wrong with it, Big Pharma’s role, and Ivermectin.

By Ian Bradford

This Part 2 is about the reality of one of the biggest scientific frauds the World has ever seen. 

U.N. predicted disaster in 1989 if global warming wasn’t checked!

That’s a pretty scary heading. The account comes from Peter Spielman and is dated June 1989 – yes, 1989. Here’s some of what the UN said:

A senior UN environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000. Coastal flooding and crop failures would create an exodus of eco refugees threatening political chaos said Noel Brown, director of the New York office of the UN Environmental Programme or UNEP.  He said governments had a ten year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect before it goes beyond human control, (that’s by the year 2000). 

According to Brown as the warming melts polar icecaps –

• ocean levels will rise up to three feet, (that’s almost a metre) 
• the Maldives and other flat island nations will be covered
• coastal regions will be inundated 
• one sixth of Bangladesh could be flooded and a quarter of its 90 million people will be displaced. 
• A fifth of Egypt’s arable land in the Nile Delta would be flooded cutting off its food supply.

The UN then formed the IPCC, (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), which became its mouthpiece.  The IPCC predicted 50 million would be displaced by rising sea levels by 2015. When this didn’t happen they then predicted the same for 2020. At one stage they said all Pacific Islanders would have to move to NZ. 

Did any of this happen? – NO, of course it didn’t. It was a load of scaremongering rubbish. You would think that members of the public reading this would begin to wonder about the integrity of reports put out by the UN — the Instigator of the climate scare. (We have just had the 2021 report). 

But no, most New Zealanders still believe what the Government says that there is a crisis and we have to buy electric vehicles, put up wind farms and solar farms, and all sorts of other measures to reverse the greenhouse effect. 

Be sure you have read Part 1 before proceeding (see here). In that I indicated that there is growing evidence that CO₂ emissions particularly from the oceans, follow global temperature increases. Many honest scientists subscribe to this now and there is plenty of evidence to support this.  Humans are accused of putting CO₂ into the air and this is causing global warming. In fact the warming comes first, then the release of CO₂.  Ice core samples show us that the warming precedes the release of CO₂ by between 800 and 1000 years.  

The CO₂ released at present — mostly from the oceans which hold the most CO₂ — is a result of the warming from the Medieval Warm Period some 800 or more years ago. Recent research indicates that the Medieval Warm Period may have been up to 6 degrees Celcius warmer than present. 

Increases in concentrations of CO₂ do not appear to increase air temperature.

In 1900 Knut Angstrom, a Swedish physicist, specialising in the absorption of solar radiation by the Earth’s atmosphere showed by experiment that increases in concentrations of CO₂ do not appear to increase air temperature. In fact we know now that the heating effect of CO₂ falls off logarithmically as the concentration of CO₂  increases.  

The graph above gives an approximation to the relationship between the warming effect of CO₂ and the concentration. You get the impression from what you are fed that the heating effect of CO₂ increases markedly as you increase the concentration of CO₂. If you double the amount of CO₂ you DO NOT double the heating effect. In fact, you only get a very tiny increase in the heating effect. 

Physicists today, understand that the temperature of matter is caused by physical oscillation of all bonds holding matter together. In 1900 Max Planck showed that the frequencies of oscillation of all these individual bonds form a very broad spectrum of frequencies known as the electromagnetic spectrum.  He showed that as the temperature of matter increases, the amplitude of oscillation at each and every frequency of oscillation increases. Thus what is being physically transferred as heat is actually amplitude of oscillation at each and every frequency of oscillation. 

Greenhouse gases absorb only certain limited bands of frequencies of radiation emitted by Earth. Those are the black spikes shown in the graph below. They are not to scale.  The temperature at the Earth’s surface is the result of the continuum of the broad range of oscillations shown in green. 

Then Angstrom went on to show that CO₂ absorbs LESS THAN 16% of the frequencies radiated by the Earth. (Note that infra-red radiation, (heat), like light, consists of a number of frequencies of vibration.) 

Meanwhile also in 1900, Max Planck showed that a body of matter (that’s the CO₂ in the atmosphere), can only be warmed if it absorbs 100% of all the frequencies radiated by the warmer body. Thus if 16% of the frequencies radiated by the Earth and absorbed by the CO₂ were re-radiated and then absorbed by matter-the Earth, they could not warm that matter.  A body cannot be heated by its own radiation.  So the Earth will not warm. Absorbing only 16% of the frequencies emitted by Earth cannot have much effect on the temperature of anything. 

It has never been shown by experiment that greenhouse gases absorbing infra-red energy (heat), can physically cause observed warming. Experiments described on the internet that claim to show greenhouse warming, use heat sources thousands of degrees hotter than Earth. Scientist Dr Peter Langdon Ward has shown in the laboratory using an appropriate heat source that air containing more than 20 times normal concentrations of CO₂ is not warmed any more than a similar volume of normal air under identical conditions.  

Dr Ward goes on to suggest that depletion of the ozone layer contributes to global warming. Depletion means more sunlight reaches the Earth’s surface and so there is more warming. He states that the ozone layer was depleted by 70% from 1970 to 1998. 

Some of the dirty tricks

•    The Obama administration faked global temperature data to fit warming. The data actually showed that we were in a cooling trend but NASA and NOAA scientists were told to deliberately alter a graph that showed cooling, to one that showed warming, in a politically motivated attempt to rewrite history and claim global warming is causing US temperatures to trend upwards.  Below are the graphs. 

After the Obama administration took office and started pushing the global warming narrative for political purposes NASA was directed to alter its historic data in order to reverse the cooling trend and show a warming trend instead. This was accomplished using modelling computers that simply fabricated the data the researchers wished to see instead of what was actually happening in the real world.

The new altered chart shows that historical data – especially the severe heat and droughts experienced in the 1930’s – are now systematically suppressed to make them appear cooler than they really were. At the same time, temperature data from the 1970’s to 2010 are strongly exaggerated to make them appear warmer than they really are. This is a clear case of scientific fraud carried out on a grand scale in order to deceive the whole world about global warming. This is one of probably several  cases of fraudulent data of which the Mann hockey stick is the best example.

•  Naomi Seibt is the non-believers answer to Greta Thunberg. She is a young 19 year old German.  She has produced several videos on climate, which oppose the views of the German party line.  German officials have fined her and demanded costs on the grounds that she has dared to question the party line.  There has been a prosecution and conviction without trial and she has had her earnings cut off. She has been fined $400 plus costs.  

•  Peter Ridd, a physicist who has been critical of science linking climate change (anthropogenic global warming), and polluted water to coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef was sacked from James Cook University in Queensland because he went against the popular views of his colleagues. He stated that bodies like the Australian Institute of  Marine Science, could no longer be trusted.  

Note: I have been in touch by E-mail with Clifford Ollier of the University of Western Australia in Perth. He says the following:  “There is a completely fake argument used by alarmists including NASA, implying that coral reef bleaching is caused by CO₂. Bleached coral is perfectly normal and occurs when wave driven mixing ceases during periods of extended calm associated with unusual warming of the surface 1-2 m of sea water. The reef recovers in a few years by recolonisation.”

Polar bears are thriving

The Washington Times had the headline in 2019: “Susan Crockford fired after finding polar bears thriving despite climate change.” Nobody has done more to sink the claim that climate change is endangering polar bears than zoologist Susan Crockford.  After 15 years as an adjunct assistant professor Ms Crockford said the University of Victoria (Canada), rejected her renewal application despite her high profile as a speaker and author stemming from her widely cited research on polar bears. Ms Crockford accused officials at the Canadian University of bowing to “outside pressure,” the result of her research showing that polar bear populations are stable and even thriving, not plummeting as a result of shrinking Arctic sea ice, defying claims of the climate change movement.   Her dismissal has spurred alarm over the implications for academic freedom.

Note: Polar bears were not decreasing in numbers because of climate but because they were being hunted and shot.  Hunting them was then banned and numbers have dramatically increased.  

These are only a few examples of victimisation of those honest scientists who dared to go against the so called “consensus.”  The list is almost endless. 

Punishing climate change sceptics. 

Some in Washington want to unleash government to harass heretics who don’t accept the “consensus.”   Galileo was tried in 1633 for spreading the heretical view that the Earth orbits the sun, convicted by the Roman Catholic inquisition, and remained under house arrest until death. Today’s inquisitors seek their quarry’s imprisonment and financial ruin. The climate alarmists are increasingly focused on punishing dissent from their views. 

Climategate : dubious science being used to support global warming     

In 2009 and in 2011 thousands of E-mails were leaked from the climate research unit at the University of East Anglia. These E-mails came from scientists central to the assertion that humans are causing a global warming crisis. Three themes emerged from the newly released E-mails. 

1. Prominent scientists central to the global warming debate are taking measures to conceal rather than disseminate underlying data and discussions.
2. These scientists view global warming as a political “cause’ rather than a balanced scientific enquiry.
3. Many of these scientists frankly admit to each other that much of the science is weak and dependent on deliberate manipulation of facts and data. 

E-mails between “Climategate” scientists show a concerted effort to hide rather than disseminate underlying evidence and procedures. Tom Wigley, a scientist  at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, authored a Climategate E-mail asserting that his fellow Climategate scientists “must get rid of” the editor for a peer reviewed science journal because he published some papers contradicting assertions of a global warming crisis. 

The Oregon Petition rejected the global warming philosophy 

31,500 American scientists signed the petition. Here’s what they said: “We urge the US government to reject the global warming  agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in Dec 1997 and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology and damage the health and welfare of mankind.” 

“There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of CO₂, methane or any other greenhouse gas  is causing or will in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the earth’s climate. Moreover there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in the atmospheric CO₂ produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.” 

Furthermore, 90 Italian scientists reject global warming in a petition to Italian leaders. The scientists told the leaders that CO₂’s impact on climate was unjustifiably exaggerated and catastrophic predictions were not realistic. “The anthropogenic origin of global warming is an unproven hypothesis, deduced from some climate models, that is complex computer programmes called general circulation models. On the contrary, the scientific literature has increasingly highlighted the existence of a natural climate variability that the models are not able to reproduce.  This natural variability explains a substantial part of global warming observed since 1850.”     

The following is the most disgraceful thing I have read: 

In the USA a group called ten–ten made and released a film. It featured children who didn’t believe in man-made global warming being blown up in an explosion by their teacher. It created so much public outrage that it was immediately withdrawn. It was an outrageous attempt to scare little kids that if they didn’t believe what they were told to believe, they would be killed. 

The IPCC and the Nobel 

Peace Prize 

In 2007 the IPCC was awarded as an organisation, the Nobel Peace Prize.(goodness knows why!). The boss of the IPCC Rajendra Pachauri, mistakenly wrote to IPCC affiliated academics telling them they were all Nobel Laureates.  This included Pachauri himself.  So whenever one of these academics was to give a lecture to the public, he or she was introduced as a Nobel Laureate. This gave them much increased status.

The organisation issued a statement: “ The prize was awarded to the IPCC as an organisation, and not to any individual associated with the IPCC. Thus it is incorrect to refer to any IPCC official, or scientist who worked on IPCC reports as a Nobel Laureate or Nobel Prize winner.”  

Pachauri resigned from the IPCC in 2015 after allegations of sexual harassment against a staff member. 

Corbyn, Piers: Man-Made climate Change Does Not Exist, Reading University Debating Journal Sept 19^th  2019

Morano, Marc: New Peer Reviewed Scientific Studies Chill Global Warming Fears. US Senate Committee. August 20, 2007.

Inofe, James: The Greatest Hoax, WND Books, 2012

Moran, Alan (Ed):  Climate Change-The Facts, Institute of Public Affairs, 2015. 

Nandi, Jayashree: R.K. Pachauri: “A Climate Champion Mired in Controversy.” Hindustan Times February 14, 2020  

Ward, Peter, L:   Greenhouse Gases Cannot Physically Cause global Warming. CO₂ Impossible, 2019

---

Where else have we been seeing relentless, unfounded scaremongering by unaccountable bureaucrats as a means of advancing their objectives? —Eds

Department of Conservation —  21/09/2021 — 1 Comment

New Zealand fur seals/kekeno are found all around New Zealand, on offshore islands, and in Australia. Usually, they tend to prefer cooler water temperatures where food supply is reliable.  But every now and then they turn up in much warmer climates.

We know that fur seals travel a fair bit during winter. Weaned pups and juveniles are out exploring and learning their world, yet to reach the breeding age when they will settle down at a colony. The big males who have summered at a breeding colony and mated with the females in their harem now leave the colony. They let the females do the work of rearing the pups while they go off and regain body condition (meaning: eat a lot of fish).

This is the time of year, the seal silly season, in New Zealand when we see fur seals venturing further inland via streams, or knocking on doors of beachside communities. But some of them don’t stop there. Some decide to swim up to 5000 km away from home for a holiday in the tropics.

This isn’t a new phenomenon. We’ve been aware that our kekeno are adventurous ocean travellers for quite some time. Since 2012, we have at least eight reports of NZ fur seals in far-off places, and there might well be more. In 2017, a seal who reached New Caledonia prompted a blog about our seals on OE. In 2021 we have added two more tropical travellers to the list.

In mid-July a yearling New Zealand fur seal arrived in Rarotonga. A young girl, Aia Okotai was the first to alert the Ministry of Marine Resources to the seal.  She and her father, Petero Okotai, were swimming in Avarua harbour when she spotted it.  Aia since named the seal Nosey, which is very fitting as they are called the ‘long-nosed fur seal’ in Australia.  Nosey was well looked after and monitored by the locals for almost a month before departing even further afield to Aitutaki, nearly 4000 km from his home country.

Then in late August, we received the first ever report of a fur seal in Fiji, on Beqa Island. While not quite as far away, it’s still a good distance to travel and an unusual sighting. This time, it’s an older male in good body condition and a bit of experience under his fur. We expect he’ll just rest up for a few days and move on, like what some of the others have done in this situation.

Others have travelled to Norfolk Island, and one to New Caledonia. At least three have made it to Rarotonga, one in 2013, one in 2016 and Nosey this year. Amazingly, two have made the mammoth swim to Tahiti – the furthest away of these tropical destinations. Now we can add Fiji to the itinerary.

While off exploring, these fur seals are being ambassadors for their species, teaching the locals a bit about seals, and providing an amazing experience. We’re thrilled with the care that the local governments have given these travellers during their visits, ensuring that people didn’t get too close and keeping us posted on their adventures. One visitor to Tahiti even got a full medical check before being released back to the beach and monitored.

While our fur seals are off traveling the tropics this winter and spring, their subantarctic cousins have caught a similar ‘travel bug’ and are arriving at our shores. Since July, we have had eight sightings of subantarctic fur seal yearlings reaching our shores. Some of these may be the same animal moving between locations, but we suspect there’s at least six individuals. 

While the climate difference isn’t as drastic as that between New Zealand and the tropics, some of the distances travelled by the subantarctic fur seals rival even that of the journey from NZ to Tahiti. We don’t know the origin of all the subantarctic fur seals reaching New Zealand – they could be coming from several islands throughout the subantarctic region, including the southern Indian Ocean and the south Atlantic. We do know that one came all the way from one of the largest breeding colonies, Amsterdam Island, approximately 8000 km away.

It’s unclear why some seals travel further than others. Perhaps there is an underlying reason, or perhaps it’s just down to individual differences. Whatever the reason, it’s exciting to see both our seals making waves overseas and having new visitors on our shores.

While the seals might not be following New Zealand’s COVID rules, we should make sure that we are. Whatever the alert level, we recommend a 20m bubble when viewing marine mammals and keeping dogs on a lead. Let’s give our new visitors the same care that our seals are receiving on their tropical adventures, and for the time being, we can live vicariously through their exciting journeys.

(Thanks to Margaret S-W)