KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Raymond Smith
Ngāti Kuia
Tuesday 8 July
Ko Parororangi te maunga
Ko Tinui te awa
Ko Raukawakawa te moana
Ko Anamahanga te whenua
Ko Matua Hautere te tangata
Ko Ngai Te Mete te whanau
Ko Ngati Kuia, Rangitane, Ngati Apa, Rongomaiwahine toku iwi
Ko Raymond Smith taku ingoa. I am father of five & grandfather to 10 mokopuna.
We have an intergenerational association with the Marlborough Sounds and I live at Anamahanga/Port Gore whanau whenua.
Since achieving a bachelor degree in Iwi Environmental Management in 2002, I have worked on environmental matters for over 20 years and have deep skills and experience in the areas of; Te Reo Maori, Tikanga, Kaitiakitanga, Traditional Maori Environmental Knowledge, Managing Maori resources, Iwi management Planning, RMA Legislation, Communication, Research, Environmental Policy, Sustainable growth.
I have been a member of many important forums and processes across Te Tauihu/Top of the South including being the current chair of the Te Tauihu Fisheries Forum and vice chair of the Te Waipounamu Fisheries Forum, representing my iwi as a Tiriti o Waitangi negotiator and being one of the founding members of the Kotahitanga mō te Taiao alliance.
Presentation: Iwi participation in Aquaculture
Kaitiakitanga is a Maori framework for life management that allows Maori to understand and interact with the natural world based on realms and our traditions, it empowers us to stand against unjust policy. When Ngāti Kuia applied for consent to participate in the evolving aquaculture industry based on our cultural association the local council denied us. We collectively took the issue to the Environment Court and won, instantly the Government legislated our rights away on behalf of all New Zealand. We have seen the increased salmon farming industry grow against public opinion, divide communities and destroy/modify pristine marine ecosystem. Kaitiakitanga is the tool that continues to enable Maori to participate in aquaculture.
Professor Kura Paul-Burke
Marine Science and Aquaculture
University of Waikato | Te Whare Wānanga o Waikato
Tuesday 8 July
Professor Kura Paul-Burke (Ngāti Awa, Ngāti Whakahemo, Ngāti Mākino, Ngāti Pūkeko, Irish) is a Māori marine ecologist with extensive pragmatic and successful experience combining mātauranga Māori (Māori knowledge) and marine science to assist kaitiakitanga (restoration, monitoring, management) priorities for marine taonga species and spaces with coastal hapū and iwi.
Presentation: Pou rāhui, pou tikanga, pou oranga
This presentation provides an overview of a first of its kind mātauranga Māori and marine restoration project called Pou rāhui, pou tikanga, pou oranga: reigniting the mauri of Tīkapa Moana/ Te Moananui-a-Toi (Hauraki Gulf).
Professor Abby Smith | 2024 NZMSS Award Recipient
Marine Science | Te Tari Pūtaio Taimoana
University of Otago | Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka
Thursday 10 July
Abby Smith comes from New England in USA, where she grew up on the coast of Maine. Wading and poking around in tidepools sent her down a marine track early on. She majored in Biology and Geology (1982) at Colby College, Waterville, Maine, spending a semester at the Bermuda Biological Station, where she developed a great fondness for marine calcareous algae. She studied for a Master’s degree in “Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences” in the joint programme at Woods Hole and MIT (1984). While she was there she made friends with some kiwis, one of whom she married. Later, they moved to Hamilton New Zealand, where Abby completed her DPhil at Waikato in 1991, just in time to shift to Dunedin, as her husband had taken up a lectureship in Zoology at Otago. She lectured and researched in the Department of Marine Science at the University of Otago for 33 years, and retired in May 2025. Alongside her work at the University, she served on the Ministerial Advisory Committee on Oceans Policy and chaired the Otago Conservation Board for several years, as well as having been the Treasurer of the International Bryozoology Association for more than two decades. Active in the New Zealand Marine Sciences Society, she was also the inaugural council chair of the New Zealand Ocean Acidification Community. Though she is still busy and productive, she has never let her scientific career get in the way of her other hobbies: knitting, making jam, and enjoying cricket.
Presentation: Shells Have Chemistry: Why skeletal composition is worth knowing about
There are a variety of controls and influences on biomineralization in the marine environment. Phylogeny and evolution provide the blueprints, but the eventual result is affected by environment, ecology, growth, and development. Biomineralisation is common among invertebrates, who usually produce shells of calcium carbonate. CaCO3 is unusual among carbonates in having numerous polymorphs, at least two of which are commonly precipitated by organisms. Since the 1950s we have been able to distinguish two calcium carbonate minerals (aragonite and calcite), and determine the level of Mg substitution in calcite, using x-ray diffractometry. The result is that we are able to place shells, species and higher taxa into different parts of biomineral space. Unexpectedly, the most diverse and most well-studied invertebrate phylum, in terms of mineralogy, are the bryozoans. This minor phylum of fairly simple colonial invertebrates creates complex and beautiful skeletal structures ranging from all aragonite or all calcite to mixtures of the two and/or mixtures of calcite with Mg contents. Over 50 species of bryozoans are bimineral, displaying at least three different modes: mostly aragonite, mostly calcite, and bi-calcific. These organisms expend a great deal of their energy on calcification, and marine calcifiers are important as ecosystem engineers, sediment-formers, and agents of change in the carbon cycle. As human activity alters aspects of carbon-cycling, marine calcifiers and marine carbonates are responding with less production, altered production, altered composition, and/or changes in energy budgets. While decades of research have provided a considerable inventory of marine invertebrate skeletal carbonate composition, we are still unable to place these data in a wider context. Information gaps include calcification mechanisms in many phyla, structural features that make shells disproportionately strong, and the various controls and influences on calcification, mineralogy, and dissolution. Thank you for the NZMSS Award, and for 35 years enjoying marine science in Aotearoa.
Assoc. Professor Dan Hikuroa
Māori Studies
Waipapa Taumata Rau-University of Auckland
Thursday 10 July
Dan Hikuroa (Ngāti Maniapoto, Ngaati Whanaunga, Ngāti Mahuta, Pākehā) is a father, surfer, paddle-boarder, gardener, loves the taiao and is an Associate Professor in Māori Studies, Waipapa Taumata Rau-University of Auckland.
Dan is an established world expert on weaving indigenous knowledge and science to realise the dreams of the communities he works with. Dan has been spearheading alternative ways of undertaking development and assessing sustainability, including braiding indigenous knowledge and epistemologies with science and into policies, assessment frameworks and decision-support tools.
Dan is UNESCO New Zealand Commissioner for Culture, member of Pou Herenga, Māori Advisory to the Climate advises national and regional government, communities and philanthropic trusts and is a member of several significant international research teams. He is member of Ngā Ara Whetū, Te Pūtahi o Pūtaiao and Te Ao Mārama, Research Centres at Waipapa Taumata Rau -University of Auckland.
Presentation: Think like a Fish - an ocean-centric vision
Kindly sponsored by
Novel governance experiments in Aotearoa New Zealand are transforming public, government and scientific understandings of rivers and mountains as being. Initiatives driven by Māori have created spaces for thinking about rivers and mountains differently, valuing them as holistic, historical and cultural entities with lives and rights of their own. These build upon relational understandings of rivers and mountains as entities that are more ancient and powerful than people, viewing rivers as the lifeblood of society and the land. Within those relational ways of knowing and being, rivers and mountains can simultaneously be an ancient kin, a revered elder, and a living entity. As Māori perspectives conceptualize humans as part of living systems within innate relationships between people and rivers, land, forests and seas they offer prospect to reframe natural resource ownership, governance and management. And more broadly in the ocean space, for many this is a reality – the physical ocean Te Moana Nui a Kiwa – the great ocean of Kiwa (masculine), with hoa rangatira (chiefly partner) Hinemoana (feminine) – the personification of the ocean. In this talk I will explore the ideas laid out above, rising with the tide – he tai pari.
DISCUSSION PANEL
Marine Education across the Motu
Wednesday 9 July
The panel will be made up of a facilitator and panellists who work across the Education Sector.
They will be discussing Developments in Education.
Al Alder - Panel Facilitator
Marine Ecologist
Cawthron Institute
Al is a marine ecologist with the Cawthron Institute’s Restoration Ecology Team, specialising in coastal and marine ecosystem restoration. Driven by a commitment to inform and engage communities, Al enjoys connecting science with people - much like the marine educators on this panel. Al is excited to guide this conversation to highlight the vital importance of marine education in our rapidly changing world.
Glenis Paul - panellist
Professional Practice Fellow
NZ Marine Studies Centre Whakatū | Nelson
Dept of Marine Science | University of Otago
Glenis has been teaching science in Aotearoa New Zealand and internationally for over 25 years.
She now delivers New Zealand Marine Studies Centre education programmes for Year 0 -13 ākonga across Te Tauihu o Te Waka-a-Māui. Glenis enjoys facilitating opportunities for people to make a connection with where they live, encourage their curiosity to ask questions, develop skills to critically analyse their world and be inspired to care for the whenua, rivers, estuaries, beaches and moana.
Dr. Tim Haggitt - panellist
Marine Ecologist
University of Auckland’s Te Hāwere-a-Maki/ Goat Island Marine Discovery Centre (GIMDC)
Tim is a marine ecologist and educator based at the University of Auckland’s Te Hāwere-a-Maki/ Goat Island Marine Discovery Centre (GIMDC). He has a PhD in marine and environmental science and has spent much of the last quarter of a century above, below, and around the moana. His academic research focus has been based on rocky reef ecosystems, particularly kelp forests ecology and surveying key indicator species such as kōura (red rock lobster). He also has decades of technical experience, having established his own environmental consultancy in 1998.
Over the past seven years, Tim has shifted focus, channelling his passion for increasing ocean literacy in Aotearoa New Zealand as the manager of the GIMDC. To date the educational programmes run through the Centre have impacted over 30,000 students from across the country and around the world. When he is not in the GIMDC inspiring the next wave of marine scientists or out in the field, you can find him surfing, skateboarding, baking egg pies, making kelp fertiliser and growing hibiscus.
Gianna Savoie, Ph.D - panellist
Ocean Media Institute
Dr. Gianna Savoie is an award-winning documentary producer, writer, professor and National Geographic Explorer with two decades of experience in Science and Natural History filmmaking and a penchant for powerful storytelling that has led her to sink her teeth into some of the most critical conservation issues on the planet. Her Emmy-nominated work has been featured on National Geographic, PBS, NATURE, Discovery, and the BBC, as well as in theatrical documentaries and in print and web publications.
In 2015, Gianna founded the Ocean Media Institute, a non-profit global media collective that engages the public in ocean science and conservation through innovative, inclusive media and artistic approaches to ocean literacy. And in her quest to “pay it forward” and inspire the next generation of environmental storytellers, she teaches and mentors emerging filmmakers and science communicators.
Rob Lewis - panellist
Teaching fellow, Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka/University of Otago
New Zealand Marine Studies Centre
Rob Lewis is based at the New Zealand Marine Studies Centre as a teaching fellow and coordinator for various participatory science projects. His academic interests focus on the population dynamics and conservation of sharks, skates, and rays. His original foray into science education, community participation, and ocean literacy began in 2010 as part of his research where he recognised the importance of community understanding in achieving conservation objectives. Since then Rob has worked in multiple spaces of ocean literacy including private research, eco-tourism, and participatory science. His recent projects include the Shark Spy and Seasons of the Sea (plankton analysis project), as well as helping with the Yachting New Zealand’s Moanamana project.
