Blog

Initial surveying from the Southwest Pacific Expedition shows a number of fish-rich areas that justify a network of sanctuaries or marine reserves around the remote Lau islands.

Some of the team's most mesmerising finds are much, much smaller and harder to spot - such as the Christmas tree worm.

In celebration of our current exhibition Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2017, we decided to seek out the hidden photographic talents of our Museum whanau and share their passion for the medium with a few select images from their personal collections.

Two bark-cloth broadsheets from the Fiji Times piqued the curiosity of our Project Conservator, Sabine Weik-Barton, so she did some detective work to discover if they were special commemorative editions.

From the depths, we have pulled up camera footage showing a deep-sea skuffle between a octopus and a fish.

So far our marine team has identified 75 species of fish including a miniature scorpion-fish-like species that is just 2 centimetres long!

So far the team have pull up a range of mysterious and rare creatures from the inky depths such the miniature-yet-venomous leaf scorpion fish.

The marine expedition team has crossed off leg one of the Southwest Pacific expedition and already they've uncovered a wealth of fish and invertebrate life.

“Never a dull moment” is an accurate description of life on the Braveheart. At the moment we have scientists from Auckland Museum, Australian Museum, Te Papa and Massey University all spending every waking hour on their research projects.

Our research team is about to set sail on the high-seas of the Southwest Pacific to discover more about the marine plants and sea-creatures that live in this largely unexplored area.

For the past five weeks, Susan Tolich has worked as a Wikimedian at Auckland Museum populating the pages of female artists to help address the fact that women are under-represented in articles and as contributors to Wikipedia, the world's biggest encylopedia.

Auckland Museum's Collections Online database gives you advanced search tools that let you explore our collection in exciting new ways. More than 300,000 images are available to download and re-use for any purpose imaginable — even commercial use.