Marine Technology

Environmentalist Raewyn Peart loves darting like a guppy around our undersea realm, from fish of all shapes and sizes to colourful sponges, kelps and corals. She's keen to pass on her love of snorkelling to her daughter and, in late summer, headed for Matai Bay in the Far North, where the marine life was reputedly as scenic as the majestic, horse-shoe shaped bay. She was shattered by the degradation.
"It was appalling - just barren. There were no sea eggs and it had been stripped of seaweed. It was a site of devastation and, for me, that's incredibly upsetting."
Peart is doubly concerned at the Department of Conservation's plan to axe its specialist marine conservation unit in a bid to cut costs at head office.
"Our marine environment is in a terrible state," says the senior policy analyst with the Environmental Defence Society.
"We have a well-resourced and politically-powerful ministry whose core focus is utilising and exploiting it. We don't have an effective organisation that can really counter-balance that in the policy-making area.