Contents

COVER PHOTO HEADLINE : THE IMMORTALS How a cave full of fossils defied the Forest Service and its napalm.
CONTENTS : Departments : UP FRONT EDITORIAL -- IN THE FIELD -- VIEWFINDER Our trees, through the steady lens of German photographer Dirk Nayhauss -- GeoNEWS Death throes of an iceberg. The true distribution of fishing in our oceans. Fungal audiophiles. And what does a happy chicken sound like? -- PROFILE To help her people thrive, health scientist Amy Maslen-Miller first wants to give them a seat at the table -- JUST SO Plants can do it. Fish can do it. Worms can do it. Even single-celled plankton can do it. Why does so much of the natural world get to glow in the dark?
REFLECTION CULTURE A homage to New Zealand's insects; tracing the roots of the humble feijoa -- HISTORY The fetid origin story of Wellington's struggling sewerage system.
CONTENTS : Features :
THE STUFF OF LIFE There are places in our seas where the great, whirring cogs of the world hold still. Where the process of decay pauses - for your lifetime, for your children's, longer - and carbon sleeps, tucked safely away in the sludge. In New Zealand these places are the fiords, the ocean deeps, and the spongy, muddy fringes of our coastlines. And we're only just beginning to understand them.
BA-GERK! Driven partly by egg prices but also, surely, by the sheer joy of keeping chickens, Gallus gallus domesticus is really having a moment.
A YEAR OF SILT After the first flurry of action in the wake of Gabrielle, survivors were left virtually alone - with their trauma, as well as the massive clean-up job.
ANNIHILATION Fifty years ago, the government was felling and burning swathes of native forest, using napalm as an accelerant. But under one patch of forest was a system of caves filled with precious, fragile fossils.
A KIND OF MAGIC Bacterium or blue whale, every living thing leaves a trace. Now we have a tool that can find that trace, in soil, in water - even in the air - and it's changing the way we do science.