BLAKE Expeditions

Motu Ihupuku / Campbell Island

2025

On 1 March 2025, eight young New Zealanders and four primary and intermediate teachers joined a team of scientists and BLAKE staff on an expedition to the Subantarctic Island group, visiting both Auckland and Campbell Islands aboard HMNZS Canterbury.

The Subantarctic islands house some of the most unique wildlife globally, with many of the birds, invertebrates, and plants found nowhere else in the world.

This trip marked the programme’s ninth voyage and the fourth to the SubAntarctic, in partnership with the Royal New Zealand Navy, and will see field work carried out across four projects which hope to develop an understanding of climate change and biodiversity in the Southern Ocean region.

A new project lead by Securing Antarctica’s Environmental Future (SAEF) and Monash University focused on springtails – minuscule, wingless land-dwelling invertebrates. This marked the first comprehensive update to springtail biodiversity data since the 1960s, as well as any recently introduced species. Using modern genetic techniques, scientists were able to explore the evolutionary relationships between these island populations and their Southern Hemisphere relatives.

The team also conducted rock sampling for Chlorine-36 surface exposure dating, led by Professor Gary Wilson from the University of Waikato – the aim to reveal crucial data about historical glacier movements and climate patterns in the Subantarctic region.

“Understanding how climate change will impact various parts of the Earth requires us to refine global climate models and one of the more sensitive areas to climate change is the subantarctic – understanding how and when ice retreated from this part of the world will be key to those models,” Wilson explains.

The expedition also advanced two critical ongoing research streams; peat coring investigations led by GNS Scientist and Climate Researcher Greer Gilmer, which explored historical climate changes using preserved organic matter, and intertidal kelp surveys directed by the University of Otago’s Phoebe Chapman, monitoring marine ecosystem health in response to warming seas.

This mission continues the legacy of Sir Peter Blake, whose pioneering expeditions to Antarctica, Tierra Del Fuego, and the Amazon inspired global environmental awareness.