Angel Investing In New Zealand


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Angel Investing In New Zealand

Angel Investing In New Zealand

The National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) has released Marine Biodiversity of Aotearoa New Zealand, an assessment of life in the waters around New Zealand. The area covered by the findings extends to the 200 nautical-mile boundary of the Exclusive Economic Zone. At 4.2 million square km, New Zealand’s EEZ is one of the largest in the world, and much of it remains undiscovered. The wide range of marine habitats provided by the EEZ’s varied seafloor relief and latitudinal spread make it rich in sea life.

Inventory of New Zealand Marine Life

The report is the result of research work done over the past 10 years, with contributions from authorities around the world. The project’s mission was to review and inventory all of New Zealand’s marine life, “from bacteria to blue whales”. It found that the EEZ is home to 17,135 living species. Groups with over 1,000 species are molluscs (common example shellfish, snails etc), arthropods (crabs, crayfish, shrimps etc), chordates (species with backbones – fish), porifera (sponges) and cnidaria (jellyfish, corals).

Many species occupy New Zealand waters to an extent greater than anywhere else in the world. For instance New Zealand’s 66 black corals represent 41% of the entire known group in the Indo-Pacific Region. Of the 1,387 species of fish in the New Zealand EEZ, approximately half are widespread while 19% are considered endemic. This leads the report to describe the EEZ as containing “a globally unique mix of widespread (semi-cosmopolitan) Indo-Pacific, Australasian, sub-Antarctic and endemic taxa.”