Jaguar - The elusive, powerful, strikingly colored jaguar (Panthera onca) is the largest feline of North and South America. Formerly it ranged from the southeastern United States to the tip of South America. Now restricted in distribution because of human activities, such as hunting and clearing of land for agriculture, building and grazing, jaguars live mostly in Mexico, Central America and Brazil. Although jaguars can live in scrub and deserts, they need fresh water in their habitat, and are commonest in rainforests, savannahs and swamps.

Kahurangi Marine Reserve (part of Kahurangi National Park) 

Kahurangi Marine Reserve protects the marine environment along 16 km of coastline and out to 5 km offshore between Wekakura Point and Crayfish Point.

The north of the reserve is a remote wilderness visited more by seals than humans. At 84 km², it is one of the largest marine reserves in mainland New Zealand.

It is home to communities of animals such as earwigs, sandhoppers, spiders, encrusting animals, invertebrates and inshore fish, fur seals/Kekeno who often visit and rest at the Wekakura Point colony in the north of the reserve. It is also home to dozens of Hector’s dolphins.

The reserve reaches to depths of about 50 m. A seabed of mud and sand provides habitat for burrowing shellfish and coastal fish such as flounder, gurnard, snapper and sharks.

The littoral zone or nearshore is the part of a sea, lake, or river that is close to the shore. In coastal environments, the littoral zone extends from the high water mark, which is rarely inundated, to shoreline areas that are permanently submerged.

Mariana Trench (is located in the western Pacific Ocean about 200 kilometres east of the Mariana Islands; it is the deepest oceanic trench on Earth. It is crescent-shaped and measures about 2,550 km in length and 69 km in width. The maximum known depth is 10,984 metres at the southern end of a small slot-shaped valley in its floor known as the Challenger Deep. However, some unrepeated measurements place the deepest portion at 11,034 metres. If Mount Everest were placed into the trench at this point, its peak would still be under water by more than two kilometres)

The neritic zone is the relatively shallow part of the ocean above the drop-off of the continental shelf, approximately 200 meters in depth. Due to the abundant supply of sunlight and nutrients in this zone, it is the most productive ocean zone supporting the vast majority of marine life.

Old Field (is a term used in ecology to describe lands formerly cultivated or grazed but later abandoned. The dominant flora include perennial grasses, heaths and herbaceous plants. Old fields are canonically defined as an intermediate stage found in ecological succession in an ecosystem advancing towards its climax community, a concept which has been debated by contemporary ecologists for some time)

Pollution, including land, water and air pollution, poses a serious threat to ecosystems. Pollution can threaten or kill organisms that are vital for ecosystems, and the ecosystem can become imbalanced.

Quadrat (is a frame, traditionally square, used in ecology and geography to isolate a standard unit of area for study of the distribution of an item over a large area. Modern quadrats can for example be rectangular, circular, or irregular. The quadrat is suitable for sampling plants, slow-moving animals, and some aquatic organisms)

Calling it a night......................

The Roaring Forties are strong westerly winds found in the Southern Hemisphere, generally between the latitudes of 40 and 50 degrees.

Systems Ecology (is an interdisciplinary field of ecology, a subset of Earth system science, that takes a holistic approach to the study of ecological systems, especially ecosystems. Systems ecology can be seen as an application of general systems theory to ecology. Central to the systems ecology approach is the idea that an ecosystem is a complex system exhibiting emergent properties. Systems ecology focuses on interactions and transactions within and between biological and ecological systems, and is especially concerned with the way the functioning of ecosystems can be influenced by human interventions. It uses and extends concepts from thermodynamics and develops other macroscopic descriptions of complex)

Calling it a night...........................