KEY POINTS:
A bag of M&Ms and a video camera helped win a group of students a trip around the sub-Antarctic islands with the Navy.
Eighteen-year-olds Holly Woulfe and Chloe O'Shea, 17-year-old Brittany Smith-Frank and their teacher Margaret O'Donnell were more than keen to swap the scorching temperatures of Tauranga for the cooler climates of the Campbell, Auckland and Snares Islands.
The teenagers, who finished Tauranga Girls College last year, returned this week from a 10-day trip aboard the frigate Te Kaha with 150 sailors and about 30 other people, including Department of Conservation workers and media.
Ms O'Donnell said that, despite small bouts of seasickness in seven-metre swells, the students enjoyed interacting with the sea lions, sea elephants, albatrosses and megaherb plant growth on Campbell Island and Enderby Island, at the northern tip of the Auckland Islands.
They were unable to berth at The Snares because of rough seas but took plenty of photos, Ms O'Donnell said.
The voyage was a gong for the girls' efforts in last year's Freemasons BIG Science Adventures DVD competition, a nationwide secondary school science contest run by the Royal Society of New Zealand.
Royal Society expedition team leader, Bruce Jones, said the sub-Antarctic islands were a "harsh and impressive environment with spectacular scenery".
"The trip held plenty of adventure, including changeable weather at sea and marauding sea lions ashore. It was a wonderful experience."
The theme of the competition for 2008 was Darwin and evolution to mark the 150th anniversary of the Wallace-Darwin paper on natural selection.
The Tauranga girls made a five-minute DVD on New Zealand's biodiversity investigating the evolution of the country's unique plants and animals and the effect humans had when they arrived.
The judges said the footage of the kereru (New Zealand pigeon) in the introduction, which were shot at the Auckland Zoo, was some of the best animal cinematography in the competition.
The video also showed an example of natural selection by using different coloured M&M lollies.
