KEY POINTS:
Auckland scientist Dr Michelle Kelly keeps a SpongeBob SquarePants toy tucked in the pocket of her white laboratory coat when she visits schools to talk about her marine sponges.
It always gets the pupils' attention, but she has not been tempted to name one of the hundreds of sponge species she has discovered after the cartoon character.
"He is very unrealistic, unfortunately."
A world expert, Kelly discovers new sponge species almost every day and has dredged, dived and snorkelled for them throughout the Indo-Pacific.
The identification process is systematic. First she notes colour, shape and texture then the details of the surface.
"This tells you what the skeleton is doing underneath the surface, then you look at the spicules (silica needles) that can be embedded."
The pattern, shape and architecture of the skeleton tells Kelly to which order or family the sponge belongs.
Small differences between the spicule types and architecture differentiate at the genus level, then tiny differences in colour and the length of the spicules reveal species differences.
It all seems highly technical, but the differences have to be checked carefully - and sponges can bite.
"I got my come-uppance for collecting a lovely looking sponge in Papua New Guinea," says Kelly. "After a few minutes I had what felt like needles being driven into my hands."
Now, aged 45 and the only general professional sponge taxonomist in New Zealand, Kelly is concerned about who will follow her. There is a worldwide shortage of taxonomists in all fields.
"Everyone is getting old, and taxonomy is not taught at universities."
It all sounds very esoteric, but it is important to all of us because taxonomy - the formal naming system for plants, animals and microbes - is an essential foundation stone for resource management and conservation.
"Taxonomy grounds our biological knowledge, is the recognised fundamental basis of all biology," Kelly says.
Not being on top of the nature naming game compromises New Zealanders' ability to be good stewards of our natural resources.
"If you don't know what you're dealing with, you can't protect it or conserve it or know what its boundaries are, how widely it's distributed and if one is the same as the other."
Among sponges, for example, some species contain antiviral and anticancer compounds. Knowing how to identify these sponges is vital.
"It can be very difficult identifying the sponges," says Kelly. "Some have very few characteristics and some are closely related."
There are also biodiversity obligations. New Zealand's maritime waters are an international treasury of variety.
"Because we are so isolated, we have species that are unique to the world, which means we need local experts. We have living organisms that are now found only as fossils in Europe."
At Spirits Bay on the northern tip of the North Island, deep-water sponges hundreds of years old have been dredged up by fishing boats.
Dr Dennis Gordon, a Niwa colleague of Kelly, is a specialist in bryozoans (lace corals) whose taxonomic expertise has been used in forensic science.
He has analysed marine growths on human bodies found in the sea, and on illegal nets snagged on the Cook Strait cable.
Gordon says that after a 1999 survey of the sea floor at Spirits Bay it was taxonomy that established the precious nature of the underwater area, resulting in a moratorium on scallop dredging.
"In an area the equivalent of 10km by 20km we found a huge number of marine species, hundreds and hundreds."
Gordon identified 300 species of lace corals - the number found in the entire British Isles exclusive economic zone.
Gordon says the problem with taxonomy in New Zealand is money.
"In real dollar terms there is less funding now than at any time since World War II for marine taxonomy. We are losing critical capacity."
Dr Wendy Nelson, the Niwa aquatic biodiversity science leader, says the extreme shortage of taxonomists is the result of a dramatic decline over several decades. But she says it is not a lack of interest in the discipline.
"Many people are interested. It's an area where a lot of really exciting things can happen. New Zealand is an amazing place to live if you are a biologist. We are discovering new things all the time."
She, too, says the funding of biosystematics - the discipline of naming and describing organisms and understanding their relationships with each other - is woefully inadequate.
"Scientists are simply not funded enough time to devote to taxonomy."
Opportunities, like advances in the biotech industry, are being lost, but the message is not getting through.
"We have been saying since the early 1980s this is serious, with countless reports to science ministers and to the Ministry of Research, Science and Technology , but it never seems to surface on the urgent list."
"The panic button has not been hit on this one ... at some point we are going to be seen to be naked."
Nelson says the Government is making itself extremely vulnerable in biosecurity where you need to be able to tell what's native from what's introduced.
Weevils, for example, are a significant biosecurity risk.
"And the only person in New Zealand who can identify weevils is retired and aged 88."
New Zealand is also at risk from shipping contamination, says Nelson.
"There are six nasty groups that grow on ships but we have no specialists for three of them - barnacles, sea squirts and hydroids, three of the most important hull-fouling organisms."
KNOWING THE DIFFERENCE
Classifying the crabs
Dr Shane Ahyong's taxonomic work on crustaceans has commercial applications.
Fascinated with marine life since he turned over his first rock on a beach, Dr Ahyong has focused on the larger crabs, shrimps and lobsters.
Most recently, he has been working with king crabs. "There are a lot more species than thought, at least a dozen or so," he says.
They are difficult to tell apart, but knowing the difference is essential as they are investigated for their fishery potential.
In 2005, Dr Ahyong assisted in an Australian case where a seafood retailer was passing off cheap imported prawns as local king prawns, making a big profit.
"Most species look very similar when cooked, so it relied on accurate taxonomic identification."
Pinpointing pollution
Dr Graham Fenwick, an invertebrate specialist, says taxonomy can help pinpoint potential pollution problems.
He has studied organisms living in gravel and water up to 20m under the Canterbury Plains and which play a role in removing contaminants.
"One type of these little beasts like conditions of organic enrichment which could be a pollution source such as from a community wastewater treatment facility or dairy farm effluent-disposal sites. So they can be a powerful measure of the condition of a stream."
Dr Fenwick says names give scientists a host of information.
"We can't talk about things until they exist, and they exist only when we give them names."
In the beginning ...
This year is the 300th anniversary of the birth of Carl Linnaeus, the father of modern taxonomy. A Swedish natural scientist and botanist, he was the first to introduce a classifications system, defining humans as an animal among other animals, and naming us Homo sapiens.
Celebrations have been held around the world, tempered by the international shortage of taxonomists.
In New Zealand, there is a lot of work to be done. The marine environment alone has 15,855 known marine species but up to 48,000 still to be described, the majority not found anywhere else in the world.
Possibly half our terrestrial plants, insects, fungi and animals are also not named.
