A New Zealand environmental activist says fishing boats off the coast of Canterbury are sneaking into a mammal sanctuary at night and fishing illegally.

To disguise what it is doing, the Beehive has ordered the Ministry for the Environment to abandon the five-yearly State of the Environment round-up report, writes Neville Peat.

An 12 metre-long adult male sperm whale was discovered by locals this morning near the Kapiti Coast Boat Club on Paraparaumu Beach, north of Wellington.

New Zealand is unlikely to compromise on its protection plan for the Antarctic's Ross Sea at key talks this year.

Three Sea Shepherd ships have left New Zealand for the Southern Ocean ready to do battle in the activist group's biggest Antarctic summer campaign against Japanese whaling.

Only the hardiest - or most foolhardy - surfers were willing to take on freakishly big waves that have crashed onto Northland's east coast.

Seven penguin chicks are the newest residents at Kelly Tarlton's aquarium thanks to a world-class breeding programme.

As searchers tried desperately to find diver Robbie Farquhar, his two young children were on the beach watching and waiting for their dad to come home.

A solo round-the-world sailor is off and racing again after completing repairs off the Dunedin coast.

A one metre shark gave swimmers a scare at a Hawke's Bay beach yesterday.

A man who suffered ciguatera poisoning after eating contaminated fish says the toxin stayed in his body for years causing relapses.

A "swat team" of whale rescue experts has undertaken an intensive three-day course in freeing whales that have become tangled in ropes and nets.