Auckland's Queens Wharf is too small for the new generation of bigger cruise ships and may need a $10 million top-up from ratepayers.

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.

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.

Family members of a Northland father and son caught in rough weather when their jetski broke down headed back out to retrieve the jetski after the rescue.

The threat of paralytic shellfish poisoning means eating shellfish from much of Northland's west coast is akin to playing Russian roulette.

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.