Jump to content

Portal:New Zealand

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The New Zealand Portal

New Zealand
Aotearoa (Māori)
A map of the hemisphere centred on New Zealand, using an orthographic projection.
Location of New Zealand, including outlying islands, its territorial claim in the Antarctic, and Tokelau
ISO 3166 codeNZ

New Zealand (Māori: Aotearoa [aɔˈtɛaɾɔa]) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island (Te Ika-a-Māui) and the South Island (Te Waipounamu)—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island country by area and lies east of Australia across the Tasman Sea and south of the islands of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga. The country's varied topography and sharp mountain peaks, including the Southern Alps, owe much to tectonic uplift and volcanic eruptions. New Zealand's capital city is Wellington, and its most populous city is Auckland.

A developed country, it was the first to introduce a minimum wage, and the first to give women the right to vote. It ranks very highly in international measures of quality of life, human rights, and it has one of the lowest levels of perceived corruption in the world. It retains visible levels of inequality, having structural disparities between its Māori and European populations. New Zealand underwent major economic changes during the 1980s, which transformed it from a protectionist to a liberalised free-trade economy. The service sector dominates the national economy, followed by the industrial sector, and agriculture; international tourism is also a significant source of revenue. New Zealand is a member of the United Nations, Commonwealth of Nations, ANZUS, UKUSA, Five Eyes, OECD, ASEAN Plus Six, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, the Pacific Community and the Pacific Islands Forum. It enjoys particularly close relations with the United States and is one of its major non-NATO allies; the United Kingdom; Samoa, Fiji, and Tonga; and with Australia, with a shared "Trans-Tasman" identity between the two countries stemming from centuries of British colonisation. (Full article...)

This is a Good article, an article that meets a core set of high editorial standards.

The slender smooth-hound or gollumshark (Gollum attenuatus) is a species of ground shark in the family Pseudotriakidae. It is endemic to the waters around New Zealand, where it is usually found close to the bottom over the continental slope at depths of 300–600 m (980–1,970 ft). An extremely slim, plain brownish shark reaching 1.1 m (3.6 ft) in length, the slender smooth-hound can be identified by its broad, flattened head with a long, distinctively bell-shaped snout. Its mouth is angular with short furrows at the corners, and contains a very high number of tooth rows in both jaws. Its two dorsal fins are roughly equal in size.

The diet of the slender smooth-hound is diverse, but dominated by small, benthic bony fishes and decapod crustaceans. It exhibits a specialized form of aplacental viviparity with oophagy: the females produce a single capsule in each uterus that contains 30–80 ova, of which one ovum develops into an embryo that consumes the rest of the ova and stores the yolk material in its external yolk sac. The growing embryo is mainly sustained by this yolk sac during gestation, though it may be additionally supplied with histotroph ("uterine milk") produced by the mother. The typical litter size is two pups, one per uterus. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has assessed the slender smooth-hound as Least Concern; it is taken as fishery bycatch but not in great numbers, and furthermore large portions of its range see minimal fishing activity. (Full article...)

General images

The following are images from various New Zealand-related articles on Wikipedia.

More Did you know? - show different entries

Te Mana
Te Mana

... that at up to 1.4 metres long the North Auckland worm (Spenceriella gigantea) is the longest in New Zealand?

... that HMNZS Te Mana (F111) (pictured) was the first New Zealand warship to visit a Russian port?

...that Garry Mallett, the former President of ACT New Zealand, is an owner-operator of a branch of a Les Mills International fitness studio?

Rob Hamill
Rob Hamill

... that New Zealand rower Rob Hamill has also stood as a political candidate, and his brother was a victim of the Khmer Rouge?

Selected article - show another


In Māori mythology, Māui is a culture hero famous for his exploits and his trickery. Cast into the sea by his mother Taranga, Māui-tikitiki-a-Taranga (or Māui of the topknot of Taranga) was rescued by ocean spirits and raised by his divine ancestor, Tama-nui-ki-te-rangi (Rangi).

Māui emerged from the sea and found his four brothers, Māui-taha, Māui-roto, Māui-pae, and Māui-waho. Māui's brothers at first are wary of the new-comer but, after he performs several feats such as transforming himself into different kinds of birds, they acknowledge his power and admire him.

With the help of his brothers, Māui netted the Sun and beat him severely with a jaw-bone club until the Sun promised to go slower in future, because the days were getting too short for people to get their work done.

Later, Māui took his brothers fishing, this time using the jaw-bone as a fish-hook. Māui, using blood from his nose for bait, hauled a great fish up from the depths, which became the North Island of New Zealand, or Te Ika-a-Māui (The Fish of Māui).

When the people need to recover the lost secret of fire, it is up to Māui to face Mahuika the Fire-goddess. He succeeds through trickery, infuriating the goddess, and he barely escapes with his life. (Full article...)

Selected picture - show another

New Zealand spacewalk
New Zealand spacewalk

Backdropped by a colourful Earth, astronaut Robert L. Curbeam, Jr. (left) and European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Christer Fuglesang, both STS-116 mission specialists, participate in the mission's first of three planned sessions of extravehicular activity as construction resumes on the International Space Station. The landmasses depicted are the South Island (left) and North Island (right) of New Zealand.

Did you know (auto-generated) - load new batch

Topics

Categories

Category puzzle
Category puzzle
Select [►] to view subcategories

Recognised content

Extended content

Good articles

Associated Wikimedia

The following Wikimedia Foundation sister projects provide more on this subject:

Things you can do

Sources

Discover Wikipedia using portals

purge cache