Ruud Kleinpaste: Teaching time in the Marlborough Sounds

In case you are trying to call me on the phone in the next few weeks... sorry, leave a message!  

I’ve just come back after a week on an offshore Island in the Marlborough Sounds – its name is Maud Island (Te Pākeka). 

One of those wonderful closed Island Reserves, managed by the Department of Conservation. All sorts of pretty special birds and native frogs, as well as rare insects of course.  

And in the water, all sorts of marine beauties, such as colourful hermit crabs.  

These critters move into an empty snail shell to protect themselves from being eaten by predators, live in front of your eyes!   

But this wasn’t just a jolly trip to Paradise, it was a lot more important than just a field trip.  

DOC organises overnight trips for local school kids in the Marlborough Region. A dozen or so board a boat late morning and end up walking around the island with some DOC rangers, my friend Richard, and myself. And the stuff we come across is literally part of their environmental curriculum that will stick inside their brains for decades to come.  

Seeing these students live locally, these 24 hour education experiences are likely to be beneficial for the young locals of the future. This was teaching time for students! Wouldn’t it be a great idea to have these kinds of amazing encounters for all of our kids (so they learn about the Operations Manual of Planet Earth)? 

One of the cool things you can do with kids on an environmental trip away, is putting on a bright light at night – especially lights with some Mercury Vapour emissions that attract the moths, beetles, flies, and all the nocturnal flying invertebrates on a nice dark night. The numbers of species can be significant, and the stories always come down to the question: “What do these creatures do, out here in the night? What’s their job? What is the ecosystem service?” 

The research is brilliant work for teachers and the kids – it never ends!  

The next few weeks (in the school holidays) it’s the teachers turn. The Sir Peter Blake Trust tackles a lot of environmental education in the form of virtual reality sessions whereby kids (and teachers) see the marine creatures through 3-dimensional masks, as well as the quality of our coastlines – or the not so beautiful areas destroyed by pollution and kina barrens.  

Gathering plankton and magnifying the incredible life.

Visiting Campbells Bay rock pools, Stardome Observatory, getting into Matauranga Māori and spending a day at Tawharanui in the most wonderful forest track with rare birds, orchids and Kiwi. The whole idea is to create nature literate teachers who create cohort after cohort of nature literate kids – a key part of our Education to restore our Country and its Ecology.  

And you know what? I love the way we’re going! 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack Tame podcast
from News Talks at.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Be Rude climb Past is not in the garden because
he's in our studio with us this morning.

Speaker 3 (00:16):
Good morning, it's so lovely to be here.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
Hey, you've brought a fair friend this morning.

Speaker 3 (00:20):
Well, I decided to do something different. I mean, you've
seen all these weather and things like that. I thought
I talked with the teachers about red back spiders and
where they came from and how they got here.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
So just to be totally clear, over the last week
or so, you've been guiding teachers.

Speaker 3 (00:33):
Yeah, and a numbers of different ways. First of all,
I had a whole week in in what do you
call it Maude Island, which is on the in the
what do you call it Marbarus Marbles, you got it, Yeah,
And we took kids there with their with their teachers
once a day and we did all sorts of work
on that island and found all these amazing native stuff,
hermit crabs and all that nonsense, and it was great.

(00:55):
Gave wet penguin's you name it, Hamilton's frog Penguin's there. Yeah. God,
they're bringing they're starting now. They're coming to the boxes
going you can't even sleep with that.

Speaker 2 (01:05):
Noise things at my place.

Speaker 1 (01:07):
Yeah, yeah, this is a bit like that. So that
was that.

Speaker 3 (01:09):
So that was actually a wonderful thing. That's what DOC does.
They give us, you know, basically with the boat. You
go there for a whole week and you muck around
with these kids one after the other, and they all
come back with the idea that they know what to do.
Can we have penguins at our school? Can we do this? Can?
And that's how you education start, you know, that works.
So that was that week. Now I've just finished a

(01:31):
week with not field based, but Blake inspire. So Peter Blake,
trust you know, Sir Peter Blake. The day before he died,
he gave the most amazing I should send it to you.
He wrote in his diary about you know what we
need to do and he got shot the next day.
And we've decided to do this this no not feel
Bake Blake inspired thing every school holidays. So we got

(01:56):
thirty teachers coming to us in hotel. They've got a
wonderful hotel there. They don't realize that they only get
six hours sleep a day. But that's that's all right,
go to Tafer and new we go to all sorts
of places and we find ki Wei sleeping at night?
Can you imagine that?

Speaker 2 (02:14):
And they go should shouldn't? Can we be awake at night?

Speaker 3 (02:18):
No? But this is during the day. Oh okay, we
went during today?

Speaker 2 (02:21):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you got it.

Speaker 3 (02:23):
This is exactly what it's about.

Speaker 2 (02:24):
I thought there was a trick question there for a
moment road, but.

Speaker 3 (02:29):
I used to Actually I studied Kiwis in the ninety
eighty that's a long time ago, but I'm not going
to go there. So basically, what we're trying to do
there is to create nature literate teachers who understand the
operations manual of the planet. I've used those words quite
a long time, but it's really what this is about.
And they now are taking that knowledge back to the

(02:51):
school and starting all sorts of projects, and that is
what this is about.

Speaker 2 (02:56):
It's just wonder that must be so nice to be
teaching the teachers like that, and knowing that, you know,
by teaching thirty people, you're actually potentially teaching you know,
three thousand people. You know, that's that is pretty amazing.
Tell us about the red back then, Well.

Speaker 3 (03:10):
The Red Back basically you got a name, Well, no,
we I just called it the red back. I got
it only about a year ago when it finally came
out of the egg. This is a creature that came
from Central Otago, where I quite often find them there.
We now know, or think we know that the way
they got into New Zealand is probably with the Chinese
people that did the work on the mines in Cinelotagra.

Speaker 2 (03:34):
Yeah, they came from Australia. Yeah, okay, and with their
gear in the eighteen hundreds.

Speaker 3 (03:39):
Yeah, they took They were quite sure we took. They
took those things with them by accident. And of course
these guys are very closely related if you look at them,
very closely related to our cutty post spider as well.
And it's interesting to actually see how they differ. And
they don't differ that much at all.

Speaker 2 (03:57):
So would that kill you? No, he says, with an
upward infliction. The ins in me, lawyer, sweet and cold bullets.

Speaker 3 (04:07):
Oh look you know what you I've taken stuff and
here that. Yeah, I've been bitten three times by back,
but that was all that was by excellent kind of
because I usually put him on my hand and show people.
You don't be worried. Do you bite the ground? Key
walk on?

Speaker 2 (04:21):
No?

Speaker 3 (04:22):
No, there you go.

Speaker 2 (04:23):
No. So yeah, but I actually do this. No, I
think we'll, I think we're we leave it three so
three times.

Speaker 3 (04:29):
Yeah, you're a quick learner.

Speaker 1 (04:30):
Root.

Speaker 3 (04:30):
No, not the first fly on the turd. Yeah, I know.

Speaker 2 (04:35):
It's amazing.

Speaker 3 (04:35):
Thank you.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
He is beautiful.

Speaker 1 (04:38):
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