NIWA, Taihoro Nukurangi, is NZ’s Crown Research Institute covering water and atmospheric research, conducting research in aquaculture, atmosphere, climate, coasts and oceans, fisheries, natural hazards. They also run NZ’s active oceanographic research vessels.

There’s an abolute ton of online services providing real-time or near real-time data from coastal webcams through to forecasts, climate maps, satellite data services, tide forecasts, UV and Ozone maps, historic weather events.

Other interesting datasets and projects include:

• Cam-ERA - a network of computer-controlled cameras that monitor the New Zealand environment for research and resource management. These are also useful for surfers and swimmers.

• NZ Freshwater Fish Database - contains over 34,000 freshwater fish observations. Data stored include the location of sample sites, the fish species present, as well as information on their abundance, size, sampling methods and a physical description of each site.In recent years, data from the River Environment Classification (REC) has also been linked to the NZFFD, adding further environmental information to each NZFFD record.

• NIWA Invertebrate Collection - olds specimens from almost all invertebrate phyla. This is a result of about half a century of marine taxonomic and biodiversity research in the New Zealand region, the South West Pacific and the Ross Sea, Antarctica.

• NIWA Seasonal Climate Outlook data - Air temperature, rainfall, soil moisture and river flow predictions for the coming season.

• Te Kūwaha - Māori Environmental Research - sharing knowledge with Māori communities and empowering Māori business with the latest science. Te Kūwaha undertake research and provide consultancy services across a number of core science areas including Aquaculture, Freshwater, Marine, Natural Hazards, Climate, and Energy.