Clever Crustaceans Workshop

About the event

Join us during the school holidays for a special Clever Crustaceans workshop with NIWA scientists!

Crustaceans come in all shapes and sizes – from huge king crabs to tiny sand hoppers! Most of them live in the sea, but some prefer to live in fresh water, on land, or even underground.

Learn more about the wider gang, from barnacles with superglue to slaters in the backyard in this workshop with two carcinologists (crustacean experts) from NIWA.

Dr Rachael Peart is a marine invertebrate systematist at NIWA where she studies small crustaceans, particularly amphipods – like the sandhoppers you see at the beach. Over the last 25 years, Rachael has described over 100 new amphipod species.

Dr Kareen Schnabel is a marine biologist at NIWA where she is an expert on New Zealand’s deep-sea crabs, shrimps and lobster. Her favourite crustaceans are a group called squat lobsters. She studied squat lobsters during her PhD and has described over 30 new species of them.

From colouring in to building your own crustacean, there’s lots to see and do at the Clever Crustaceans school holiday workshop!

Image:  Juvenile Lithodes aotearoa, this specimen is only about 3 cm in diameter. Courtesy of NIWA.