Great Southern BioBlitz Day 1 Scuba Diving
Location
Hosted by
Green Heroes LTD About
FOUR DAYS. FIVE ADVENTURES. ONE BIG BIODIVERSITY COUNT.
As the official area coordinator for the Great Southern BioBlitz, Green Heroes is bringing this global biodiversity event to our local backyard — above and below the water at Cook Island and across the Fingal Head Peninsula.
The Great Southern BioBlitz is a spring snapshot of life across the entire Southern Hemisphere.
Over four days, people across Australia, New Zealand, South America and southern Africa record as much biodiversity as they can find and upload it to iNaturalist — building a single, shared picture of life across the southern hemisphere.
GSB 2026 runs Friday 27 to Monday 30 November, with a further 14 days afterwards to upload and identify everything recorded during the BioBlitz.
Green Heroes is taking that global effort beneath the surface at Cook Island Aquatic Reserve.
Fish, invertebrates, corals, algae, sponges, turtles and everything in between — if it lives on the reef, we want it on the record.
DAY 1 — DIVE DEEPER
We're kicking off our Great Southern BioBlitz with a scuba expedition into the underwater world of Cook Island.
Reef environments are often badly under-represented in biodiversity surveys, meaning a huge amount of marine life can go unseen and unrecorded.
That's why this dive matters.
Our goal is simple: find as much as we can.
We'll explore the reef, photograph the species we encounter and contribute our observations to iNaturalist and the Cook Island Ecology Project, helping build a more comprehensive species list for the Aquatic Reserve.
Every fish.
Every nudibranch.
Every crab.
Every coral.
Every strange little creature hiding in the reef.
The things you notice today could become part of the permanent biodiversity record for Cook Island.
HUNT FOR THE UNEXPECTED
This isn't a dive where we're simply looking for the biggest or most colourful animals.
We're looking closely.
Under ledges.
Between rocks.
Among the algae.
Across the reef.
Because some of the most important discoveries might be the tiny, cryptic or easily overlooked species that rarely make it into biodiversity records.
And who knows what we'll find?
A species we've seen before?
Something we haven't recorded yet?
Or perhaps something that makes us stop underwater and think...
“What on earth is THAT?”
That's part of the fun.
SEE IT. SNAP IT. RECORD IT.
You don't need to be a marine biologist or expert fish identifier.
If you can photograph it, we can work on identifying it together.
Your photographs and observations will contribute to the growing Cook Island Ecology Project and help build a more complete picture of the biodiversity protected within Cook Island Aquatic Reserve.
WHY YOUR DIVE MATTERS
A BioBlitz is all about completeness.
The more eyes we have looking, the more we discover.
And the more we discover, the better we understand what lives here.
By joining this dive, you're helping fill an important gap in our knowledge of Cook Island's underwater biodiversity — one photograph and one species record at a time.
Come dive with us, look a little closer and help put the hidden biodiversity of Cook Island on the map.
FOUR DAYS. FIVE WAYS TO EXPLORE.
This is just the beginning.
Across the four-day BioBlitz window, Green Heroes will run five different biodiversity adventures across Cook Island and the Fingal Head Peninsula — above and below the water.
Different habitats. Different species. Different ways to explore.
One big goal: build the most complete picture of our local biodiversity that we can.
