Geography of New Zealand Geography of New Zealand New Zealand ("") is an island country located in the south-western Pacific Ocean, near the centre of the water hemisphere. It is a long and narrow country and comprises around 600 islands. The two main islands by size are the North Island (or "Te Ika-a-Māui") and the South Island (or "Te Waipounamu"), separated by the Cook Strait; the third-largest island, Stewart Island (or "Rakiura"), is located off the tip of the South Island across Foveaux Strait. Significantly smaller islands include Waiheke Island, Chatham Island, Great Barrier Island and more, although many are uninhabited. New Zealand's landscape
Fram Strait ground for this Critically Endangered population. The use of the name "Fram Strait" for the passage between Spitsbergen and Greenland appears to have come into common use in the oceanographic literature in the 1970s. Fram Strait is named after the Norwegian ship "Fram". In an 1893 expedition led by Fridtjof Nansen, the Fram drifted for two years across the Arctic before exiting the Arctic through what is now known as Fram Strait. According to glaciologist and geographer Moira Dunbar, an early adopter of the name, the name "Fram Strait" originated in the Russian scientific literature. While in common use, particularly