My dad's using science to find the LOCH NESS MONSTER!

Teora, this is Ilsa reporting for Kia Kids News. We are reporting today from Aramoana. We are meeting a scientist who is coming up with ways to help in the hunt against possums and rats by fishing their DNA out of rivers and seas. And surprise, he's my dad! My dad uses new ways to find animal and plant life. He examines water to find microscopic information left behind by animals and fish. He even took his new technology to Scotland to look for the Loch Ness Monster. The information he's gathering is stored in a little twirly thing called DNA. It's in every living thing. Think of DNA as the instructions of building a Lego set. And imagine that the instructions are stored inside every individual piece of Lego. That's how our bodies know how to build themselves. Did you find the Loch Ness Monster? No, we didn't find a monster. We did find an awful lot of eel DNA. And so there had been some suggestions by some people that there are giant eels in Loch Ness. So maybe the Loch Ness Monster is actually the world's biggest eel. How does finding animal DNA in the water help our environment? So the first is that it helps us figure out where stoats and possums and rats and various other pest species that we might want to control are. How does eDNA testing work? So we're picking up things that you'd need a microscope to see generally and we're capturing them in a molecular net, a filter that captures the cells of plants and animals and bacteria and other living things. How does DNA get in the water? Possums and rats, they either drink it or they bathe in it or they're peeing and pooing and then traces of their DNA are being washed down into the rivers and lakes and ocean after rainfall. Dad, can we go and find some animal DNA now? Sure, let's go do it. Alright, woohoo, it's bucket science. Bucket science. So we've got our eDNA in a bucket and what we're going to do is capture it in this molecular net. All the cells and all the bacteria and things are going to get stuck on that filter and the water's going to go through. Let's see if we can capture that eDNA. So plug that in. Now, squirt it through there. Why is this so hard? Because you're pushing it through tiny little holes. I don't got this. You don't got this? It's actually quite tough. So we have some DNA in this dish? There's definitely DNA in the dish. Well... DNA in a... Whoa! Oh no! DNA overboard! It doesn't matter if it's filtered DNA because it's kind of everywhere. What kind of species do you think are in that filter, Dad? So this little filter is now chock-a-full of DNA. There's probably going to be DNA from the seagulls that we see around here, the sea lion that's down the beach. What's the weirdest animal DNA you've ever found in one of these? Out here at Aramoana, the thing that I like the most, we've found a sunfish. So these are those giant fish, and there's a new species that was discovered here in New Zealand, and we find that in these filters from time to time. Use a wrench and go eDNA hunting. This has been Elsa reporting for Kia Cancer News.