Marie Darby
| Marie Darby | |
|---|---|
| Residence | New Zealand |
| Education | BSc, Victoria University of Wellington MSc, University of Canterbury |
| Known for | First New Zealand woman to visit the Antarctic mainland |
| Spouse(s) | John Darby |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Marine biology |
Marion Marie Stringer Darby (née Buchler) was a New Zealand marine biologist and teacher. She was the first New Zealand woman to visit the Antarctic mainland. In January 1968, she travelled on the Magga Dan, the first tourist vessel to the Ross Sea, and visited Scott Base with other staff and tourists. She prepared a checklist of sub-Antarctic birds for the information of tourists on board and later wrote an article on summer seabirds to be seen between New Zealand and McMurdo Sound. Mt Darby in Antarctica is named after her.
Marie Darby's interest in the sub-Antarctic and Antarctic began at a young age. When she was young, her mother used to take her down to the wharf to watch boats returning from the sub-Antarctic. Marie and her mother also went together to talks given by Dominion Museum director Robert Falla about penguin and seals.
Darby studied at Victoria University of Wellington and graduated with a BSc. She completed an honours and a master's degree at the University of Canterbury, specialising in ichthyology. Her 1966 master's thesis was entitled The ecology of fishes in tidal rockpools: with a revision of the common littoral species Tripterygion nigripenne Cuv., and Val., 1836 (Tripterygiidae: Blennioidei: Teleostei). At the time of her trip south, she was working as a marine zoologist at Canterbury Museum, but she had spent a year at the Portobello marine biological station in Dunedin and had taken part in several study trips in Cook Strait. She was also an Honorary Ranger.
She married John Darby, a zoologist and biological photographer for the University of Canterbury. John Darby was working at the penguin colony at Cape Bird, 60 miles north of Scott Base, from December 1967 to February 1968, so he was already in Antarctica when Marie arrived.
In 1968, the first tourists travelled to the Ross Sea on the Magga Dan. Most of the tourists on the first cruise had flown to New Zealand from the United States. Darby prepared a checklist of sub-Antarctic birds for the information of tourists on board, and later wrote an article on summer seabirds to be seen between New Zealand and McMurdo Sound. They arrived in Auckland on 4 January 1968 and sailed from Lyttelton on 8 January, calling in at the Chatham Islands on the way south. The Magga Dan ran aground on 22 January near Hut Point at the entrance to Winter Quarters Bay in McMurdo Sound. She was successfully re-floated and returned to Bluff on 2 February. The second cruise left from Bluff on 6 February and reached Winter Quarters Bay on 19 February.
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