Winston Cowie
[17] He is the lead author of the international IUCN Guideline for gathering of fishers knowledge for policy development and applied use[18] (2020) which includes contributions from 50 experts from 16 countries.
[21][22][23][24][25][26] He was part of the Environment Agency Abu Dhabi and Emirates Nature-WWF team that mapped the movement of Green turtles from foraging grounds in the UAE to Oman and back for the first time.
Etihad Airways removed 95 plastic items – including cups, cutlery, dishes, headset bags and toothbrushes – from the long-haul flight.
[41][42] It tells the story of three Emirati scientists working in the hottest sea in the world, the Arabian Gulf and the wildest part of Abu Dhabi, Al Dhafra.
[45] To date his most notable work is environmental documentary ‘Zayed’s Antarctic Lights’ (2018) which screened on National Geographic Abu Dhabi and Etihad Airlines.
The 50 minute documentary investigates the theory that the Spanish or Portuguese might have been the first Europeans to discover New Zealand, before the Dutchman Abel Tasman in 1642.
In 2018 he was a participant of Abu Dhabi's Team Zayed, which sent a message to the world in solar lights about climate change and single use plastic.
Cowie directed a film on the expedition called Zayed's Antarctic Lights[46] which screened on National Geographic and which won and international award.
[1][11][69][70] Cowie was captain of the Doha[71] and Mahurangi Rugby Club,[16] and played for the Harbour Hawks in Dunedin and the British Penguins in the Orkney Islands, Scotland.
[74][75] The goodwill mission featured on World Rugby TV and the Mike Ballard Foundation Committee were awarded UAE volunteers of the year.
[80] Cowie assesses the Spanish theories that Juan Fernández (1576-1578) or the San Lesmes (1525-1526) of the Loaísa expedition voyaged to New Zealand pre-Abel Tasman – as proposed by Chilean historian Jose Torobio Medina and Australian researcher Robert Adrian Langdon in The Lost Caravel respectively.
[81] Cowie’s original research included interviews with elderly residents of the Pouto Peninsula – oral tradition which included stories of shipwrecks, intermarriage between wrecked sailors and local Maori, artefacts being found and reburied, and early settlers describing local Maori as having red hair and complexions similar to the Portuguese and Spaniards.
He concludes that the San Lesmes may have been wrecked on Baylys Beach, Northland, New Zealand and may be buried under the sand there - with more research needed to take the theory from possibility to probability.
Part of Cowie’s research involved investigating the date of the large Pohutukawa tree at the La Coruna Police Station, endemic to New Zealand.
Cowie through the generosity of the late master carver Kerry Strongman, gifted the tree a greenstone taonga representative of the links between Spain and New Zealand.
[3] Cowie’s book sparked an international debate on the Spanish and Portuguese discovery subject with articles in: El País, Mahurangi Matters, Otago Daily Times, The Listener, and The New Zealand Herald.
[81] In December 2019[5] and March 2020[85] Cowie launched a two part competition in his column in the Dive NZ and Pacific magazine entitled The Great New Zealand Historical Treasure Hunt where readers were asked to send in ideas on what additional research could be done to explore the theories further.
