Do you remember what it was like to be a child? Or have you recently watched your children, your friend’s children, or your nieces and nephews? Everything they see is new and exciting, everything seems possible, and everything can be turned into an adventure. It’s a shame that we seem to require reminders to switch our children’s view of the world back on.

I’ve been working for Greenpeace since 2008, and even though my work tends to be fairly desk bound, I get pretty frequent reminders about how exciting this world is and how we should push the seemingly impossible to be possible. So it seemed only fitting that my latest reminder came in the shape of small Greenpeace boat named after Margaret Mahy, a famous New Zealand author of countless dearly loved children’s books.

Greenpeace New Zealand has teamed up with researchers at the University of Auckland in an effort to discover more about the critically endangered Māui dolphin. Although scientists have information about the preferred habitat of Māui dolphins in summer, very little is known about where they go in the colder water months. “With so few Māui left, we need to gather all of the information we can about their distribution in order to understand how we can best protect the population", says Olivia Hamilton, a PhD student of the Institute of Marine Science at the University of Auckland, who was on board the Margaret Mahy.

So two scientists from the University of Auckland and two Greenpeacers set off to find some Māui dolphins before the close of the colder water months. Much to my wobbly sea legs’ relief, we had a stunner of a day with plenty of sunshine and little wind. We donned our gear, slapped on the sunscreen and launched the Margaret Mahy at Mangere, before going along the bays and crossing the bar at Manukau Harbour. Just those views alone would have made my day, but it certainly didn’t end there.

Before one o’clock we found our first Māui dolphin. He was a little shy, and our first reminder to embrace the world a little tighter! We certainly did: We all let out a squeal and a jumped in excitement... The excitement didn’t let off when we found another seven Māui dolphins and two hammerhead sharks!

These cute little critters are the reason why Greenpeace is calling on the Government to extend the dolphins’ marine mammal sanctuary refuge to cover their full habitat range, issue a ban on net fishing, seabed mining, petroleum exploration and drilling from within the sanctuary, and ban seismic testing from within 20 nautical miles of the sanctuary's boundary.

Over 65,000 people have signed Greenpeace’s petition on the matter.

My day’s adventure ended when the team dropped me off at Cornwallis wharf, where my partner and 18-month-old son were waiting to pick me up. My son’s eyes grew big when he saw his mum was climbing out of a “butt” (his word for boat), and I couldn’t wait to tell him about the Māui dolphins (“phush” as he calls them)…

Now I’ll just have to get my hands on a copy of Margaret Mahy’s The Man Whose Mother Was a Pirate!