Field work

We started the day adrift some 12 north of Bounties. Misty conditions with poor visibility. Sea continues to be very sloppy with waves coming seemingly from all directions. Started engines around 7 am and arrived back at the Bounties by 8 am. Westerly wind of 10-15 knots and bumpy seas. The islands are invisible in the fog until we are right in between them. Spent the whole morning anchored between Depot and Funnel Island. The Evohe is frequently rocked by violent seas.  Steve and Simon checked out the landings with the dinghy but returned quickly – far too dangerous to land.

Toyed with the idea of flying the Funnel mission from the boat when mist lifted around lunchtime. But launching and catching the unit in these conditions very difficult and dangerous. So decided against it. Found out that DOC has not updated our entry permit so that we are not allowed to deploy a time lapse cameras on Depot – of course. Steamed to the Proclamation anchorage in the afternoon. Massive surges around the island underlined that there was no way we could have landed today. So, a second day of twiddling thumbs.

We sailed all day in circles some 20nm north of Bounties. Seas too rough to stay anywhere near the islands. A lot of time spent in our bunks while the Evohe is hit now and again by big waves that bang loudly against hull. It was the same all through the night so that none of us got much sleep. A pod of common dolphins follows the Evohe for about 30 minutes. No improvement in sea conditions all day but forecast suggests that conditions may improve tomorrow.

We get an early start on a gorgeous day. Up on the top of Proclamation by 8.30am.

Flying drone missions with two units in the air while being filmed with the NZ Geo 360° VR camera doing so. Got Proclamation and Depot done despite a stiff breeze with gusts of up to 20 knots by 10am.

Packed up drones and started different tasks. Klemens, Jeff and Bianca down to the penguin landing to collect blood samples; Robin off to the western end to start penguin ground counts.

Hannah does the same starting in the East for Albatross.

Dave & Thomas; install time lapse camera rock bolts, but adhesive need to set for a couple of hours so both return to top of the islands by lunchtime.

Despite the forecast saying differently, the wind has dropped to about 10 knots from the Southwest. Decide to fly further drone missions. Within 2 hours Penguin, Ruatara and Lion Island are completed – we have the main group in the bag! Between 2pm and 4pm deployed all time lapse cameras. In the process encountered four Albatross carrying GLS loggers.

Blood team managed to get their sample size up to 20 birds. Robin’s penguin count got up to 1500 pairs and Hannah’s Albatross count 350 nests by the time we have to get off the island around 5 pm. Wind has picked up and turned northwest in the afternoon.

Bumpy ride in dinghy to Evohe. Will not be able to spend the night at Bounties. Instead started sailing north by night fall.

We arrive at Bounty Islands around midday after another lumpy day steaming under sail east. Clouds burn away and the islands greet us under gorgeous blue skies.

After Richie any James sent the 360° drone for a spin over the channel between Proclamation and Spider Island, we all gear up for our first landing. Swell at the Proclamation landing site in Bucket Cove reasonably minor. Thomas, James, and Richie go ashore first to rig some guide lines up the steep cliff but by 2pm entire team plus most of the Evohe crew landed on the island.

First impression – a lot more albatross on the ground than during the 2019 visit. In many albatross nests, chicks were hatching so it could be that pairs now together at nest whereas in 2019 we were on the island 3 weeks earlier in the season, i.e. still firmly in egg incubation. Base Plateau on top of island overrun by albatross.

Establish ourselves (after albatrosses had vacated the plateau reluctantly) and start flying first drone missions with two units. Hannah with spotter Bianca covers Proclamation, Thomas and spotter Robin take care of Tunnel, Ranfurly and Spider. Even try to cover Depot, but tablet batteries run out so that only about two thirds of the island completed. Meanwhile Jeff, Dave and Klemens start blood sampling arriving penguins down at the northern main landing. Only four samples collected before we all return to the Evohe around 7.30pm.

After quarantine of our expedition equipment in Invercargill we drove everything up to Dunedin to load it on the Evohe yesterday.

There is no rush to get out of port so Thomas takes the morning to run some final errands before the entire team assembles aboard the Evohe around 11am.

It is a warm, summery day. At 12.30pm we finally launch in the Bounty-Antipodes Islands 2022 Expedition.

We clear Taiaroa Head at 3pm and head east towards the open ocean where some 800km behind the horizon a cluster of exposed Granit islands covered in seabirds awaits our arrival in a couple of day.

Tamatea/Dusky Sound appears to be a transition point for tawaki breeding preferences. In the fjords north of Tamatea, we found the majority of tawaki colonies in forest settings, be it the Fuchsia-fern grove that is Harrison Cove in Piopiotahi/Milford Sound, or the primary forest islands of Patea/Doubtful Sound. Sure, the colonies all look vastly different, but what they all have in common is that they are located in forests.

And with the idea of finding tawaki in forest settings we also arrived in Dusky Sound. However, while we did indeed encounter tawaki colonies on forested islets, we also searched other spots and found at best a handful of nests on islands that theoretically could host hundreds of nests.

A good example was the large, unnamed island in Cormorant Cove in the northern reaches of the fjord. The four of us battled through the undergrowth for what felt like an eternity, we only came up with six nests on the entire 14 hectare island. We spent the night anchored at that island and while having her breakfast muesli Robin spotted a tawaki on the rocks not far from the Tutuko. When she and Myrene checked out that spot a bit later, they discovered a small cave entrance – and a colony of eleven nests in it. Needless to say that from then on, we were on the lookout for sea caves.

Especially towards the tail end of our time in Tamatea, we had our eyes on the shoreline. We spotted many potential caves but hardly ever had the chance to inspect them as landing at those sites was rather difficult if not outright perilous.

In essence, Tamatea/Dusky Sound can be described as a transition zone for tawaki breeding habits. North of Dusky, the majority of the penguins breed in forests. In Dusky, besides forest settings, tawaki colonies can be found in sea caves, like on Rakiura/Stewart Is in the South.

We even found Tamatea tawaki colonies in caves that were located deep in the forest. So it would appear that in southern Fiordland, the penguins rather live underground than under trees. A sign of centuries of hunting pressure by iwi in the southern ranges of the species?

More questions to address in the coming years. Working with tawaki never gets boring.

After searching tawaki in Tamatea / Doubtful Sound for five days, we have some good but also some slightly worrying news.

The good news is, that we recorded a total of 203 nests on 16 different islands in the fjord. Considering that there are supposed to be more than 700 islands in the Breaksea/Dusky fjord complex, we might have barely scratched the surface of the question about the total tawaki population numbers in Tamatea. Considering that the official numbers for the fjord (dating back to surveys in the 1990s) is only 9 nests, there are a lot more penguins than anyone would have thought.

Some of these islands are unsuitable for tawaki. Not because there wouldn’t be adequate breeding habitat, but because of the flourishing fur seal population in the fjord. Some of the islands are literally overrun by fur seals, especially pups and lactating mothers. The pups are small enough to cuddle up with a penguin in their burrow. Something Myrene Otis actually directly witnessed and documented. This likely makes for a rather uncomfortable breeding experience.

However, on other tawaki islands that were free of fur seals, we found some other worrying signs.

During our searches we came across quite a few tawaki nests, that were neatly prepared with fresh sticks and leaves for this year’s breeding season, but unoccupied. This generally means, the male penguin had returned and got the nest ready to impress his partner upon her return. Only she never showed up – most likely because she did not survive the winter migration.

Now, one could think that this may happen especially considering that we are entering the third year of a strong La Niña which is known to have negative effects on New Zealand penguins. If that were the case, we would have expected to see similar patterns in Doubtful and Breaksea Sound. But we didn’t which potentially points at a localized effect, an effect that only affects tawaki in Dusky Sound.

It is too early to speculate about what may be going on in Dusky. But at any rate, it means that we have our work cut out for the coming years.

Figure out if something’s wrong in Dusky. And what’s wrong.

For the longest time, tawaki have been touted as “the rarest penguin species in the world”. Until recently, the IUCN redlist gave a total world population of tawaki estimate of only 7,000 mature individuals. Yet, survey work carried out by the Tawaki Project but especially Robin Long in the past decade has cast some serious doubts on the validity of this claim. In fact, the IUCN has revised their estimate since to 12,500-50,000 individuals. (Although some still haven’t caught up.)

So what’s up? Are tawaki numbers increasing even though the official assessments still considers the species in decline? Or have tawaki numbers been underestimated previously? To answer this question, we have to look at where the 7,000-individuals-number comes from.

It is based on a series of surveys carried out in the early 1990s. These surveys were primarily financed through the participation of tourists that paid for the privilege to visit some of the remote sites in Fiordland and search for penguins in the process. With tawaki not the easiest bird to find there is certainly the suspicion that search parties consisting primarily of tourists lacked the necessary experience and potentially enthusiasm to crawl into every hole in the ground to see if there are penguins in there.

But then there are the John Islands in Te Puaitaha / Breaksea Sound.

During the 1990s survey, the search parties found a total of 9 nests when searching four of the five islands in the group. So when we stopped at the John Islands on our way to Dusky Sound, we thought we had to look for a bunch of needles in a haystack. Well, turns out, in just a couple of hours we found 43 tawaki nests – more than four times as many as the 1990s survey.

While we often had the suspicion that the inexperience of the search parties back in the day resulted in the low penguin numbers, it seems difficult to imagine that inexperience was behind the low return of just nine nests in the 1990s. You have to walk around blindfolded not to spot the burrow entrances!

So, it would appear that penguin numbers on John Islands at the very least have increased in numbers since the 1990s. That is not to say, that inexperience of the search teams 30 years ago did not contribute to the low population estimate that we stuck with for almost as long. As with everything, it generally is a combination of different factors that determine what we see.

While breeding deep under tree roots certainly has significant advantages for tawaki that want to avoid being easily accessed by two-legged predators (i.e. humans), it also has the disadvantage that such tree root caves can be obliterated by a storm that blows over the tree to which said roots belong.

Exactly this has happened in early August on East Shelter Island, when a massive storm ravaged Fiordland. In the centre of the island stands – or rather ‘stood’ – a massive rātā tree whose roots extended far from the trunk. A total of 5 tawaki pairs called this root system their home. We called it the ‘honey pot’ as we found a good number of penguins in there when we first deployed satellite trackers on bird after the moult.

Of the five nests, there was only one nest left which had its ceiling more or less ripped away completely. The male tawaki who is guarding its chick in this lofty nest does not seem to appreciate the new skylight in his home. But clearly breeding was well underway when the tree toppled, otherwise the bird would not have decided to breed under such exposed circumstances.

What happened to the other nests, we can’t say for sure. However, we did not find any dead penguins, so we can assume that the other former rātā tenants made it out okay.

The rātā is completely blown over so that, where there was once closed forest canopy, there is now a huge clearing. The forest floor where the rātā landed is the main highway for tawaki breeding on the northern side of the island. No doubt that arboric monster creates a huge obstruction for the penguin traffic. The falling trunk also narrowly missed nest #111 which is active and well. But talking about a close shave…

Finally, field work for the Tawaki Project 2022 is underway again! We started off with a 10-day survey trip to Te Puaitaha/Breaksea and Tamatea/Dusky Sounds with the incredible support of Fiordland Expeditions aboard the Tutuko.

Checks of our marked colonies in Doubtful Sound/Patea on Seymour and Shelter Islands were first on our list of tasks. Nothing better to get into the field work groove than crawling into narrow caves to inspect penguin nests.

Turns out, the majority of nests are back in business albeit about 2-3 weeks behind the usual schedule. Many birds were still incubating eggs when we would have expected to see chicks all around. Obviously, the third year of La Niña has an effect on the timing of breeding.

With Myrene Otis, Robin Long as well as Jeff White and Thomas Mattern, we reinstated the #TawakiGirls and #TawakiBoys teams from a couple of years ago. But it quickly became clear that searching for tawaki in often narrow underground caves, did not really make for a fair competition between the two teams. Basically, whichever team had Robin in wins.

Like in the previous years, the Tutoko was our floating home base for the trip. Skipper “tawaki sniffer dog” Abo (if he says “over there’s tawaki” there will be tawaki) and his partner Mandy completed our team (Mandy actually hopped ashore in most of our missions as an honorary #TawakiBoy).

After checking all nests on Seymour on the first day out, we spent the entire second day on Shelter Island, before steaming south towards Breaksea Sound.