General news

Just returned from a two day trip out to Haast and Jackson Head where I had a look at how things are progressing with the Fiordland penguins. The breeding population has yet to be surveyed by DOC which will happen sometime next week. As of yet we have no clear idea where the nests are located or how many breeding pairs there are.

Jackson Head – looking west towards Smoothwater Point

However, even though it appeared rather quiet there surely were penguins in the area. Occasional honks were heard from the bush on top of the cliffs – although most of them seemed to be coming from dense Kiekie patches. Now, I am really appreciative of the New Zealand vegetation in general and native plants in particular. But penguins breeding in Kiekie means trouble. The stuff is literally impenetrable, penguins are hard to spot, and it is all in all no fun to work in this kind of habitat. Well, here’s to hoping that there will be nests with cool birds in a more accessible setting.

Kiekie patch atop the rocky beach; if only all penguin nests were as accessible as the one indicated by an arrow.

I had with me Sam, a production assistant working for the Japanese NHK which will film a documentary on Fiordland penguins. I will be acting as their scientific consultant and supervisor. They had a rough time finding their way through DOC’s all new albeit by no means easier to comprehend permitting process, but eventually we managed to suss it all out for them. Through the consultation work we manage to offset some of the public funding for the project that never really came to fruition.

As Sam and I were scrambling along the shore looking for good vantage points to place 4K cameras, we came across some Tawaki returning home from a foraging trip. And I also realised that it will be tremendously difficult to catch penguins we will fit with GPS loggers down here on the beach.

The tiny white blotch indicated by an arrow is a Fiordland penguin preening after emerging from the sea.

I am always astonished when I witness the agility of penguins in what we humans perceive as “difficult terrain”. Surely, penguins – crested penguins in particular – are the animal equivalent of Parkour traceurs. They just jump over what I would call razorsharp volcanic rocks without hesitation, land safely on the next boulder over, hop a couple of times to the crest of the stone only to disappear with another daring dash somewhere in what certainly must be a stony maze to them. Only to reemerge at the top of the cliff less than a minute later. I am so looking forward to see the footage the Japanese film crew will get of this spectacle.

Fiordland penguin negotiating the rocky shore of Jackson Head West

We will be back at Jackson Bay next week when filming starts. It’s another three weeks until the Tawaki Project gets under way in earnest.

As of 31 July 2014, the Tawaki Proect has received its official stamp of approval by the New Zealand Department of Conservation – the research permits have been issued. This means that we will be able to start our work in the first (or second) week of September.

One of the new miniature GPS dive loggers to be deployed on Fiordland penguins in a few weeks

The pilot study will concentrate on the Fiordland penguins breeding at Jackson Head. Our research focus is on the deployment of GPS dive loggers to track the birds’ movements at sea and monitor their diving behaviour. We will also trial surveillance cameras at selected nest sites that will record time lapse videos that hopefully enable us to determine exact hatching dates, nest attendance patterns and, hence, foraging trip lenghts of adult penguins, and allow the monitoring of potential predator nest intrusions.

So much for the good news. Unfortunately, our problem finding accomodation around Jacksons Bay or at Haast still persists. This isn’t helped by the fact that our funding seems to get whittled down a bit more every day. Support funds that were calculated in have disappeared, donations have shrunk to fractions of what was initially announced. And our last hope of getting a couple of bunks at the DOC facilities in Haast has imploded as well. We will have to keep looking in the next few weeks.

But, heck, we made it this far… this will work out as well in the end.

It feels like the calm before the storm. For more than a week nothing substantial happened with regard to the Tawaki Project. The research permit application is still being processed. We are still waiting for the final green light to order the last batch of GPS dive loggers. And the core of the team, currently with teaching duties in Germany, is also slowly simmering away in the thunderstorm ridden heat of an unusually hot June. But the clock is ticking…

“It’s been a long time comin’, it’s goin’ to be a long time gone. ” – David Crosby

Indeed. This project has a long history without ever coming to fruition. After our first reccee trip to Breaksea Island in 2003 and in between several attempts to get support, the Tawaki Project ended up repeatedly in hiatus. Now finally, we see the finish line, which in fact is the starting line.

In the second week of September, we will be at Jackson Head. 3 months to go.