Research Diary

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.

You might have seen some of our recent social media posts, that had little to do with penguins flashing yellow eyebrows. These posts also had little in the way of rain forest settings or involuntary mud baths we had to take while working with penguins.

We are collaborating with colleagues in Chile to help doing with Humboldt penguins what we have been doing with tawaki for the past few years – figure out where the penguins go while at sea and what they are doing there. The overarching question of this project is to which extent Humboldt penguins breeding on Isla Choros in the Humboldt Penguin National Reserve in northern Chile would be affected by the development of a major port for a huge copper mine on the mainland just 30 km from the island. We suspect it may not be good.

So, last month, Thomas went over to Chile for a pilot study on the island. Humboldt penguins are known to be quite skittish and prone to abandon their nests when disturbed, so first step was to figure out, how to deploy tracking devices and recovering them a few days later, without wreaking havoc in the colonies.

In the second week of June, a team of four – Thomas, Alejandro Simeone from Andres Bello University in Santiago, plus students Max and Karen – made their way to Punta Choros, two hours North of La Serena. With the help of a local fisherman/tourism operator, the team was transported across to Isla Choros where they spent the next two weeks camped out in the desert.

The first few days were spent searching and mapping suitable penguin nests for the project. There are two breeding seasons each year in Humboldt penguins, and we had arrived for the winter breeding season. Unfortunately, we were about two weeks early as most nests that we found were either still on eggs or chicks had just hatched. That limited the number of nests Thomas deemed suitable for GPS logger deployments.

What he was looking for were closed nests, with a single entrance, and chicks that were at least a week old. Adult penguins with chicks had already established a bond with their offspring and were less prone to abandon their nest if disturbed. And after being fitted with a device, it was always best to release the bird into a cul-de-sac nest where they could not bolt out the backdoor while the Adrenalin was still through the roof.

Over the next ten days, the team managed to deploy 12 devices on birds of which they were able to recover 10 units. In one case, the bird carrying a logger seemed to have abandoned the nest after it was raided by vultures. Since that deployment occurred at night, it seems unlikely that the disturbance facilitated the raid. So hopefully it wasn’t our fault. The other was a case of bad timing; we deployed the device too late, and the bird did not return to its nest before the team had to leave the island. In both cases, the loggers will eventually fall off.

Over the next ten days, the team managed to deploy 12 devices on birds of which they were able to recover 10 units. In one case, the bird carrying a logger seemed to have abandoned the nest after it was raided by vultures. Since that deployment occurred at night, it seems unlikely that the disturbance facilitated the raid. So hopefully it wasn’t our fault. The other was a case of bad timing; we deployed the device too late, and the bird did not return to its nest before the team had to leave the island. In both cases, the loggers will eventually fall off. Of the ten devices we got back, nine had fantastic foraging data. The tenth bird did not leave its nests during the entire 5 days of carrying a logger presumably because its partner had died at sea. Set netting by-catch is a major issue for Humboldt penguins.

Of the nine penguins for which we managed to obtain data, eight followed a more or less strict one-day-at-sea-one-day-at-the-nest routine. But one female decided to go on a four day sojourn up the coast before returning to feed its chicks.

In the data of the one-day-trip performing penguins, a pattern seemed to emerge. Penguins breeding on the eastern side of the island, tended to forage closer to the coast, while birds that landed on the western side, principally foraged 15-30 km from the mainland. What is a bit unfortunate, is that while the eastern side is where the majority of penguins breed we only managed to track three birds from there. All other birds were from western nests, simply because they were a bout a week ahead in terms of breeding. Taken by itself, our data may be interpreted such that the proposed port development may have a lesser effect on the penguins because they tend to forage further offshore. But given the higher nest densities in the east, it seems that foraging closer to the coast may be much more important than our data suggests at this stage.

In December, it is Ursula’s turn to bring Tawaki Project expertise to Chile and build on this pilot study to get a better idea of the plight of Humboldt penguins in northern Chile.So later on this year, it is Ursula’s turn to bring Tawaki Project expertise to Chile and build on this pilot study to get a better idea of the plight of Humboldt penguins in northern Chile.

This morning we lost one of the greatest seabird scientists, conservationists and petrel heads of the Southern Hemisphere – Kerry-Jayne Wilson.

What Kerry-Jayne achieved in her lifetime to protect all kinds of seabird species is tremendous – and if you haven’t heard about these achievements, it’s just a sign of how successful she was.

Generally, those conservation projects receive greatest recognition that keep critically endangered species on life support, often with no real perspective for a recovery. Kerry-Jayne’s work, however, focussed on ensuring that species did not even slip into this state of utter dependency of human intervention. Her invention of the fabled burrow flaps – a semi-clandestine operation past NZ notoriously broken permitting system – helped to restore the Chatham petrel from a critically endangered status in the early 2000s to a hugely improved vulnerable status with increasing population trends. She managed to inspire West Coast communities to care for their Westland Petrels and was one of the main instigators within the West Coast Penguin Trust to build miles and miles of penguin fence along sections of highway that were a death trap for countless little penguins.

Kerry-Jayne also was an integral part of the Tawaki Project, both in her support to get the work done but also in the field. And there is one story I will forever remember and take as an inspiration.

In October 2017, a team of three, Kerry-Jayne, Jeff White and I, were tracking tawaki in Harrison Cove, Milford Sound/Piopiotahi with GPS dive loggers. We had three units on penguins, and we were desperately trying to recapture the penguins to take the devices off. One bird –Yellow – had given us the slip for three straight days. While Jeff and I hid on the bushes near the penguins’ main landing site, Kerry-Jayne had assumed the role of the spotter scanning the bay with her binoculars for our bird. She relayed any arrivals to us via radio. We had already gotten back two of our candidates in the late afternoon, but Yellow again was a no show. We waited patiently. Penguins arrived, hopped out of the water, preened, and waddled off into the forest. But not Yellow.

Just after 8pm, my radio crackled, and I heard Kerry-Jayne’s voice saying: “There she is. At the far end of the rocks.”

Far end of the rocks? What was that supposed to mean? It’s far too steep for a bird to get out there. So, I answered: “Say that again? Did you say ‘far side of the rocks’?”

“Yep. Saw her come out there.”

“Impossible! Where? You sure?”

“Pretty sure. But if you stand around questioning my eyesight, she won’t be there much longer.”

I looked at the rocks, basically just a series of near vertical granite slabs that disappeared in the clear waters of the fjord. How was I supposed to get round there? And how on earth did she spot Yellow in there?

“Okay, I’m going”, I said. But when I arrived at the rocks and faced the prospect of having to climb around these slippery monsters with a greater chance of ending up in the water than making it around them I raised my radio and said “Kerry-Jayne, are you really sure? I mean how…”

“Just keep fucking going!”

And so against what I perceived as my better judgement, I started climbing, digging my finger tips into tiny cracks in the rock clinging on for dear life. I’m not a big free-climber, so it was a terrifying experience all around.

I reached a tiny ledge and could not believe my eyes. There was Yellow. And by the looks, Yellow was just as surprised to see me. When I picked the penguin up, she gave me a nasty bite that let me scream out loud in pain, my cry echoing over the still water of the cove.

With the penguin still pinching my hand hard making my eyes water my radio crackled again.

“Fucking told you so.”

Oh yes, you did. Not only did I survive the climb, but we got the bird and our device back. If there’s rocks in the way to your goal, you gotta do what you gotta do.

You just keep fucking going.

We will, Kerry-Jayne. When we sail towards penguins islands in the future, I will keep an eye out for you gliding with your beloved seabirds over the waves of the vast beautiful ocean.

Glide on forever Kerry-Jayne. Your friend, Thomas.

While we’re still trying to catch up with posting stuff about the last breeding season, the Tawaki are already starting to come back to go through their annual feather change.During a brief visit to Milford Sound last weekend, to check our transponder bridge, surveillance cams, and re-bait our trapline, we came across this plump young female. Together with her partner she had chosen this lovely spot amongst the ferns to hang out while growing her new dive suit.

During a brief visit to Milford Sound last weekend, we came across this female about to go through her annual feather change. As new feathers are produced, the old ones get pushed out giving the birds a rather fluffy look. Interesting Tawaki almost double their weight in preparation for their annual moult. As new feathers are growing and thousands of old feathers a falling out, she will soon look like an experiment of a fire cracker and down pillow gone wrong. Don’t be alarmed if you see such a penguin. It’s perfectly healthy and doesn’t need any help! Best give them lots of space since they cannot go foraging for food but need to live of their fat reserves while they have holes in their dive suit.

Fantastic to see the first candidates returning so fat and healthy from their epic pre-moult journey. Over the next few weeks more and more tawaki will return to Southern New Zealand to moult. Let’s hope they’ll all find similarly lovely and safe retreats to hide away for their personal annual lock down.

In late October, last year’s tawaki chicks usually start popping up in the breeding colonies. In some years, there are heaps of them, but this year we only saw a handful which suggests that the survival of last year’s chicks cohort wasn’t particularly good. La Niña and the associated warmer ocean temperatures in the Sub-antarctic resulting in lower productivity and less penguin food may have made life exceedingly difficult for many young penguins.

However, a few tough ones did show up on the Shelter and Seymour Islands this year while we were there. Like the fellow below.

Even though the grey beard provides one-year-old tawaki with a rather distinguished old man’s look, the short, pale crest gives their young age away. And as most juvenile tawaki, this one had not a clue what he was supposed to do. It seems as if he (for it is a boy, look at the honker!) wandered aimlessly through the forest and ended up at the least populated eastern side of the East Shelter Island. Eventually he found his wee little nook to plonk down in and contemplate what to do next.