This week has flown past as I raced to a whole raft of deadlines before travelling across to Te Anau to board Tutoko – a 17m steel monohull that is a research vessel for the next three weeks in Fiordland. I've joined a team from The Tawaki Project for their annual count in Fiordland, which Fiordland Expeditions donate their time, and one of their boats, to each year.
Tawaki are the Fiordland penguin – a crested penguin that is listed on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species as Near Threatened. It was one of only 31 species worldwide to get bumped up in status in 2020 when it went from Vulnerable to Near Threatened – bucking the trend with its threat ranking – more than 300 species moved a step closer to extinction that same year.
But its not exactly a good story, Dr Thomas Mattern tells me. He and his wife Dr Ursula Ellenberg lead The Tawaki Project. He reveals that the change in status is more representative of their improved understanding of the species, but there is still a lot more work to do. That's what we're doing here, at anchor in a sheltered bay in Charles Sound as another front rolls through, hoping to get onto a remote island to explore for nests.
I'm learning a lot about tawaki. These endearing creatures are endemic to Fiordland, but are expert travellers. They leave Fiordland at the end of spring and feed in the accumulation of nutrients found at convergence zones 2500km to the southwest in the Sub-Antarctic. Their migration takes 8-10 weeks and they travel from New Zealand's sub-tropical water to Sub-Antarctic waters and then the polar regions of the Southern Ocean. They'll travel up to 7000km in that time before returning to Fiordland for their moult, which is scientifically described as a catastrophic moult – it can take 3-4 weeks for them to replace all 160,000 of their feathers.
After their moult, around the end of March, they head back off again on a less time-pressured migration that can see individual birds travel 10,000-12,000km back down into the same area of the Southern Ocean. They return to breed in Fiordland in July and August.
Dr Mattern tells me it's one of the most adaptable of the penguin species, "with our hoiho at the other end of that spectrum".
More pictures coming next week ...
See you at the beach, Derek
PS We're still running our free hanging promo through until the end of September. Purchase one of our framed limited edition prints before then and we'll hang it for free throughout Otago. Here are some of our favourites from the gallery to get you started. Live in the North Island? We can now ship all sizes of our limited edition framed prints to any address. Get in contact and we can share how that works.
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