After an amazing field season in Fiordland the Tawaki team have emerged from the rainforest. Unshaven, muddy and covered in penguin poo we came back with some amazing insights into the success of the mysterious and discreet penguin species known as the Tawaki. This was my first season working with penguins and I learnt so much, but I also have a BIG appreciation for the challenges of working on remote islands with seabirds!
Funding part of my research was a Seltzers Marine Conservation Grant seltzers.co.nz/grants Passionate about marine conservation Greenhill Seltzers have been donating 10% of their profits to protect the ocean and I am stoked that they selected to support Tawaki!
The field camp in Doubtful sound, listening to Kaka and bellbirds in the morning. Photo Gabe Vink
As I am alluding to, Tawaki don't give up their secrets easily and studying them requires extreme patience and dedication. Sitting sometimes for 8 hours watching, waiting and willing our GPS tagged penguin to come home. Tawaki usually land just before dusk so we set up near the nest about 4pm and the waiting game begins. Waiting under ferns, umbrellas, in trees often until midnight our daily routine shifts to that of a penguin. The best thing about this is watching the penguins come and go undisturbed. We get to see all sorts of behaviours, from males fighting over a nest site to the hilarious penguin jumping fails.
Tawaki often preen their feathers for 20 or 30 minutes when they land, but when they have a hungry chick to feed, they dont waste time down on the rocks.
The majority of our work was deploying and recovering GPS dive loggers that record where the bird went to forage each day. The logger also records data from each dive so we can estimate foraging efficiency and compare home ranges of different Tawaki colonies. We tracked penguins from an inner fjord colony at Seymour island and an outer fiord colony at the Shelter islands. As you can see from the map they have very different foraging strategies. The girl from the Shelter islands travels out to sea, 30km offshore and the other from Seymour swims through the freshwater layer and up the fjord to Bradshaw sound. After many long nights camping out to collect this data it feels so good to finally see where they were going each day.
Tracks of two foraging voyages. From the outer fjord colony birds head out to sea, while from the inner fiord colony penguins stay and forage deep within the fiord walls.
Fiordland has an incredibly complex marine environment. It has a huge terrestrial inputs which is no surprise as it receives an annual 7m of rainfall which creates a freshwater layer that floats on top of the saltwater which can at times be 16m deep! To understand what ocean conditions make for good Tawaki foraging we sampled the water profile in different parts of the fjord.
A Tawaki near Seymour Island takes a breath at the surface.
It was truly a privilege to work up close with Tawaki and thanks to the Seltzers marine conservation grant I was able to do this important work and get a look into the secret life of a Tawaki.
To find out more about Tawaki and the research that is being done check out the tawaki-project.org
A beautiful sunny day in Fiordland. Here I am measuring light attenuation through the freshwater layer in Doubtful sound.