Our Far South « Te Papa's Blog

Tag Archives: Our Far South

Our Far South: Ross Sea adventure playground for Petrel heads.

22 February 2012 – 7.49am

Tabular berg amidst pack ice. Photo Anton van Helden, copyright Te Papa.

As we entered the Ross Sea we lef the band of large ice bergs behind us, and entered a fairly calm Ross sea. I kept a morning vigil on the bridge looking for whales. it was not until mid afternoon that we saw our first, a small and rapid antarctic Minke whale Balaenoptera bonarensis. These animals are still hunted by the Japanese as part of their “research” programme. They are also hunted by Killer whales! Later in the day we caught asight of a small pod of Type A killer whales. The different types of antarctic Killer whales have been ascribed the letters A, B and C. they are not only distinguishable by their looks but also by their feeding strategies.

Snow Petrel. Photo Anton van Helden, copyright Te Papa

Type A specialise in the hunting of Antarctic Minke whales, Type B seals on Pack ice, and type C that are the most southerly form that feed primarily on fish near the continental ice edge.

So many whales were taken out of this region, it is scary to think that so few species have made any kind of recovery. In a matter of a few decades the population of Blue whales had been reduced from about 250,000 animals to probably less than a hundred, they are now estimated to number about 2000.

Antarctic petrel and snow petrel. Photo Anton van Helden, copyright Te Papa.

The boat has had a few constant companions since coming into the Ross Sea, which by the way is an enormous body of water. The Antarctic Petrel with their brown and white markings have been flocking around the boat, and along with the white snow petrels have been feeding in the disturbed waters of our wake.

We are heading down to Cape Crozier where we will rendez-vous with a Sanfords fishing vessel, as one of their crew is joining the Our Far South trip.

We still have a few hundred Nautical miles to run. Currently we are just over 73 degrees south.

By antonvanhelden | Posted in Biodiversity, Birds, Field trips, Mammals, Whales | Also tagged Antarctica, petrels, Whales | Comments (3)

Our Far South: Roaring Forties, furious fifties and Screaming sixties…

20 February 2012 – 3.14pm

Heading south from Macquarie Island we have had some relatively calm seas, pretty remarkable for this part of the world.

Furious fifties. Photo Anton van Helden, copyright Te Papa

Leaving the Roaring Forties which gave us a pretty slow rolling sea the fifties gave us a small taste of what it had to offer with some mild five-metre seas. Passing past 60 degrees south was significant as that is the line of latitude that marks the start of the Antarctic Treaty, the international piece of legislation that New Zealand is a signatory to.

The treaty was established in 1959 to dedicate Antarctica to peace and science.

What passing into the sixties has also provided us with our first icebergs. I guess I had imagined that the first ones we would see would be small….I could not have been more wrong. The first ones I saw were enormous, like large land masses that completely dwarfed the ship.

Iceberg. Photo Anton van Helden, copyright Te Papa.

I was awoken this morning by the call of “Whale”, I did not get to see this animal but a photo revealed the dorsal fin of a Sei whale, a rorqual that can get up to 20m in length. This species has very fine baleen, and is thought to feed on very small crustaceans called copepods, but probably also the smaller krill species.

As we head now for the Antarctic circle at 66.33 degrees south ( ETA 5.20pm), the line where on the longest day the sun does not set. We have been keeping a vigil on the bridge looking our for whales and icebergs. We have so far seen about six humpbacks, none at terribly close range, but still visible with the naked eye and confirmed by looking at them with binoculars and some rather spectacular camera shots.

Tabular iceberg probably broken off from the Ross Ice Shelf. Photo Anton van Helden, copyright Te Papa.

Seeing humpbacks down here is pleasing, as they were once hunted so fiercely as to nearly wipe them out. In the 1961-62 whaling season the Russian whaling fleet took nearly 28000 humpbacks out of the population south of New Zealand, which spelled the end to the whaling industry in New Zealand.

This species seems to be recovering well of the East coast of Australia, sadly very few are still passing by New Zealand, let’s hope that improves. The Japanese still have them on their list of species to take in their “scientific whaling” programme, which is a concern.

A single humpback whale represents US$1,000,000 to the whale watching industry in Tonga over it’s lifetime.

Iceberg. Photo Anton van Helden, copyright Te Papa

This afternoon we have been passing more and more icebergs, each shape as extraordinary as the next. From small little floaters that they call “growlers”, which get their name from the sound they make if the collide with the ship, to great monuments like this one that looks like the Arche Du Triomphe.

Ok I am heading back to the bridge to keep looking out for whales!

By antonvanhelden | Posted in Biodiversity, Birds, Field trips, Mammals, Penguins, Whales | Also tagged Antarctica, conservation, Whales | Comments (3)

Our Far South: What it boils down to

17 February 2012 – 9.09am

King penguins surrounding the zodiac. Photo Anton van Helden, copyright Te Papa.

We arrived at Macquarie Island - the sheltered waters in the lee of the island provided a welcome relief from the open ocean we had crossed between here and the Auckland Islands.

The cool subantarctic summer did not detract from the spectacular wildlife – elephant seals and penguins everywhere! Until 1920 the elephant seals and penguins of Macquarie Island were boiled down for oil. A single Royal penguin would produce about 600ml or one pint of oil.

The Australian antartic explorer Mawson petitioned for Macquarie Island to be classed as a wild life sanctuary. A recent publication reported in New Scientist shows that the population has recovered surprisingly well over the last 80 years, and now numbers are back to half a million after dropping to around 4,000; and genetic diversity is close to pre-slaughter levels – vital to long-term survival.

Gentoo penguin, Macquarie Island. Photo Anton van Helden, copyright Te Papa.

Four species of penguin now breed on the island as do 2 species of fur seal and of course the giant elephant seals.

Although we did not get a chance to see any Antarctic or sub-Antarctic fur seals, we did get a chance to see more king penguins, swimming and on shore and the much smaller Gentoo and Rock-Hopper penguins that were close in around the Australian base at the northern end of the island.

The base is used forvarious scientific experiments and monitoring and is also the base for the hunters who are working to finally eradicate all the introduced rabbits.

The have not seen any sign of rabbits now for two months, but this monitoring will go on for probably another 2 years.

Yearling elephant seal. Photo Anton van Helden, copyright Te Papa.

Although all of this years Elephant seal pups have already left to go to sea, there are a few yearlings from the previous year, tiny compared to the enormous males that are still hanging out in their wallows. The few females scattered amongst them are dwarfed by the males as they are only about a quarter of their size.

The project of pest eradication on the island is an amazing success story, as they have now succesfully removed all the mice, rats, cats and hopefully now all of the rabbits.

The areas that were fenced off to keep rabbits out are full of the tussock plants that would have once covered the island.

Elephant seals and regenerating tussock. Victor Anderlini.

We are now heading out to sea and leaving the lee of the islands for a four day journey down to Antartica itself.

This island shows how fragile this ecosystem is but also that with considerable effort what can be done to restore them.

Aurora australis - the Southern Lights. Photo WWF.

By antonvanhelden | Posted in Biodiversity, Birds, Field trips, Mammals, Penguins, Whales | Also tagged Antarctica, conservation, elephant seals, Macquarie Island, Penguins | Comments (0)

Our Far South: from shipwrecks to high seas

16 February 2012 – 8.06am

Becalmed in Carnley Harbour. Photo Anton van Helden, copyright Te Papa

I awoke to find that the boat had moved over night to the bottom end of the Auckland Islands, into Carnley harbour, with Adams island to our south. Adams island is home to Gibson’s wandering albatross – DNA research is currently being carried out to determine if Gibson’s Albatross is distinct from other wandering albatross species.

We had incredibly calm weather and took a zodiac ride up one of the arms of the misty harbour to visit what was left of the wreck of the Grafton. One of the great tales of survival of early sailing in the our sub-Antarctic seas. The five men aboard set about extending one of their life dingies, they had to even make their own nails! they made a sturdy little craft to take three of them back to New Zealand in search of help for the two men left behind.

Wreck of the Grafton. Photo Anton van Helden, copyright Te Papa.

Now what is left of the Grafton is used primarily as a sealion hangout.

Our investigations on the rocky shore revealed something that surprised me, a spider living in the intertidal zone! I hope that when I get back to Te Papa that my photo will be enough to help Phil Sirvid identify it.

We spent the morning looking at areas within Carnley Harbour, including an area where rata trees were once cut down by the crew of a German merchant vessel at the start of World War Two. They used the wood as fuel to enable their vessel to reach Chile.

Adams Island in fog, Carnley Harbour. Photo Anton van Helden, copyright Te Papa

“Figure of Eight” Island is home to the most southern breeding site for NZ sealions in the Auckland group. Unlike sealions at Sandy Bay on Enderby Island these sealions breed in the bush on this small flat islet.

It has been a calm sailing so far, and so there has been a chance to give lectures and have debates. The primary one today being about the NZ sealion and their interactions with the commercial fishery for arrow squid. Lots of things may be influencing the decline of the this sealion population, however it seems clear that fisheries are unlikely to be completely blameless in this. Female NZ sealions, have to work very hard to get the food they need to be able to keep themselves in good condition and to pass that on to their dependent pups. The squid fishery coincides with the exact time when female sealions are foraging hardest to meet the demands of supplying milk to their pups. NZ sealion is the only sealion in the world where the survival of females is less than that of males: it is mostly female sealions that historicaly have been caught as by-catch in the squid fishery. Which surely can not help when a population like this is affected by other influences like disease outbreaks and even normal levels of predation.

Sealion Exclusion Devices (SLEDs) have been put in the trawl nets of the fishery. There is much debate about the chances of a sealion surviving being thrown out of a net at 200m depth. the fishing industry claims that they are now not catching any sealions, but perhaps these SLEDs are just removing the evidence of mortality from their catch.

I have been keeping a look out for Whales…you can only see them if you look!

Heading south. Image WWF.

After lunch we set sail out in to the wilds of the Southern Ocean on our way further south to Macquarie Island. I am greatly looking forward to seeing the elephant seals at Macquarie.

By antonvanhelden | Posted in Birds, Bugs, insects and spiders, Field trips, History, Mammals, Plants, Whales | Also tagged albatross, Auckland Islands, sealions, shipwreck, Whales | Comments (0)

Our far South: Return to Enderby

14 February 2012 – 12.13pm

Sandy Bay, Enderby Is 1995. Photo Anton van Helden, Copyright Te Papa

I visited Enderby in 1995 as part of the DOC Sealion project. The project is still going today. Sadly the most noticeable thing on my return was the much smaller numbers of sealions and pups.

It is very saddening to hear from Louise Chilvers (DOC’s sealion biologist) that the population has decreased by 50% in the last 12 years alone. In part because of disease epidemics, but probably also because of other factors such as fishing and climate change which may be having an impact on these remarkable animals.

Sea lion pup suckling. Photo Anton van helden. Copyright Te Papa.

New Zealand sealions Phocarctos hookeri, are the deepest diving eared seals in the world. They have been recorded to dive to depths in excess of 700m. They are sadly, now the rarest sealion in the world, with a population of only about 10,000 animals.

The island vegetation has recovered however. After the removal of cattle, rabbits and all other mammalian pest species the undergrowth in the southern Rata forests and the tussock fields that ring the island have bounced back vigourously.

Southern Royal albatross, Auckland Islands. Photo Anton van Helden, copyright Te Papa.

The yellow-eyed penguins seem to be doing well, which is heartening.

Yelloweyed penguin. Photo Anton van Helden. Copyright Te Papa.

One Southern Right whale was seen, a reminder that in the winter months they come into Port Ross in the Auckland Islands to calve. At nearly 18m these animals feed on tiny swarming crustaceans called Copepods that they sieve through the water with their long baleen.

Right whale, Port Ross, Auckland islands. Image WWF.

Louise Chilvers and Anton van Helden, Enderby Island.

The Te Papa Fish team will be coming down here in the next week or so to investigate the animals that live deep down in the waters around the island.

By antonvanhelden | Posted in Birds, Field trips, Mammals, Penguins, Uncategorized, Whales | Also tagged albatross, Auckland Islands, Enderby Island., Penguins, sealions | Comments (0)

Our Far South: The Snares

13 February 2012 – 9.04am

After leaving the port of Bluff, we took our sunset cruise down past Stewart Island on towards the Snares, our first port of call in Our Far South.

Snares Island. Photo Antonvan Helden, copyright Te Papa.

The first marine mammal spotting of the trip was a small pod of Southern right whale dolphins, these spectacularly sleek animals have no dorsal fin and gave the imprssion of being giant penguins porpoising along. They are just one of the many species of marine mammal which inhabit our rich southern waters.

Snares crested penguins. Photo Anton van Helden, copyright Te Papa.

Into the zodiacs we went to explore the rugged coastline of these islands. Devoid of any introduced predators they are remarkable for the abundance of bird, from the tiny black tomtits and fern birds to the soaring Buller’s Mollymawks. The islands with their tree daisy and leatherwood shrub coverings are home to a massive number of Sooty Shear waters whose burrows festoon the island. Groups of Snares crested penguins could be seen gathered along the rocky coastal cliffs, while the exposed coastline is covered with massive clumps of bull kelp.

Sea lion, Snares Is. Photo Anton van Helden, copyright Te Papa.

The islands are also home to New Zealand Fur seals, hunted in vast numbers in the late 1790′s to about 1830 when it was no longer economic for sealers to hunt them.

A few sub adult male New Zealand Sealions also call it home and swam around with inquistive looks.

Next target the Auckland Islands, we should reach there in the early hours of Sunday morning. I am looking forward to this as I spent the summer of 1995 there as part of the Department of Conservation Sealion Recovery project.

By antonvanhelden | Posted in Birds, Field trips, Mammals, Penguins, Uncategorized, Whales | Also tagged Penguins, Seals, Whales | Comments (1)

Our Far South

8 February 2012 – 9.38am

Auckland Islands sign and NZ sea lion pup. Photo Anton van Helden. © Te Papa

Welcome to Our Far South. This coming Friday I will be standing on the dock at Bluff, looking south, and about to board a boat heading to the sub-Antarctic Islands and the great white continent itself as part of the Our Far South project (www.ourfarsouth.org). What will I see?

We all know about Stewart Island and some people might think that is where New Zealand stops; but there is a whole lot of territory even further south than that!

The subantarctic Islands include the Auckland, Campbell and Macquarie Islands where we will see colonies of sea lions, elephant seals, penguins and our everpresent companions of the southern oceans – the albatrosses.

Our Far South is unique, and is an extraordinary area for Whales and seals, sea birds, remarkable plants, fish and invertebrates from the tiniest plankton to the colossal squid! It is also an area that hugely impacts on the world’s climate. As I head south I will report back to you on the natural environment of Our Far South and how its biodiversity, climate and geology is so intricately interconnected.

Elephant Seal Auckland Islands. Photo Anton van Helden .© Te Papa

Our Far South is an area that although remote is impacted by the things that humans do from fishing (and Whaling!!), pollution, oil and mineral exploration, climate-change. I will be looking at these things and reporting back.

So Hat and gloves on and away we go….heading South!

By antonvanhelden | Posted in Birds, Colossal squid, Field trips, Fish, Penguins, Whales | Also tagged Antarctica, Auckland Islands, Campbell Island, Macquarie Island | Comments (2)

The global penguin – Part 10. It’s only a game.

12 September 2011 – 12.47pm

Te Papa’s curator of terrestrial vertebrates Dr Colin Miskelly tells the tenth instalment of the unfolding story of the emperor penguin that went where none had gone before. Previous blogs on the penguin were posted between 23 June and 8 September.

Israel Dagg scores the opening try at the 2011 Rugby World Cup. Photo : Reuters

One story has dominated New Zealand media since Friday 9 September 2011. The opening of the 7th Rugby World Cup. A spectacular opening ceremony at Eden Park was followed by the top-ranked All Blacks’ clash with Tonga. Endless column-inches and air-time were filled with discussion of whether tyro Israel Dagg had done enough with his 2-try haul to displace veteran fullback Mils Muliaina, whether captain Richie McCaw has lost his mojo, and the truly big question of whether the All Blacks (the most successful international sports team in world history) can win back the William Webb Ellis trophy that they last held following the inaugural 1987 tournament.

Not surprisingly, the national media have paid no attention in the one ongoing New Zealand story that is the focus of international interest: a missing penguin.

Blog #9 “Heading home, or heading east?” described the south-easterly track that the penguin took for the first 4 days after his release, from 4 September to the (NZ time) morning of 8 September. For the next 24 hours he continued on an easterly track. And then nothing. The last signal was received at 20:11:51 UTC on 8 September (about 8:12 am on 9 September, NZ Standard Time).

The emperor penguin's path from release on 4 September until transmissions ceased on 9 September. Map supplied by Sirtrack

There are a multitude of reasons why the signal from the transmitter could fail to appear on our screens, and most of them have been mentioned in comments on the previous blog or in tweets on the Sirtrack NZEmperor website. These range from the transmitter no longer sending a signal (transmitter failure or damage), to signals not being received by the satellite (e.g. due to the penguin diving, or the transmitter falling off and sinking, or the transmitter being inside a larger predator), to not enough signals being received (4 or more signals are required per satellite pass for a plotable fix), through to technical failures at the satellite or terrestrial receiving station, or in the software used to filter and map the locations.

For a while, it appeared that an extra-terrestrial higher authority was responsible for the lack of signals. Intense solar flare activity since 9 September played havoc with satellite communications, leading to widespread speculation that this was blocking transmission of the transmitter signals. But sadly no; data from other satellite transmitters have been received by Sirtrack without any apparent problems. The lack of even a single satellite message since last Friday indicates that the transmitter has not broken the surface of the sea at all since then.

The last data download received from the KiwiSat 202 satellite transmitter glued to the emperor penguin's back. Data funded by Gareth Morgan KiwiSaver and provided by Sirtrack

It is unlikely that we will ever know what caused the transmissions to cease, but it is time to harden up to the reality that the penguin has returned to the anonymity from which he emerged on 20 June. The Sirtrack team will keep trying to recover a signal, and we will post an update if they succeed. And maybe, just maybe, he will surprise us all by turning up at a monitored emperor penguin colony, where the transponder inserted under the skin on his thigh will remind us all that once upon a time, a long time ago, he was more than just another penguin.

Previous blogs on this topic:

The global penguin – Part 1. How a lone emperor ventured into superstardom

The global penguin – Part 2. The young emperor penguin pushes the boundaries and is taken into care

The global penguin – Part 3. No latitude for error: a young emperor penguin a long way from home

The global penguin – Part 4. How to track a wandering emperor penguin

The global penguin – Part 5. The rocky road to fame

The global penguin – Part 6. Hitching a ride south

The global penguin – Part 7. The wandering emperor penguin enters the technological age

The global penguin – Part 8. Free at last!

The global penguin – Part 9. Heading home, or heading east?

For later blogs on this bird:

The global penguin – Part 11. How old was the Peka Peka emperor penguin?

The global penguin – Part 12. The final word?

By Colin Miskelly | Posted in Biodiversity, Birds, Penguins | Also tagged Emperor penguin, Happy Feet, Sirtrack | Comments (376)

The global penguin – Part 9. Heading home, or heading east?

8 September 2011 – 12.48pm

Te Papa’s curator of terrestrial vertebrates Dr Colin Miskelly tells the ninth instalment of the unfolding story of the emperor penguin that went where none had gone before. Previous blogs on the penguin were posted between 23 June and 5 September.

Time to take the plunge! Photo: Lisa Argilla, Wellington Zoo & NIWA

It is four days since the world’s most famous penguin escaped down the stern ramp of the Tangaroa. After two months of intense scrutiny, you might think that he was slipping into the obscurity of being a speck in the great southern ocean, and the anonymity of being one of over 300,000 emperor penguins on the planet. No such luck! Thanks to the Sirtrack KiwiSat 202 satellite transmitter glued to his back, his every move is watched by millions of adoring spheniscophiles around the world. But that is hyperbole; the duty cycle of the transmitter has it turned on for only 7 hours per day. This means that for 17 hours a day he can swim wherever he likes without anyone telling him that he is swimming in the wrong direction (as long as he ends up further south when the transmitter turns on again).

The emperor penguin's track for the first 4 days after his release. Image courtesy of Sirtrack

What does his track tell us after 96 hours? Overall, he has travelled about 100 km in a south-easterly direction, travelling at a rate of about 1.2 km per hour (29.3 km per day). But where would he have ended up if he had floated passively on the surface, allowing currents to carry him like inanimate flotsam? We have the answer to that due to the known movements of 30 Global Drifter Program buoys that have passed near Campbell Island (data from NIWA).

Campbell Island sits in the path of the mightiest oceanic current on the planet, far more massive than the Amazon River. Driven by strong westerly winds, the Antarctic Circumpolar Current south of New Zealand flows eastward at a rate of nearly 150 million cubic metres per second. This is about 150 times the water flow of all the world’s rivers combined.

Tracks of 30 Global Drifter Buoys past Campbell Island. Image courtesy of NIWA

On average, the drifter buoys near Campbell Island moved in an east-northeast direction at an average rate of 10.5 km per day. This means that if the penguin had not been actively swimming, he would now be about 42 km east-northeast of his release point. If passive movement due to the Antarctic Circumpolar Current is allowed for, the distance that the emperor penguin has travelled by active swimming is approximately 91 km in a south-southeast direction at a rate of 1.1 km per hour (26.9 km per day).

If he keeps on this track and speed, he will reach the pack ice off Marie Byrd Land (between the Ross Sea and the Amundsen Sea) about the end of November. Will he find other emperor penguins there? Yes – as the attached map shows, there are two known and two probable emperor penguin colonies along this remote stretch of the Antarctic coast. The probable colonies have never been visited by humans; they were discovered by satellite imagery detecting faecal staining on the fast-ice, known to be characteristic of emperor penguin colonies.

Locations of emperor penguin colonies around Antarctica. Image courtesy of Barbara Wienecke, Australian Antarctic Division

This strong easterly drift also raises the question of where the peripatetic Peka Peka penguin came from. If he travelled as far east as he did north on his way to New Zealand, then it is likely that he came from one of the colonies in the Australian Antarctic sector, rather than from one of the cluster of colonies on the western side of the Ross Sea.

Previous blogs on this topic:

The global penguin – Part 1. How a lone emperor ventured into superstardom

The global penguin – Part 2. The young emperor penguin pushes the boundaries and is taken into care

The global penguin – Part 3. No latitude for error: a young emperor penguin a long way from home

The global penguin – Part 4. How to track a wandering emperor penguin

The global penguin – Part 5. The rocky road to fame

The global penguin – Part 6. Hitching a ride south

The global penguin – Part 7. The wandering emperor penguin enters the technological age

The global penguin – Part 8. Free at last!

For later blogs on this bird:

The global penguin – Part 10. It’s only a game

The global penguin – Part 11. How old was the Peka Peka emperor penguin?

The global penguin – Part 12. The final word?

By Colin Miskelly | Posted in Biodiversity, Birds, Penguins | Also tagged Emperor penguin, Happy Feet, Penguins, Sirtrack | Comments (174)

The global penguin – Part 6. Hitching a ride south

19 August 2011 – 11.20am

Te Papa’s curator of terrestrial vertebrates Dr Colin Miskelly tells the sixth part of the unfolding story of the emperor penguin that went where none had gone before (at least in the age of digital media). Colin is a member of the committee advising on the care and rehabilitation of the bird, and told the first five parts of its story in Te Papa blogs posted between 23 June and 22 July.

The emperor penguin at Wellington Zoo. Photo: Kate Baker, Wellington Zoo

It’s time to go! After nearly two months in care, a decision has been made on how the emperor penguin will be returned to subantarctic waters. After a satellite tag has been glued to his lower back, he will be placed in a purpose-built crate and loaded on to the NIWA research vessel Tangaroa at its berth in Wellington Harbour, a few kilometres from Wellington Zoo, on 29 August.

The Tangaroa will be undertaking an acoustic survey of southern blue whiting fish stocks in the vicinity of Campbell Island during most of September. Campbell Island is the southernmost of New Zealand’s subantarctic islands; it lies at 52.5 degrees south, approximately 1100 km north of the maximum extent of the Antarctic pack ice. This is at the northern edge of the at-sea range of immature emperor penguins (see blog of 6 July).

Tangaroa – the pride of the NIWA fleet. Photo: NIWA

During the four or so days that the Tangaroa steams south from Wellington, the penguin will be cared for by Dr Lisa Argilla, veterinary science manager at Wellington Zoo, with assistance from NIWA staff. There will be no room on board for media, and so TV crews will have to say their farewells to the penguin on the wharf on 29 August. The release should be videoed, and we are hoping that Lisa and team will be able to relay the footage via a satellite link.

After his release on about 2 September, we should be able to follow the emperor penguin’s progress on both the Sirtrack and Our Far South websites (see blog of 11 July). I’ll provide URLs in a later blog, once the pages are up and running.

The satellite tag constructed and donated by Sirtrack. Photo: Colin Miskelly, Te Papa

The satellite tag is not a Global Positioning System (GPS) unit. As partially explained on 11 July, the tag works by transmitting a signal every 45 seconds at times of the day when a polar orbiting satellite is passing overhead. In order to get an accurate fix (within a few hundred metres of where the bird is), the satellite needs to pick up four or more signals per pass. If fewer signals are detected, the penguin’s location will be determined with a lower level of accuracy (typically within a few kilometres of the correct position). The Sirtrack team have developed a programme to check the accuracy of the locations, and plot only those that are plausible and sufficiently accurate.

The location data should be accurate enough to tell if the penguin sets foot on any of the island groups in the southern ocean, but not with the level of precision that a more bulky GPS transmitter would provide.

The penguin has been experiencing polar conditions in Wellington, with the heaviest snowfall in decades gracing the city during 14-16 August, only three weeks after the coldest day ever recorded there. While Wellington residents shivered, the cold conditions cooled the small pool in the The Nest Te Kōhanga, the animal hospital at Wellington Zoo, allowing the penguin to have short swims on 25 July, and 14-20 August.

Taking to the water on 19 August. Photo: Saphira Brilliant Nrew

He is in great condition, weighing in at close to 27 kg. Allowing for the sand removed from his stomach and throat, this is about 6 kg more than when he was brought into care. It could be a rude shock for him to return to catching his own food after 2 months of being handfed young salmon!