Vertebrates Curator Dr Colin Miskelly recently returned from one of the most remote and rarely visited parts of Aotearoa New Zealand. He shares some of his images and insights from two days ashore on the Bounty Islands.
A speck in a vast ocean
There are few places in Aotearoa New Zealand that are as difficult to reach – or land on – as the Bounty Islands Moutere Hauriri. Lying 800 km east of Rakiura Stewart Island (and about 500 km southwest of Rēkohu Chatham Islands), it took 2 days of sailing from Dunedin for us to reach the islands.
The islands received their English name from Captain Bligh of HMS Bounty in October 1788 – about 6 months before he was infamously mutinied off Tonga. They were the first of New Zealand’s subantarctic islands to be ‘discovered’ by European explorers. Although remote and lacking soil or vegetation, the islands soon became a focus for sealing gangs, who took thousands of fur seal skins, and left few survivors. Fortunately, the seals have recovered 200 years later, although their presence adds to the challenge of landing on the steep-sided islands.
Wall-to-wall wildlife
The Bounty Islands are only 50 ha in extent, and every square metre appears occupied by wildlife – all of which are dependent on the surrounding ocean for food. At the time of our visit (mid-October), Salvin’s mollymawks were incubating fresh eggs, erect-crested penguins had just started laying, and fur seal bulls had started forming harems ahead of pupping and mating in early summer.
These three large species dominated flatter areas, with Cape petrels, Antarctic terns and the endemic Bounty Island shag preparing nest sites on ledges on the coastal cliffs.
Fulmar prions were as abundant as the mollymawks and penguins and were preparing their nest sites in crevices and under boulders alongside their much large neighbours.
Time warp
Before leaving Wellington, I made contact with retired press photographer Ross Giblin, who landed on the Bounty Islands in November 1978. Ross provided an image of Sir Robert Falla, who was on the trip to three subantarctic island groups as a guest of the New Zealand navy. Sir Robert was the Director of the Dominion Museum (now Te Papa) from 1947 to 1966 and passed away just 3 months after this last visit to the subantarctic.
Knowing that we would be landing on the same island as Ross and Sir Robert, I was interested to see how much the island and its wildlife had changed in 46 years.
Puzzling prions
The reason for my visit was to collect blood samples from fulmar prions, for genetic comparisons with other prion populations in the New Zealand region and beyond. Working with my Te Papa colleagues Lara Shepherd and Alan Tennyson, we have been investigating relationships within this very confusing group of seabirds for more than a decade. Various authorities recognise between three and at least eight species of prions, depending on interpretations of species boundaries.
We had previously shown that the ‘fulmar prions’ that breed on the Chatham Islands are more closely related to fairy prions than they are to fulmar prions, and are best treated as a separate species (known as Pyramid prion, after their main breeding site on The Pyramid Tarakoikoia). The Bounty Islands are the type location for fulmar prion, and so genetic samples from this reference population are essential for us to make sense of variation throughout the cluster of populations that have been referred to fulmar prion and fairy prion.
In addition to collecting blood samples from ten prions, we also collected surveillance swabs for High Pathogenicity Avian Influenza from these same birds, plus swabs from erect-crested penguins and Salvin’s mollymawks. The priority given to collecting these samples (to test for a disease not yet known from New Zealand) is a reminder that remoteness in itself does not guarantee long-term security for the wildlife on these remarkable islands.
With grateful thanks to Thomas Mattern of The Tawaki Project, the Department of Conservation, and Steve Kafka and the crew of Evohe for the opportunity to visit the Bounty Islands and to continue Te Papa’s research programme on prion relationships, and Ross Giblin for the historical image of Sir Robert Falla.
Related blogs
- Then there were eight: Te Papa research reveals yet another species of prion
- The Western Chain – Expedition Snares Islands
- Prions: When and where did they evolve?
- What are prions, and why we should care?
- Riders of the storm – thousands of seabirds perish on New Zealand shores
Thank you Colin for the write-up and accompanying photos of a part of the country very few people have the fortune to ever see. The comparison photos of the visit by Sir Falla in 1978 and the same position this year is fascinating.
It’s heartening to see the populations of the various species doing seemingly well. I will keep an eye out for future reports.
Ver interesting read. Thank you
Thank you Colin for sharing your research in yet another engaging blog.
I had not heard of prions as a species of seabird. Are they located in particular isolated island environments, worldwide, at certain colder latitudes? They look small but hardy.
I will read your other prion blogs with interest.
Great photos, and great to compare with Falla’s expedition. Good to see the seals have survived their almost being exterminated, and the penguins and Bounty Shags look to be in good numbers.
Nga mihi for your mahi, and the team who support you.