Te Papa vertebrate curator Dr Colin Miskelly recently spent 12 days on Ohinau Island (east of Whitianga, Coromandel Peninsula) as part of a Te Papa seabird research team studying flesh-footed shearwaters. This blog reports on the seabird species found on the island and nearby Ohinauiti Island. Ohinau is a 43Read more

Ohinau Island Coromandel

Keeping track of our protected species populations and their distribution is one of the tasks of biologists, and this summer Te Papa scientists surveyed sites in the Mercury Islands group for seabird populations. Flesh-footed shearwaters Puffinus carneipes breed throughout northern New Zealand, with a total population size in New Zealand ofRead more

By Alison Burnett and Susan Waugh The austral summer is the peak breeding season for seabirds in New Zealand. Te Papa is undertaking research into the impacts of seabird mortality in fisheries on shearwater populations over the next 2 summers. We began the study in January 2012, surveying islands toRead more