Charming hoiho struggle to survive
Visitors to a Catlins beach may be charmed by the sight of five hoiho (yellow-eyed penguin) waddling up and down the beach.
The hoiho head out to sea in the morning, spend the day diving for fish and return to their habitat in the tiny village before dark.
Sightings of these special penguins will not be a thrill that future generations can enjoy. Hoiho are predicted to become extinct from New Zealand’s mainland in
20 years or less. Despite the major efforts of conservation groups and volunteers to support the penguins by removing starving chicks and adults for rehabilitation and optimising their habitat on land, poor breeding seasons have pushed the species to the brink.
Trudi Webster, science adviser to the Yellow-Eyed Penguin Trust, said the birds’ numbers have been dropping for years, with a big slump in
2019, particularly in the Catlins. ‘‘We have gone from 16 nests [at one spot] in the Catlins last year to five nests this year; that is a huge decline. Starvation is a problem, particularly when they are breeding, and then when they are moulting. These are the two times in the year when there is a lot of pressure and extra stress on the birds.
‘‘Either they are feeding chicks, or when they moult they do a catastrophic moult so they have to increase their body weight dramatically to sustain them through a three or four week period when they don’t feed at all. If they don’t increase their weight beforehand, they slowly starve to death.’’
Last year the organisations working with the penguins brought in 400 birds between the Catlins and North Otago that were not going to survive the moult. After supplementary feeding, the birds were released back into the wild but the breeding females have not returned to the Catlins this year to breed, and they have likely not survived.
‘‘Either there were changes to their prey availability or prey distribution – they are just not finding the fish that they need. We just don’t know the reason for that,’’ Webster said. ‘‘They have potentially been affected by flooding and sediment at the start of the season, potentially some fisheries impacts, climate change, warming seas.
‘‘We can’t know for sure what exactly and it is probably a mixture of those things all together.
‘‘The remaining hoiho are now at the beginning of their breeding season, with eggs starting to hatch.
‘‘Last year there were 227 breeding pairs of hoiho on the mainland.’’
Numbers this year will not be known until later in the season.
Webster urged people to give the penguins space on beaches and to keep dogs away so the feeding of chicks was not interrupted and birds on nests were not stressed.
Jim Young, a member of South Otago Forest and Bird, is calling for marine reserves and restrictions on commercial and recreational fishing to help the hoiho.
‘‘Clearly there is a problem of starvation and most likely the reason, especially for adults, is the lack of fish in the sea that are suitable for them to eat.
‘‘The one thing we can do is reduce the amount of fish being taken out of the sea and it is really disappointing that marine reserves were not put forward in the Catlins in the Marine Protection Forum.’’
The forum, established in June 2014 by the ministers of conservation and primary industries, was tasked to recommend to the Government what sites, from Timaru down to Waipapa Point in Southland, are deserving of marine protection and what type of marine protection.
‘‘The phrase that keeps going through my head is ‘optimism isn’t a problem solving strategy. The one thing we can do something about is the fact that they are starving.
‘‘We could ask the Government to buy back the fishing quota, we could pay the commercial fishermen not to fish.’’
Young said the threat of extinction had been widely known since 2013 but nothing had been done in the marine environment to protect the birds. Predators were being trapped on land and the birds had plenty of habitat.
‘‘It is really disappointing that there is no marine protection for penguins that are under threat of extinction on the mainland.’’
Fergus Sutherland, caretaker for Te Rere Yellow-Eyed Penguin Reserve in the Catlins, agreed things were very serious, with numbers declining rapidly. Hoiho prefer to eat small fish and there were fewer available. They would then attempt to catch bigger fish which took more energy. When the bigger fish were regurgitated for the chicks, the chicks could not eat them.