Sea lion pups make island comeback
After years of declining New Zealand sea lion pup births on the subantarctic Auckland Islands, the Department of Conservation is celebrating a 14 per cent increase this year.
There are fewer than 12,000 New Zealand sea lions in total, with almost 90 per cent of them concentrated around the Auckland Islands.
Conservation Minister Maggie Barry made the announcement of the increased pup births from the Auckland Islands, 465km south of Bluff, during a visit this week.
Barry said 1965 sea lion pups had been born in 2017, compared to 1727 in 2016, a 14 per cent increase.
She has led a delegation to the Auckland islands this week to experience and observe the conservation and research work being carried out on the islands.
On Wednesday, she walked around the predator-free Enderby Island, one of the Auckland Islands group, and saw sea lions, penguins, albatrosses, native birds, rata and mega-herbs.
She met with sea lion and penguin reseachers who have spent the past three months on Enderby Island.
The increase in pup numbers was sig- nificant because for many years they had declined, Barry said.
It was not clear why, and it was too early to say it was an upward trend, while the issue of sea lion pup deaths was continuing.
‘‘We are committed to ensuring these sea lions continue to thrive and survive.’’
Southern South Island Department of Conservation boss Allan Munn, also on the Auckland Islands venture courtesy of the HMNZS Otago warship ferrying the contingent down, said researchers were trying to separate the natural deaths from those caused by other means such as disease.
Sea lion disease researcher Thomas Burnes, who has been studying the pup mortality rates on the island, said one of the killers of the pups was a bacterial disease that caused meningitis in the pups.
The researchers were trying to work out why it occurred and whether they could do anything about it.
The disease affected healthy pups, and various treatment and options were being tried.
The researchers worked seven days a week, going out every day on Enderby Island to look for dead pups before taking them back to base, mostly on wheelbarrows, to do autopsies on them.
They took samples and froze them in liquid nitrogen, with the samples later taken to Massey University for analysis.
Pups also died in various other ways, including by getting stuck in holes they fell into when wandering inland for shelter from the high winds that hit the area.
To combat that problem, small wooden ramps were built and placed up the bank from the holes so the sea lions could scramble out.
Barry was impressed, calling it ’’Kiwi ingenuity’’.
Staff on the island had rescued about 70 pups from the holes the year before the ramps were put in, but the first year they were in place none had to be rescued because the ramps worked. prevention