| Revisiting New Zealand (1) - Stewart Island & Ulva Island |
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Stewart Island & Ulva Island
In November I had returned from a very arduous, weather adverse, sailing trip to South Georgia Island on the Golden Fleece with Jerome Poncet. After a short catch-up with exhibitions, repair of gear, etc. in December I flew to New Zealand in the hopes that I could take more complete images of the endangered and found-nowhere-else wildlife of the Sub Antarctic Islands that stretch from New Zealand to Macquarie Island.
I spent the first couple of days visiting a friend in Auckland and going around the city on the completely integrated transportation system to visit museums, the aquarium, and shops. Auckland has trains, buses, taxis and ferryboats and without knowing it one needs to use all of them to get around. I had met my friend in Stanley, Falkland Islands, a few years before. She currently works for a major world-class adventure travel company in Auckland and is also an author and has several books in print.
After my short stay in Auckland I flew to Invercargill at the extreme southern end of South
On an earlier trip to the Sub Antarctic Islands on the Spirit of Enderby my cabin mate had told me about this great bed and breakfast, Bluecastle, on Stewart Island. Raylene, the proprietor, picked me up at the Flight Depot and pointed out the attractions of Halfmoon Bay as she drove me up the hill on Golden Bay Road past the Police Station.
On the walk the weather began to worsen with a cold wind and rain. I saw a number of Albatrosses over the water but they were hard to identify. I think I saw at least one Wandering Albatross, one Southern Bullard’s Albatross and a number of other albatrosses that in the rain and wind just were too far out above Foveaux Straits to be certain of what they were. I walked out to the Lighthouse and hoped to stay until dusk to see the reputed large numbers of Sooty Shearwaters returning to their burrows along the coastline as the sun
The Sooty Shearwater is called titi, or muttonbird, by Maori. Maori capture about 250,000 of them per year for food and income on islets in the Foveaux Straits. However, as of 2009 the numbers have rapidly fallen in traditional trapping locations from just a few years ago when a typical bird trap would collect 500 birds per setting. This year, 2009, only 40 birds on average are being captured per trap! (I have a small problem with these numbers in that I thought it was only young birds collected directly from the underground nests. Maybe these trapped birds are adults and used for an annual count. I could not tell from the report.) The International Union for Conservation of Nature, ICUN, has placed Sooty Shearwaters, “muttonbirds,” on the Red Lists as “Near Threatened.” The Atlantic and Pacific Sooty Shearwaters are one of the long flying migrators. Tagged New Zealand birds regularly are found in California, Alaska, the Aleutian Island and Japan. Annual round trip migrations of 40,000 miles per year are common. Sooty Shearwaters may actually be one of the largest bird populations in the world and only declining in Maori traditional trapping areas. For example it is reported that there are 5,500,000 Sooty Shearwaters on Snares Island alone.
In 1770 when Captain James Cook was in these waters he did not sail between Stewart Island and the Southern Island. He believed Stewart Island was no island at all, but connected to the main island of New Zealand. Much later Owen Folger Smith identified and named the span of waters between Stewart and South Islands. He called this area the Foveaux Straits to honor the Lieutenant-Governor of New South Wales, Joseph Foveaux. Sealers entered the Straits as early as 1790 and within 30 years there were no seals to be found. Whaling came with the sealers, but whaling lasted several decades beyond the 1830’s. By the beginning of the 1860’s the endemic whales too were hunted to near extinction. In 1869 an oyster fisheries around Stewart became the primary economic activity. By 1875 the Stewart Island oyster beds were declining in productivity. Then in 1879 larger and more productive beds were discovered near Bluff on the South Island side of the Foveaux and the oystermen relocated to Bluff. To this day Bluff oysters are considered a superior oyster and only recently has an export ban on them been lifted, however harvesting regulations are now in place to protect the fishery.
The Blue Castle was quiet and I slept very soundly. I was up at dawn as I wanted to get an early start and meet Captain Mike, local fisherman who works part time as a guide for Ruggedy Range, to take me around the coastline in search of penguins, other birds or mammals. It is a short walk from the Blue Castle to the dock where I was to meet Mike. Mike had the boat ready. The weather was terrible. The light was worse; flat and shadow-less. Color temperatures were not even cool, but cold and dreary. The tone was slate-like. The short walk left me chilled and wet, but Mike had the heater going full and I gratefully sat under the wheelhouse canopy as we went onto the bay. We immediately came on Little Penguins, often called Little Blues or Blue Penguins, swimming in the bay.
Sometimes the natural world denies my personal philosophy, “When in the field, always go out. Don’t lose those few hours you have.” However, I developed a very good idea of where to walk to on the land to find the different penguins if they were ashore, or to find particular rare birds. The rain increased and it got colder. I walked into town looking for a hot cup of coffee. I did not want to return to the Blue Castle too early and I thought it would be a good time to look at the shops. I may have been the only human taking such action under such drenching conditions. Eventually I sloshed my way up the hill to the Blue Castle. A hot shower followed with some hot tea and I was ready for bed.
The next morning Furhana, herself, met me at the dock and took me to Ulva Island. Ulva Island is a well known nature reserve and marine reserve in its own right. It has been freed from all rats, the primary land predator, that decimates most New Zealand ground dwelling birds. Ulva Island has become a relocation site for endangered bird species of New Zealand. It is also one of the original remaining podocarp forests with trees whose lineage stretches back historically to when New Zealand was part of the continent of Gondwana. Locally the Maori name for these trees and ferns is preferred: like “rimu” instead of “red pine.” The “miro” and “totara” are present as well and numerous of the other surviving species of the podocarp group. Southern rata and kamahi are found in abundance. On the walk around
After landing back on Stewart I walked Thule road and then Deep Bay Track to Deep Bay. Even though it was rainy and cold I was protected by the trees and underbrush from the cutting wind as I walked along the coast of Golden Bay and Paterson Inlet. The vegetation on Ulva and Stewart Islands is rich and colorful in its own right. I saw no mammals, penguins or birds on this walk. It must have been the weather. At the end of Deep Bay I turned inland and took Wohlers Road to Lonnekers Beach on Halfmoon Bay. The day before, when I went out to Akers Point Lighthouse, I had been by Lonnekers Beach and so I turned left again and made my way back to the Blue Castle. The afternoon hike was a fine walk but it produced no images or sites that I thought looked promising.
In the morning I set out on the Horseshoe Track that took me along the south side of Horseshoe Bay to Horseshoe Point, Dead Man Beach to Bragg Bay and then into Oban town. When the road ran out past Johnson Cemetery the path became a trail through medium tall grass all the way out to the Point. It was a somewhat difficult up and down hike, but well marked and beautiful in its lookouts and vegetation. I could hear birds in the bush and trees around me but did not see anything long enough to identify it. Sea birds were in abundance over the Bay and Foveaux Strait. At Dead Man Beach I spotted Little Penguins coming and going. I spent an hour taking some fairly good images of Little Blues crossing the sand in sunlight or in shade as the clouds would break and the scene would light up. Two days before Mike had spoken highly of Dean Man Beach as a good place for penguins. After about an hour a permanent overcast seemed to set in and I realized I had to walk a long way back to Blue Castle in order to collect my gear and make my flight back to Invercargill.
Raylene took me to the Flight Depot and I said goodbye for now to Steward Island. It was a particularly bouncy flight across the Foveaux Strait. In Invercargill I met up with the Heritage Group that is taking the Spirit of Enderby from Bluff to a few of the sub Antarctic Islands and Macquarie. It appears this particular trip will spend more time at four or five islands than the first trip that surveyed all the islands with almost no time at any one of them. I had failed to find any Yellow-eyed, Snares or Fiordland Penguins on Stewart…my last trip and the weather had not been cooperative for getting images…I have high hopes for this cruise.
Links: http://www.indexmundi.com/antarctica/population.html http://www.stewartisland.co.nz/index.php?pageLoad=122 http://www.southernair.co.nz/sections/theflight/theflight http://curiouskai.blogspot.com/2007/06/mutton-birds-titi.html http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/08/060808-bird-migration.html http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/southland-region/5/3 http://www.doc.govt.nz/conservation/native-plants/podocarp-hardwood-forests
Raylene’s B & B, Bluecastle: Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it Web Site: www.bluecastle.co.nz
Furhana T. Ahmad, Ruggedy Range, Stewart Island, NZ:
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Seasons are reversed in the Southern Ocean and Antarctica. Fall in the Northern Hemisphere is Spring in the Southern and the time to return to projects that are curtailed for the winter. I would take any opportunity to travel to different sites in the winter but all forms of travel, except emergency military aircraft on life saving sorties, are halted. There are perhaps 1,000 or 1,200 people sprinkled throughout my areas of interest that work and study through the winter in the Southern Ocean environs, the islands and Antarctica itself, with the largest concentration of about 150 people at McMurdo Station. There are many other research stations but none as large as McMurdo. Hence, I begin my image taking and location research trips in October and must finish them before March. 
Island where I boarded a Stewart Island Flights’ Britten-Norman Islander aircraft similar to those flown by FIGAS in the Falkland Islands for the short 20 minute flight to Ryan Creek Airstrip on Stewart Island. A mini van took me into the center of Oban Township on Halfmoon Bay. Archeologists tell us that Stewart Island contains a site that was occupied since the 13th Century! I have no idea if any of the 400 permanent residents claim “continuous” family habitation but it is a beautiful place and I am sure it would not be surprising. I was dropped off at the Flight Depot. In a shop window was a sign, “I must go over to New Zealand some day.” There is one of each thing necessary for a town: school, grocery-general store, hotel, government building, tourist center, museum, a few specialty shops, etc. Many visitors come to Stewart Island because of its fame as a place of great “tramping” and walking paths that radiate out from the town. Stewart and Ulva Island, in the bay, have small populations of 4 of the regional penguins: Little, Yellow-eyed, Fiordland and Snares Penguins, as well as unique and other rare birds and plant life.
I stored my gear in my room and set off to locate and hire Raylene’s recommended guide/transporter, Ruggedy Range, owned by Furhana T. Ahmad, for a boat on the bay and to Ulva Island for the next two days. Upon completing my arrangements for the following days I followed the path to the lighthouse on Akers Point, a two hour walk outside of town.
set, but the rain and low visibility chased me back to the warmth and comfort of Raylene’s. 
I took a lot of bad images and I assure you that having traveled this far just to know that I had taken bad pictures of something not normally seen by most people is not a bright and sunny feeling. I had Mike move the boat around the group but no angle improved the situation. Eventually I convinced myself to abandon this particular flotilla and move on. Mike was terrific in explaining the coastline, the natural order and what was to be found where. But each place we went was empty of what we expected to find. I guess the weather was much worse than I thought…even water birds were nowhere to be found. 
Ulva I had numerous sightings and took photographs in no particular order of a number of rare and endangered New Zealand birds; South Island Saddleback, Stewart Island Robin, Fantail, New Zealand Wood Pidgeon, Red Crowned Parakeet, Weka, tui, and Tomtits. We heard but did not see Rifleman, Bellbirds and Kaka. The Yellowhead, Kiwi, Gray Warbler, Yellow Crowned Parakeet and Kea were not seen or heard. Furhana said they were present on Ulva and one had to be lucky to see them with only a few hours of walking, but with more time and specific searches they could be seen. I only had a few hours on Ulva Island and it is definitely on the list of “must-return.” And yes, the weather was terrible. There was no fog, but there was wind, rain and cold. I must say, however, the numerous orchids in every imaginable color, shape and size went a long way toward offsetting the energy sapping weather. I especially was attracted to the very tiny orchid groups.
