My First Publication

As I'm only just beginning an academic career, I only have a couple of publications to my name so far. One of these, the first paper I had published, is particularly important to me. I'm a strong advocate for conservation of rare and endangered species, but in order for conservation and restoration programs to be successful I believe they require one key ingredient: the active involvement of landowners and the general public.

For my Honours degree at Lincoln University I was lucky enough to work with Shireen and Francis Helps, the landowners of a large section of Flea Bay, on Banks Peninsula, New Zealand. As well as being a working sheep farm, the bay is also home to the largest mainland colony of little blue penguins (Eudyptula minor) in New Zealand, with over 1200 nests. However, the Flea Bay penguins are particularly special, as they have a distinctive white edge to their flipper, which is only seen in little blue penguins from Canterbury, New Zealand, and lead to them being given the sub-species name of white-flippered penguins (Eudyptula minor albosignata). There is some confusion as to whether they should be designated a separate subspecies or not, but in either case they remain a unique organism, worthy of conservation efforts.

Whereas many other penguin colonies on Banks Peninsula (and around all Australasia) are in decline, the Flea Bay colony has been increasing in size at a great rate, largely thanks to the many years of dedicated and tireless work by Francis, Shireen, various conservation organisations, and researchers. Over the years they have done some awesome work through trapping predators, building artificial nesting boxes, caring for sick and injured penguins, and monitoring colony size. Every breeding season, Francis consistently visited 50 nest boxes every two to three days (even including Christmas), collecting data on which birds were occupying each nest (he banded each bird for easy identification), and how their nest was doing in terms of breeding success. He was kind enough to give me the 13 years of data he had collected in numerous little notebooks. My job was to put this data into a digital format, and analyse it, with the goal of finding which factors were influencing breeding success in the colony from year to year.

I collected data on trap catch numbers, fisheries catch rates, climatic conditions, nesting box habitat, altitude, distance to sea, and a few other things, using statistical models to examine how closely it was correlated to annual breeding success. As it turns out, the most important indicator of breeding success at Flea Bay is guard period length. This is the period following hatching when at least one of the chick's parents remains to guard the nest while the other seeks food at sea. It is thought that guard period length is largely dependent upon the quantity and quality of food available in the feeding grounds of the colony, and so may be a good indicator of fish stocks in the area.

The Helps also run Pohatu Tours, where you can take an awesome tour of the penguin colony, head on a sea kayaking trip, stay in the farmhouse, and walk portions of the famous Banks Peninsula track. If you ever get the chance, I would highly recommend visiting Flea Bay, or just Banks Peninsula in general.

Here is a link to my paper should you wish to read it: http://www.nzes.org.nz/nzje/new_issues/NZJEcol35_3_199.pdf

White-flippered penguin (Eudyptula minor albosignata) in a nesting box

A Southern Spring Break

This past week was Spring Break at LSU, an entire week where the campus becomes a desolate wasteland as the majority of students head to the beaches of Alabama and Florida to party. That was what I did last year (can't believe that was a year ago already!), but this year I had too much work to do on my research project to head away for so long. However, all work and no play is boring and a good life needs balance, so I made sure I still got to do some fun stuff during the holiday, and coincidentally all of these activities seemed to have a very southern US/Louisiana theme to them.

First up on the festivities for Spring Break was a crawfish boil, which I was the host of. It was Anthony's (my late mate) idea to attempt a boil for our friends and I agreed to have it at my house thanks to the spacious courtyard and lawn. If you've never been a part of a crawfish boil before then I can tell you it is quite an experience, even if you aren't the one cooking. Crawfish are kind of like tiny crayfish and the people here in Louisiana are crazy about them. The most common way they are eaten is boiled in a spicy broth with all sorts of vegetables like corn, potatoes, celery, onions, and  garlic. The contents of the boil are poured out over newspaper spread on a table and then consumed busily. Eating a crawfish involves twisting off the crawfish tail to get the meat and then pulling off the head to suck the delicious juices inside. It's a lot of effort for such a small mouthful, and your hands can smell like crawfish for days, but it's totally worth it for the awesome flavour of a good boil!

The boil itself was quite an experience. We spent the entire day driving around Baton Rouge picking up various supplies and ingredients, then started cooking them around 6:30 pm. Because we had 80 lbs of crawfish we did the boil in four separate batches. Anthony, Fallon and I shared the job of master boiler and as first-timers we were lucky to have Forrest (a former PhD student from our lab, born and raised in Louisiana) around to give us some advice on the timing and amount of ingredients. I won't give away our secret recipe online, but needless to say it had lots of excellent southern spices. It was busy work, especially the first couple of boils. The first batch was quite spicy but a little bland in flavour, while the second one was even spicier but with excellent flavour. By the end of the night we had lowered the spiciness a little, all 80 pounds plus vegetables had been eaten, and the keg of Abita Amber was dry too.

Three labmates

The broth

Crawfish boiling

The three master boilers

Let the feast begin!

The next day, Fallon, Pradip, Bimesh and I drove down to New Orleans to spend a night at our friend's camp on Bayou Segnette. I've blogged about a trip there before for the 4th of July last year. This time we went to the birthday party of Whitney's friend at his fishing camp, went kayaking, searched for alligators while cruising in the waterways (we saw about 15), and played water fetch with a dog and toy duck. The highlight though was getting to shoot a 12-gauge shotgun. This was the first time I have shot a decently powered gun from what I can recall and it was a lot of fun. I even managed to hit my target - a Heineken bottle. Can't wait to go there again later in the summer!

Whitney

At a crab fishing camp

6 am fog on the bayou

Inside Whitney's camp

Pradip hanging at Whitney's camp

Small alligator

Nailed it

The next fun part of my Spring Break was a trip to the Sherburne Shooting Range out near the Atchfalaya Basin instead of working on Friday. Our advisor (Jim) was nice enough to take Anthony and I out to shoot his guns and ammo for the entire morning. We shot about eight different guns, aiming for targets and having shooting competitions. For my second time shooting I wasn't too bad, but it does help a little when some of the guns have laser sights. The coolest gun I shot was the AR-15, the standard gun used by the US army, which you can see me firing in a photo below. The bullet leaves the barrel at 1200 m per second, and you can fire as fast as you can pull the trigger, which I imagine can do some pretty serious damage. Guns are a huge part of US culture, with almost one gun per person on average (imagine how much that increases in Louisiana...). However, as a non-citizen it's illegal for me to own a gun, so I definitely won't be buying one at the local sports store. Luckily Jim has agreed to take us out again sometime soon, this time to try clay pigeons.

Shooting handguns

The range

AR-15 action

To top off the southern themed week, I made a trip to the new L'Auberge Casino here in Baton Rouge. I'd heard it's pretty good so I went along with a group of friends to check it out. It was bright and loud with the sounds of pokie machines inside, but the beer was free so we stayed a while playing $3 roulette. All three of us came out with at least $20 profit each, and had a laugh as well. It finished the week on a nice note, walking out of the casino as a winner.

Now an exciting next month lies ahead. I will be running a series of experiments and doing a lot of fieldwork for my research (including a trip to the northeast; Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Maine), and my friend James is coming from New Zealand to visit for a week or so. But most of all I can't wait for this semester to be over and for summer to begin!

The new L'auberge casino/hotel