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