The Tawaki Project

A Tawaki Project double-whammy! 🎉 After Myrene’s paper came out last week, we’ve now got a follow-up study highlighting just how adaptable tawaki are finding food at sea - a huge advantage in our rapidly changing world.

As always, Open Access and free to read:
peerj.com/articles/196...

After three years of hard work, @myrene_ventures has published her first scientific paper! 🎉 It suggests Tawaki might handle our changing world better than many other penguins.

It’s Open Access - go have a read! doi.org/10.7717/peer...

The big Bounty-Antipodes Expedition 2024 report is finally out!

It's jam packed with the info about the work we've been doing on the sub-antarctic Bounty and Antipodes Island including penguins (obviously), albatross, elephant seals - and more archaeological discoveries!

-> bit.ly/bounty-antip...

We visited a remote sea cave in to establish another colony of marked penguins. The tagging process takes just five minutes, and then the penguins are free to go about their day. With an automatic reader at the cave entrance we will track each bird’s fate without ever disturbing them again.

That's why we're taking a different approach. By tracking annual survival and recruitment rates, we can model population trends more accurately. To do this, we implant microchips in penguins, allowing us to monitor them over several years.

Tawaki are notoriously hard to find, making it nearly impossible to know their exact population size. This also means we can't easily tell whether their numbers are stable, growing, or declining.

The 2025 tawaki moult period is coming to an end. In Patra/Doubtful Sound most penguins have finished their 'scruffy' phase and are sporting a new coat of feathers.

In the next week or two they will all leave on their big autumn-winter journey to the subantarctic region.

Call to keep distance from rare penguin A rare penguin has made its way to St Clair Beach as part of its marathon moulting journey. An Otago Daily Times reader spotted the erect-crested...

We're having a déjà vu! Different species (Erect-crested penguin), much closer to home (NZ mainland), but same story as yesterday. 🤪

www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin...

Happy Feat: Chilean officials stunned as NZ penguin turns up 7500km from home A native NZ penguin has made an 'extremely unusual' visit to a seaside city in Chile.

News about the Snares penguin in South America has hit the national news too. 🐧🌎

www.nzherald.co.nz/the-country/...

CNN Chile: A Snares penguin has appeared in Punta Arenas. Described as a 'historic sighting', it might not be as unusual as it seems. We do know of Snares penguins on the Falkland Islands. In recent years, other tawaki species were spotted in Argentina. Still cool!!

www.cnnchile.com/pais/pinguin...

Tawaki are showing up along the southeast coast of the South Island for their annual moult. They should be pretty difficult to spot - unless they come out of their hideyholes for a quick drink. In that case, it's important to give them room and leave them in peace.

ScienceAdviser: Lights, camera… penguin? Today in Science and science: Seismological ghostbusting, borrowing a page from cancer’s playbook, and more

Not bad... the news page of Science reports on the camera loggers we developed to be able to see what tawaki do underwater...
www.science.org/content/arti...

Just a week ago we were packing and prepping for pick up from Antipodes Island. 2.5 months of exhausting field work flew by with this amazing team. Couldn’t ask for better people to study penguins with. Thanks for another great season @tawaki-project.org

Last day of streaming from the Antipodes Islands. We're going home tomorrow.

tawaki.cam/antipodes

Some of the penguin colonies on the Antipodes Islands are pretty inaccessible. This is particularly true for most of the sea cave colonies. To get an idea about the number of penguins we use small #fpvdrones to take a closer look. It becomes a virtual visit without the disturbance of a human.

Coming home to the Anchorage Bay colonies can be challenging for Erect-crested penguins even on relatively calm days. Slithering through kelp to get to the rocks beyond while the surge is trying to pull you back out is an art form in itself.

The choir. We're not quite sure what this trumpeting is for - other than perhaps making one's presence known. The urge to trumpet bounces between birds so that it is hardly ever quiet in an Erect-crested penguin colony.

Antipodean albatross youngster practicing its moves. It's another few months before the first take-off.

Easterly storm at the Reef Point Erect-crested penguin colony, Antipodes Island.

Dead straight!

I guess that's why they call it Stack Bay?

Mapping new tawaki nests on Many Islands in Dusky Sound. Year after year we find penguins in new spots, often because people spotted a bird scrambling ashore somewhere. Slowly we are filling in the gaps on the map of tawaki breeding sites. At this rate we need several life times to find them all.

Somewhere along Acheron Passage...

The film star is back. The male tawaki from nest SE70c is guarding a new chick. He was featured in the tawaki segment of season two of 'Our Planet' on Nerflix.

A rock solid tawaki nest in Thompson Sound, Fiordland

A rock solid tawaki nest in Thompson Sound, Fiordland

A pretty wet start to the field season proper. After loading our gear and food onto the Tutoko (and after a couple of rigs were installed for a film crew that will join us in a few days) we were off. When we got to Seymour Island the rain stopped just long enough to do nest checks on the island.

Southern Discoveries underwater observatory partially sinks in Milford Sound The tourist attraction in Harrison Cove was damaged in a storm at the weekend.

This is a tragedy! The base for our tawaki work in Piopiotahi / Milford Sound has taken a major hit. Luckily this happened when no one was at the observatory. But, boy, that is heartbreaking...
www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa...

After successful beta test of our Zooniverse project 'Penguins From Above' we are scrambling to get all our drone data ready for the power of AI - Actual Intelligence!
The power of the crowd helps us count penguins!

-> www.tawaki-project.org/2024/05/19/p...

Meet Peter, one of the Erect-crested penguins that volunteered in our pre-moult satellite tracking study this January. The penguin left its fledgling chick and went on a 1,000 km journey. Peter returned on 29 February, just in time for the albatross team to take off the device!

Our work in the subantarctic region relies on the use of drones. We are incredibly lucky to partner with Drone Deploy who have the best flight app on the market, process our data in the cloud and now have implemented AI counting of penguins! Awesome!!

www.dronedeploy.com/blog/countin...