camwitney
Vulnerability
If you weren't aware, our endemic Hoiho or Yellow-Eyed Penguin, is the rarest penguin on the planet with populations believed to be hovering around 1,700 breeding pairs. Around 600 are believed to be distributed around the South Island and Stewart Island, with the rest residing on our Sub-Antarctic Islands further south.
Predation by introduced pests, habitat loss, and human disturbance are all key contributing factors to the decline of the Hoiho's numbers with major and strict interventions having to be put in place to try and protect them where we can. Viewing hides, frequent trapping, and restricted access areas have been set up in coastal regions where these penguins frequent in an attempt to bolster their chances of rebounding.
Hoiho feed 2-25km out to sea each day, with parents taking turns incubating eggs, and frequently spend all day out at sea hunting, leaving early in the morning and returning late in the afternoon. Notoriously, upon returning to shore, individuals will usually wait and scope out the beach for threats before trekking up into the vegetation they've nested in. Humans are regularly identified as a threat and the penguin will wait in the water, slowly digesting the precious fish it needs to feed its chick with while it waits for the threat to pass.
To me, this image highlights this stunning penguins vulnerability. Something about the way this individual is precariously positioned above the ocean struck a chord with me about just how fragile their existence is. Living on battered, cold coastlines like this and dealing with as many day to day challenges as they do, it's no wonder that it's a struggle to survive. The least we can do for them is to ensure human related stresses and threats don't compound that further.
Vulnerability
If you weren't aware, our endemic Hoiho or Yellow-Eyed Penguin, is the rarest penguin on the planet with populations believed to be hovering around 1,700 breeding pairs. Around 600 are believed to be distributed around the South Island and Stewart Island, with the rest residing on our Sub-Antarctic Islands further south.
Predation by introduced pests, habitat loss, and human disturbance are all key contributing factors to the decline of the Hoiho's numbers with major and strict interventions having to be put in place to try and protect them where we can. Viewing hides, frequent trapping, and restricted access areas have been set up in coastal regions where these penguins frequent in an attempt to bolster their chances of rebounding.
Hoiho feed 2-25km out to sea each day, with parents taking turns incubating eggs, and frequently spend all day out at sea hunting, leaving early in the morning and returning late in the afternoon. Notoriously, upon returning to shore, individuals will usually wait and scope out the beach for threats before trekking up into the vegetation they've nested in. Humans are regularly identified as a threat and the penguin will wait in the water, slowly digesting the precious fish it needs to feed its chick with while it waits for the threat to pass.
To me, this image highlights this stunning penguins vulnerability. Something about the way this individual is precariously positioned above the ocean struck a chord with me about just how fragile their existence is. Living on battered, cold coastlines like this and dealing with as many day to day challenges as they do, it's no wonder that it's a struggle to survive. The least we can do for them is to ensure human related stresses and threats don't compound that further.