Bountiful bounties

A Salvin’s albatross cuts a sleek profile head-on. Photos by Neville Peat.
A Salvin’s albatross cuts a sleek profile head-on. Photos by Neville Peat.
Two Salvin’s albatross in sychronised flight. With a wingspan of 2.5m they can fly across the...
Two Salvin’s albatross in sychronised flight. With a wingspan of 2.5m they can fly across the South Pacific to feeding grounds off the South American coast and back again for the breeding season.
Bull kelp is thrown around as a wave washes one of the islands. Le Soleal lies safely anchored...
Bull kelp is thrown around as a wave washes one of the islands. Le Soleal lies safely anchored offshore. Photo by Mick Fogg.
A Salvin’s albatross carries a jellyfish meal. Photo by Terry Newham.
A Salvin’s albatross carries a jellyfish meal. Photo by Terry Newham.
The Bounty Island shag is probably the world’s rarest cormorant. It nests on the rock ledges,...
The Bounty Island shag is probably the world’s rarest cormorant. It nests on the rock ledges, building low pedestals from the only available materials, seaweed, feathers and excrement. Photo by Mick Fogg.
Tips of an old granite landmass, the Bounty Islands. Photo by Neville Peat.
Tips of an old granite landmass, the Bounty Islands. Photo by Neville Peat.
Salvin’s albatross and erect-crested penguin nests intermingle on the weather-polished rocks....
Salvin’s albatross and erect-crested penguin nests intermingle on the weather-polished rocks. Photo by Paul Sagar.
Albatrosses swirl above islands in the main group. Photo by Neville Peat.
Albatrosses swirl above islands in the main group. Photo by Neville Peat.

Neville Peat visits the rawboned and rarely visited subantarctic Bounty Islands, 700km southeast of the South Island. 

It was both a contrast of two worlds and a coincidence of taste.

As Salvin's albatrosses tucked into jellyfish plucked from chilly waters, passengers on the French expedition cruise ship Le Soleal anchored off the Bounty Islands were enjoying a silver-service lunch menu featuring a different sort of soft-bodied marine animal caught who knows where: squid.

The on-board lunch included squid rings, tempura vegetables, Vietnamese spring rolls, delicieux breads and cheeses, dainty desserts and a slew of "grand cru'' French wines at a grand price.

All albatrosses love squid and octopuses.

And the passengers, 180 of them, mostly Australian and French, were delighted to make the acquaintance of the endemic Salvin's albatrosses at their home base, a collection of rock castles in latitude 47 degrees south and a long way from any landmass.

It took us 36 hours to reach the Bounty Islands from Akaroa on this two-week tour of New Zealand and Australian subantarctic islands.

The Bounties were the first land we saw.

They were also the first of the five groups of New Zealand subantarctic islands to be included on world maps.

In September 1788, HMS Bounty came upon these guano-coated rocks bound for Tahiti under admiralty instructions to take a cargo of breadfruit to the West Indies.

Captain William Bligh named them the Bounty Isles in honour of his ship, from which he would forcibly part company seven months later as a result of an infamous mutiny off the Tonga islands.

Bligh mistook the guano for patches of snow.

What he saw - 20 granite islands spread across 4km and measuring just 135ha all up - is little changed from what we were viewing with binoculars 228 years later: prized real estate for marine creatures, with feathers or fur filling every square metre at Noah's Ark density.

Nesting Salvin's albatrosses are joined here by six other birds: erect-crested penguin, fulmar prion, Antarctic tern, Snares cape petrel, Bounty Island shag and black-backed gull.

The shag species, Leucocarbo ranfurlyi, is probably the world's rarest cormorant, 1400 individuals at last count in 2013.

The penguins, found only here and at Antipodes Island, are about the hardest of the world's 18 species to photograph because tour ships are few.

The tiny fulmar prions, also uncommon, somehow squeeze into fissures and crevices and hold on tight in the face of "Roaring Forties'' storms that can send spray across the highest islands, 80m above sea level.

Among all this birdlife several thousand New Zealand fur seals somehow shoehorn space for themselves.

They are making a comeback after decimation in the 19th century by Sydney-based sealing gangs.

The Bounty Islands may be mere specks of land but economically and geopolitically they are hugely important, bolstering New Zealand's enormous 200-mile exclusive economic zone, the world's fourth largest at four million square kilometres.

Geologically, they are the tips of a submerged landmass, the Bounty Platform, which once formed part of the eastern edge of the mini-continent of Zealandia.

The next set of subantarctic islands to the east are 8000km away, the South Shetland Islands off the Antarctic Peninsula.

Given the battering from wind and wave, there is no chance soil will form.

Terrestrial plant life was thought to be limited to lichens until 2004, when a yacht-based expedition discovered the native cress Cook's scurvy grass Lepidium oleraceum on two of the islands.

No chance of scurvy aboard Le Soleal.

There are two restaurants, with both buffet and a la carte options, and plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables.

We eat and wait for the swell to lessen at the marina dock where the rubber inflatable Zodiacs are launched.

The only boats allowed out so far carried naturalists checking the inshore conditions.

We are not permitted to land even if were able to.

Three of the six groups on our itinerary, including Australia's Macquarie Island, are off limits to landing - Bounty, Antipodes and Snares - because of potential disturbance to the pristine ecology.

Still, the best way to see them is from a Zodiac, the inflatable rubber motor boats the French perfected.

They are highly manoeuvrable and seaworthy.

Hence Le Soleal, carrying a dozen of them for landings in remote places, is called an expedition cruise ship, conveying "luxury adventure''.

So we wait, in a sunny 6degC, captivated by porpoising penguins, jinking cape petrels and albatrosses performing aerobatics or bobbing in "rafts'' in their hundreds, waiting for jellyfish or just enjoying a seabird siesta away from the madding crowd ashore.

Similar numbers swirl above the islands, creating a haze that does not diminish throughout the day.

Their numbers are declining, however, down 30% in the 14 years to 2011.

Named for an English ornithologist, Salvin's albatross is classified "nationally critical'' by the Department of Conservation, and the Ministry for Primary Industries ranks the species as the most threatened New Zealand seabird (after black petrel), mainly as a result of the by-catch fatality rate in trawl fisheries.

In an earlier era, the seals suffered.

About 50,000 were killed here for their fur by early 19th-century sealing gangs in just two years.

In the late 1800s, New Zealand Government steamships called occasionally to check for castaways and collect albatross and penguin specimens.

Governors-General and other VIPs were sometimes on board.

In 1895, such was the colonial passion for expanding pastoral farming, the New Zealand Government advertised the Bounty Islands as a pastoral lease proposition despite the small area and total absence of grass!

The offer was withdrawn.

Aboard Le Soleal, during a sleepy afternoon off the Bounty Islands, you could take a facial massage or spa.

Or, as weirdly, go for a stationary bike ride in the gym with the Bounty Islands as a scenic backdrop.

In a stiff sou'west wind, the western side of the group offers no opportunity to get closer.

Besides the rougher sea, two previously uncharted rocks were discovered there in recent years.

The only other ships visiting the Bounties (one or two a year) are former Russian research ships converted for tour use, or chartered motor yachts on a scientific mission.

On her maiden voyage in these waters Le Soleal was surely the most luxurious.

Towards dusk, and still with no chance of a closer encounter with the islands' churning shores, Le Soleal departs on a 220km run south to volcanic Antipodes Island, a high-rise tussock-clad stronghold for erect-crested penguins.

Anyway, passengers had to get ready for the New Year's Eve gala dinner, where sommeliers in formal attire would be on hand to advise on wine matches for whatever main course you might desire.

After dinner, ballroom dancing, another first, perhaps, for this region.

The Bounty Islands soon slipped below the horizon, swallowed by the dominant sea.

There is nothing quite like them anywhere - small, stark, stormy yet teeming with wildlife in the form of birds, seals; and, in the circumstances even more incredible, an assemblage of unique invertebrate animals - a beetle, weta, two moths and two spider species.

Does it deserve to be a Unesco World Natural Area?

You bet.

• Neville Peat, guest lecturer aboard Le Soleal, researched and wrote the nomination for the 1998 Unesco World Natural Heritage Area listing of the New Zealand Subantarctic Islands. He is the author of Subantarctic New Zealand - A Rare Heritage, which is now in its third edition.

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