The hoiho yellow-eyed penguin is starving, disease-riddled and faces multiple threats, nearly all caused directly or indirectly by humans.
In 1999, there were an estimated 741 breeding pairs in the penguin’s northern population, which is between Banks Peninsula and Stewart Island. In 2019, there were 265.
This summer, 93 nests have been located, the Department of Conservation says, with maybe another 22 in spots "unable to be accessed".
A Doc survey of the only other remaining hoiho population — on sub-antarctic islands — is to be published soon.
The survival of any mainland chicks, between hatching and going to sea, is now entirely dependent on people. All chicks that survive have been hospitalised for at least one stretch and been hand-fed when back on their nests.
Yellow-eyed Penguin Trust (YEPT) programme co-ordinator Dr Wenna Yeo says
without human intervention around two-thirds of the chicks would die before getting a chance to dip a flipper in the ocean and dive to the ocean floor — which they do up to 200 times a day to look for their prey of small fish. Their foraging range is typically up to 25km offshore.
However, once at sea, perhaps only 5% survive to adulthood; and adults are also dying early.
The predominant killer according to a recent report by Fisheries New Zealand, part of the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI), is malnutrition.
Malnutrition could also exacerbate the ability of hoiho to fight off diseases.
The causes are murky and probably manifold. The report flags a correlation between hoiho decline and ocean warming due to climate change, probably contributing to a decline in fish that hoiho eat, and a rise in pathogens.
However, the report says it did not assess the impact of fishing, sediment or pollution arriving in the ocean from rivers, or loss of hoiho habitat on land, which all could have "effected major changes" in the population size.
Being drowned in set-nets is one cause of death. The use of set-nets has recently been banned, temporarily, but that ban only covers a small part of hoiho habitat.
Any other government action to save the birds is yet to be determined, following a consultation late last year.
Fisheries New Zealand says warming oceans are a "key factor" for hoiho decline. However, Dr Yeo says urgent action to save the bird at sea is still possible and where, how, and how much we fish are controllable.
"We are doing everything we can on land ... and then we send hoiho out to sea and mostly they do not return. If you look at the overall picture it is common sense that everything should be done, that can be done, at sea.
"We are not exaggerating when we say every bird matters."
WWF New Zealand chief executive Dr Kayla Kingdon-Bebb has called for a bigger ban on set netting and "better fisheries management so there’s enough food left ... Otherwise, we are quite simply leaving hoiho to starve to death".
"It’s also time we once and for all end destructive fishing practices like bottom trawling in their foraging grounds. The time for dither and delay is over."
Hoiho tracking by Dr Melanie Young and Dr Rachel Hickcox at the University of Otago showed that bottom-set gillnetting, bottom-contact trawling and the deposition of dredged substrates all occur in the foraging areas of hoiho.
Another study by Dr Young, that analysed hoiho faeces, found their previously varied diet of squid and small fish had altered radically to include significant amounts of blue cod, thought to be harder for hoiho to catch and inappropriate food for their chicks.
At the end of last year, five marine reserves off the Otago coast were confirmed.
The reserves only cover around 4% of hoiho foraging range and there are none in the Catlins.
The temporary ban on the use of set-nets, implemented last year, only extends around the Otago Peninsula and 8 nautical miles out to sea.
Charity Environmental Law Initiative (ELI) challenged the government in the High Court for not making the ban bigger and a decision is awaited.
During the hearing, news broke that another hoiho had drowned in a set-net near Stewart Island.
A public consultation by MPI about further steps to protect hoiho has closed with a decision awaited. One of its proposals is a bycatch limit of four hoiho in set-nets before further action to protect them at sea is triggered.
The YEPT advocates for a zero limit and has asked MPI if the hoiho killed near Stewart Island was a breeding female. MPI has not answered the question, Dr Yeo says.
Scattered nests
Harbour Fish chief executive Aaron Cooper recently blamed the government for not creating a land-based hoiho reserve, along the lines of the albatross colony on Otago Peninsula.
However, conservationists explain there are already reserves and it is not possible to save hoiho in one or more land fortresses because of the high risks at sea.
Unusually for penguins, hoiho spend time on land year-round, including breeding and moulting, but live in isolated family units, not colonies, so their remnant nests are thinly scattered along the southeast coastline, as far north as Oamaru.
Some beaches where hoiho have bred regularly are now devoid of nests, while other beaches have one or two nests, with only one or two eggs per nest.
In the early 1980s the Otago Peninsula was considered a hoiho stronghold. The University of Otago recorded more than 120 breeding pairs within the Boulder Beach area alone.
At Sandfly Bay, also on the peninsula, the last breeding female was killed in 2024.
This year, for the first time, there are also zero hoiho nests on the peninsula’s Victory Beach on Okia Reserve, one of several reserves cared for by the YEPT on the peninsula and elsewhere, including Tavora reserve near Goodwood and Long Point reserve in the Catlins.
Dr Yeo describes the loss of hoiho nests at Victory Beach in one word: "sad".
In one area of the Catlins, in 2010 to 2011, a University of Otago study reported 70 breeding pairs. This season, that area has 10.
The Catlins tourism website still promotes hoiho as possible to view from a hide at the Nuggets — where there were around 50 breeding pairs in the 1980s — and at Curio Bay, where Curioscape’s infrastructure has risen up, partly on the back of people’s desire to see penguins.
Land efforts
Hoiho reserves, dotted along the coastline and overseen by various organisations including YEPT, have helped make hoiho safer on land through trapping programmes that protect eggs and chicks from stoats, rats and possums.
There are also efforts to replant native bushes and trees, because most of the hoiho’s natural land habitat — coastal forest — has been lost.
YEPT runs a native plant nursery on the Otago Peninsula and says replanting is vital to help a range of species, not just hoiho.
Doc also imposes seasonal beach closures, bans dogs and advises people to stay away from penguins and report penguins that seem at risk.
Biodiversity principal ranger Samantha Marsh says that surfers, as well as beach users, should also "not get in the way of hoiho routes between sea and land as they may be trying to come in to feed chicks or rest, or trying to swim out to seek food for themselves or chicks".
Then there is the extraordinary level of intervention to save chicks.
Four Doc hoiho rangers are working fulltime during this year’s 28-week breeding season, and part-time during the rest of the year, and there are more rangers employed by other agencies, including a YEPT ranger currently seconded to Doc.
The Doc rangers have found, and are caring for, 60 of the known nests and the other 33 are cared for by other stakeholders reliant on community funding.
The rangers lift every small, fluffy-feathered chick around three days after hatching and take them to the Dunedin Wildlife Hospital to be fed and treated for diseases, including diphtheria (which causes mouth sores preventing eating).
The birds can also suffer a fatal virus called respiratory distress syndrome (RDS), among other conditions that have caused population decline.
A fake egg is put on the nest while a chick is hospitalised — which parent penguins accept as real — then, post-treatment, the chick is returned to the nest.
However, the work does not stop there.
The Otago Daily Times accompanied YEPT biodiversity co-ordinator Francesca Neal as she crept quietly between nest sites.
The charity is caring for 13 nests found on land it manages this year, compared with 60 in 2020.
Ms Neal performed "top-up" feeding of chicks with small fish, checked their weight and dusted them with insect repellent to ward against avian malaria, which is spread by an increasing number of mosquitoes as the climate warms.
The chicks were compliant and adorable but, she said, in need of saving, not naming.
Starvation at sea
Ms Neal stressed the abject lack of marine protection in the Catlins.
"These birds are just as important as the coastal Otago hoiho ... they all need to be protected."
The government report Spatial Risk Assessment of Threats to Hoiho, published two months ago by Fisheries New Zealand, analysed a sample of hoiho deaths and determined that malnutrition "caused a substantial number of annual deaths at all life stages".
Data from the dead hoiho indicated malnutrition was the "primary cause" of female deaths studied, an "important factor" in male deaths and the "main cause of death" for chicks.
University of Otago Emeritus Prof Abby Smith, who has advocated tirelessly for marine reserves since the 1990s, says she is delighted that five reserves are finally going ahead, but "bigger would be better".
Action is also needed to stop chemical-laden sediment entering rivers and consequently the ocean, she said.
"Protection needs to extend from the mountains to the sea. We are only doing half the job if we are not stopping what goes into the ocean."
One former government employee, who wished to remain anonymous, referenced a 2024 High Court ruling that stresses a Doc mandate to protect vulnerable species from being killed by the fishing industry. The ruling found Doc had failed to use its powers to set bycatch limits for various species.
The source said conservation priorities had always been over-ridden by fishing priorities, with the impact being poorly-conserved ocean floors.
Doc and MPI were both asked to respond to the claim.
For Doc, Mr Fleming said "collaborating across agencies is essential to turn the tide for hoiho" including working with Fisheries New Zealand to achieve a five-year hoiho action plan that ends in 2029.
The plan’s sixth strategic priority is to eliminate bycatch. The seventh is to "protect and support marine habitats and ecosystems that nourish hoiho" and its eighth aims to protect against pollution.
However, actions listed against priorities seven and eight are mainly research.
Fisheries New Zealand acting director of fisheries management Rob Gear said that New Zealand’s fisheries were in "good shape" and when setting catch limits "MPI takes into account broader ecosystem impacts, including effects on protected species like hoiho".
He said the hoiho risk assessment report had identified "increasing frequency of marine heatwaves as a key factor in declining abundance for hoiho’s preferred prey species".
The report does not contain this sentence.
It says there is a "correlation" between hoiho survival rates and sea temperature changes, but the causes of malnutrition could "not be determined" and fatal threats, including malnutrition, are "caused by an unknown mixture of natural and anthropogenic [caused by humans] threats".
The report said there was "no quantitative assessment for some of the more diffuse threats, such as the indirect effects of fishing on prey species and habitat, increasing sedimentation of coastal waters, pollutants and changes in land use through time, although some of these could plausibly have affected major changes in population size and trajectory."
When asked whether he wished to clarify his remark about marine heatwaves, Mr Gear said the report had identified a "range of factors" killing hoiho, with climate change likely one of them.
Dr Yeo says the hoiho is a "sentinel species". Its mainland collapse is a cry for urgent climate and biodiversity action, including protecting marine food sources and banning set nets, but also stopping land-based fast-track proposals with environmental impacts, such as the gold mine proposed in Central Otago.
"Hoiho are in trouble because the ocean is in trouble and their coastal habitat is in trouble."
