Annual Reports
Bounty-Antipodes Expedition 2025/26
“Now in its fourth season, the Tawaki Project’s Bounty-Antipodes 2025/26 expedition sailed from Bluff on 25 November 2025 aboard the yacht Evohe, returning to the remote subantarctic Bounty and Antipodes Islands to continue the most sustained scientific programme ever conducted on Erect-crested and Eastern Rockhopper penguins. Fieldwork on the Antipodes ran for nearly three months encompassing GPS bio-logging of foraging movements and diving behaviour, comprehensive drone population surveys of all known colonies, blood and feather sampling for health and genetic analyses, and the first deployment of a live-streaming wildlife camera broadcasting to the world via tawaki.cam…”
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Bounty-Antipodes Expedition 2024
“Returning to the subantarctic for a third season, the Tawaki Project’s Bounty-Antipodes 2024 expedition ran from 10 October to 18 December 2024 – the earliest departure yet, reaching the islands during incubation rather than chick-rearing and thereby opening a new window into the at-sea behaviour of breeding Erect-crested penguins. The Bounty Islands saw drone surveys, ground counts, and blood sampling of both Erect-crested penguins and Salvin’s albatrosses. On the Antipodes, GPS bio-logging was extended across two study sites and two breeding stages…“
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Antipodes-Bounty Expedition 2023/24
“The Tawaki Project returns to Antipodes Island in November 2023 for an extended stay until the end of January 2024 with a short visit to the Bounties on the way home. This provides the opportunity to conduct an extended GPS logger study on both Erect-crested and Eastern Rockhopper penguins during the chick-guard and crèching stage of breeding. Drone surveys are flown and satellite transmitters deployed on Erect-crested penguins to study the species pre-moult dispersal after the conclusion of the breeding season…”
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Bounty-Antipodes Expedition 2022
“Four years in the making, the Tawaki Project in November 2022 finally embarked on the first expedition to the subantarctic Bounty and Antipodes Islands to conduct the first complete population census of the endangered Erect-crested penguin and study the species foraging ecology. The species is the least known and, given its threat ranking, severely understudied penguin species. This expedition represents the first scientific study of the species in 25 years and is planned to be the beginning of a series of expeditions aiming to uncover the secret life of Tawaki nana hī…”
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Tawaki Project – Year 7 – 2020
“After completing its first phase (2014-2019), that compared the marine ecology and breeding success of tawaki across their distributional range, the Tawaki Project entered the second phase in the 2019/2020 breeding season. Our previous work not only found that tawaki are extremely versatile in their foraging behaviour which allows them to thrive in highly variable marine conditions. The second phase of the project, therefore, focuses on the ecology of tawaki throughout their Fiordland range….“
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Tawaki Project – Year 6 – 2019
“In the breeding season 2019, the Tawaki Project completed its sixth field season and entered a new phase of research. The first five years of the project examined how the species’ foraging ecology and population dynamics varied across the entire tawaki breeding distribution. The next phase of the Tawaki Project will investigate how the penguins fit into the marine ecosystem of New Zealand’s fjords, and whether Fiordland provides a safe haven for tawaki in an era of substantial global changes…“
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Tawaki Project – Year 5 – 2018
“Since 2014, the Tawaki Project has been studying the foraging behaviour, reproductive success and population developments of Fiordland penguins/tawaki across the species’ breeding range. Starting in 2016, the project operated at three sites representing the penguins diverse foraging habitat: Jackson Head on the West Coast, Harrison Cove, Milford Sound/Piopiotahi in Fiordland, and Codfish Island/Whenua Hou in the Foveaux Strait…“
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Tawaki Project – Year 4 – 2017
“The fourth year of the Tawaki Project has been the most ambitious in terms of scope of research questions that were addressed. Over the first three years, the project slowly ramped up from working at one (Jackson Head/West Coast), then two (Milford Sound/Piopiotahi), and finally three sites (Codfish Island/Whenua Hou) simultaneously to study how breeding Fiordland penguins / tawaki interact with their diverse marine habitats...”
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Tawaki Project – Year 3 – 2016
“In 2015, the Tawaki Project included Harrison Cove in Milford Sound as a second study site besides its established West Coast site at Jackson Head. The second year of research coincided with a very strong El Niño which affected penguins from both sites differently. In its third year, the Tawaki Project finally expanded its research activities to cover the species’ full breeding extent operating at four sites: Jackson Head, Gorge River, Milford Sound and Codfish Island / Whenua Hou…”
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Tawaki Project – Year 2 – 2015
“After a successful pilot study conducted in 2014, the Tawaki Project moved into its first fully focused season of foraging research on Fiordland penguins/tawaki in September 2015. The pilot study had shown that research involving deployment of data loggers on a penguin species that is considered extremely sensitive to human presence was indeed feasible. While the penguins proved to be a cautious species, they were considerably more tolerant to research interactions than previously thought…”
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Tawaki Project – Pilot – 2014
“The year 2014 saw the realisation of a project that had a considerable gestation time. The need for more research on the enigmatic Fiordland penguins/tawaki was highlighted in Graeme Taylor’s ‘Action Plan for Seabird Conservation in New Zealand‘ in the year 2000. Investigations of the species’ marine ecology – their foraging ranges, diving behaviour and diet composition – all ranged high in the priority list of required research…”
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“The enigmatic Fiordland crested penguin (Eudyptes pachyrhynchus) or tawaki is one of the rarest penguins worldwide. It is also one of the penguin species we know the least about. Only a handful of studies have been conducted so far, the majority of which focussed on aspects of the penguins’ terrestrial biology such as breeding behaviour and population counts. The IUCN red list ranks tawaki as ‘vulnerable’ due to its low population size (~5,000 mature birds) and apparent decline. In New Zealand, tawaki are ranked ‘nationally vulnerable’ with an estimated rate of decline between 10-50% over the course of just 10 years…”