Below Piopiotahi

Last September we deployed our new miniature penguin camera on a breeding female tawaki from Milford Sound/Piopiotahi. The results were incredible.

After the penguin spent the day foraging in the fjord, she returned the same night allowing us to recover the camera. The device recorded roughly 2.5 hours of footage and provides a fascinating insight into the foraging behaviour of tawaki.

While the camera was rolling the bird caught more than 50 individual fish larvae, simply by picking them up in a sort of drive-by fashion – blink and you miss it.

Particularly fascinating were the captures of three squid. When viewing the footage, it really seems like a bad idea for squid to squirt out ink when under threat. Commonly believed to be a strategy to confuse potential predators, for tawaki the ink seemed to indicate that there is prey to find. Squirting proved counterproductive for the cephalopods.
Also fascinating to observe were the pursuits of sprats directly underneath the surface. The agility of the sprat allowing them to do sudden U-turns seems to give the fish a fighting chance.

From a penguin perspective, it is extremely cool to see that all the prey captures occurred from below, where the prey item was clearly visible against the light backdrop of the water surface. So much for the countershading theory…
We plan to deploy more devices this coming season to get a better understanding of the prey composition and the varying foraging strategies of the penguins. So stay tuned!