Sheldon

Of all the tawaki to be fitted with a satellite transmitter, the tawaki Sheldon is the one that managed to fly under the radar from start to finish.

After Richard’s encounter with his girlfriend’s alter penguin-ego, he pointed the team in the direction of an area that he called the ‘honey pot’. Here, Richard had found two caves with a lot of moulters in them somewhere on far side of the island. It seemed to take hours for the team to make their way through the thick bush on East Shelter Island to get to said ‘honey pot’. The bush bash was exacerbated by Richard’s insistence of using the – alleged – best route, which brought them into even thicker vegetation or on the brink of steep bluffs.

When they finally reached the two caves, these were indeed occupied by penguins, but most of them in various stages of the moult with very few of them suitable for transmitter deployment. To make matters worse, the wind started to pick up which, with two more devices still to deploy on the island, had the potential to become a major problem.

Landing on East Shelter Island can be quite challenging unless the conditions are just right. The Shelter Islands are located right at the entrance of Doubtful Sound and are therefore quite exposed to the swell. Which can quickly pick up if the wind does the same. As such, the team feared that if they did not get the job done quickly, there might be a chance for them to be stranded on the island.

And all of a sudden, there was only one more transmitter to deploy.

It is difficult to comprehend what happened, but somehow Richard located a male penguin in one of the caves and delivered it to Myrene and Thomas who then proceeded with the deployment – with all of them looking up at the tree tops that kept on swaying more violently in the wind by the minute. That the device was nevertheless expertly attached is principally due to the fact that at this stage of the project, a deployment routine had set in so that everyone could have played their part blindfolded. Richard’s photos, who absentmindedly documented the attachment with his camera, can attest to that.

However, the penguin was released back into his cave without any of the team really coming to grips with the fact that they had just attached another transmitter to a bird. But the obligatory profile photo that is to be taken of every tawaki to be marked with a transponder was forgotten. So Richard scrambled back up to the cave and managed to snap two photos of the satellite tagged penguins before it disappeared behind a curtain of tree roots.

And, Sheldon, as the penguin was named continued to be more penguin than a phantom. For the next 12 days, he remained silent. No transmission, no sign that he even existed. Even though the deployment records showed that Sheldon weighed in at a stately 3.05 kg when fitted with device, it seemed increasingly likely that his transmitter had failed or that the bird had removed it while in its underground lair.

But then, in the morning of March 1st, Sheldon pinged home for the first time. He was still there. But most importantly – he was real!

Ever since entering the water, Sheldon seems to be on a mission. With the exception of a four-day doodling intermission when the penguin must have hit a good prey patch about 250 km northwest of the Auckland Island, Sheldon has been swimming along a straight southwestern trajectory. He has overtaken most of his contemporaries that all started their journeys days if not weeks before him (Tom being the only exception, more on him next week).

Currently Sheldon is approximately 1,000 km due south of Tasmania.