Kororā Blog

Waiheke kororā also known as Little Blue Penguins, Little Penguin and Eudyptula minor

Recognised as the smallest penguin in the world, this declining species inhabited Tīkapa moana o Toi long before humans arrived in Aotearoa. When Māori arrived, kororā soon became a cultural taonga.

Despite being an iconic attractive species in a post-colonial world, featured in children’s stories, movies and made into toys, many people know little about the penguin’s life and world.

Like many marine animals, kororā live a lot of their life in or under the sea or in their burrows scattered on rocky coastlines or opportunistically using the basements of coastal homes and baches. It is only when they noisily and stinkingly live under our houses or get attacked by our dogs, or we find them dead on our beaches, do we really notice the ‘real’ kororā. We haven’t noticed how we have affected their lives to their detriment. Kororā are inshore feeders, the parents going out every night to bring food to their chicks during the winter to spring breeding season. The trouble is that we have denuded our inshore fish populations, and with the fish gone the kina have not been held in check and the kelp has been decimated. The kelp are where the small fish e.g. paketi and crustaceans are safe. These are kororā food and without this food they and their chicks starve. On this island, Waiheke, as with other gulf islands, people have been pulling down the old baches, to build coastal mansions, or they have boarded up the basements, so some of the opportunistic kororā burrows have been disappearing at an accelerating rate.

On Waiheke even conservation groups were not too interested in kororā as they concentrated on the ngahere (native forest) and its regeneration. It was only when the community faced the prospect of a marina being built at Matiatia did the kororā become a significant focus. For over forty years Jude Pemberton, once married to Mike Delamore, had been aware of a significant kororā colony at Matiatia, particularly in the rock seawalls either side of the ferry wharf. When (1992) the new wharf was being built it was Jude who alerted the authorities to the plight of the kororā whose burrows were being disturbed by the removal of rocks from the seawall as building commenced. Jude, also, drew the Hauraki Islands Branch of Forest and Bird’s attention to the risk to the colony posed by the marina. The committee decided a submission should be written on behalf of the kororā and tasked Sue Fitchett to write this and appear as a Forest and Bird branch witness at the Environment Court proceedings. The case was won by Direction Matiatia and the Matiatia colony was safe for the present.

Now kororā were in the sights of local conservationists who followed up the marina case with extensive monitoring of the Matiatia colony and the mahi of committee members such as Hue Ross, who once went to the rescue of an errant kororā who had strayed into the ‘wrong’ habitat e.g. a wealthy home’s goldfish pond. The committee worked with and received advice from bird experts in Auckland Council Biodiversity including Monique Jansen Van Rensburg and Tim Lovegrove. Eventually the first major survey of Waiheke kororā was contracted by AC Biodiversity in 2016.

New dog rules in relation to wildlife were proposed by Tim Lovegrove and the backlash from local dog owners was a huge shock to island conservationists. One dog owner got up at a Local Board meeting and proclaimed that “penguins were climbing these cliffs years ago, but we humans are here now”. Few owners understood how easily a dog could kill a kororā even though a Local Board member confessed his small dog had killed a kororā, within seconds, right in front of him. It was clear there needed to be better community education and liaison in regard to wildlife (including kororā) on the island and advocacy for their future protection.

Developing relationships with pet owners and understanding some of the needs of their pets e.g. staying safe and getting good exercise, were taken on board by conservationists and animal welfare organisations. Out of a collaboration between WISCA and Forest and Bird a first edition of a Waiheke Responsible Pet Ownership brochure was published with funding from the Hauraki Gulf Conservation Trust. WISCA has just released a revamped version of the brochure with endorsement from all conservation NGO on the island. The Waiheke Marine Project funded its insertion in a recent edition of the Gulf News.

However, new challenges were to face island kororā when another marina was proposed for Putiki Bay, which had been identified by the 2016 survey as the next biggest known kororā Waiheke colony. Stalwarts from the Matiatia campaign, such as Kathryn Ngapo, became founding members and leaders in Save Kennedy Point. The protection of the kororā colony was central to this new campaign. The courts did not find in favour of Save Kennedy Point but Protect Putiki with huge energy from mana whenua (Ngāti Paoa) has continued to feistily advocate for the Putiki Bay kororā. Whare Ramari Stewart spent some time on the island observing this area and all the species in it to determine what effect that marina was having on the ecosystem. She guided a dedicated group of volunteers who would observe from 4am, developing an awareness of the smells, noises, changes in behaviour over a period of months.

Over the last few years the island has started to feel the effects of climate change, with more periods of intense rainfall and extended drought. In Tīkapa Moana the boil ups of pilchards have started to disappear and scientists speaking at Gulf Forum events gloomily report declining moana health. More dead kororā wash up on our beaches, while the number of starving chicks who die in their burrows is not known.

Has the Waiheke indigenous kororā population numbers substantially changed since 2016 or is it stable? In the face of climate change and associated sea rise, will the traditional burrow choices of our local kororā continue to exist? Will there continue to be some of the human infrastructure that kororā had made use of and so lived happily alongside us? Can we understand how to ensure the sustainability of kororā in the future through a Matauranga Maori lens? Are there coastal landowner networks who can commit to predator control and kororā habitat opportunities?

These are some of the questions the Waiheke Marine Project has been pondering. In answering the first question WMP has contracted the 2016 bird survey specialist – DabChickNZ in the person of Jo Sim and her two specially trained dogs Miro and Rua to carry out a new island wide survey in late August. It will cover 95% of the 2016 survey area plus some ‘as yet to be surveyed’ coast, where community feedback has indicated potential kororā breeding, or where land access was not possible in 2016. WMP has boat capacity to be able to land Jo in some of sea-accessible coastal areas with kororā possibilities.

The goals of this pipi are to be able to provide updated information on the distribution and abundance of Kororā and their colonies as far around Waiheke’s coastline as is practicable. This information will then be shared openly with mana whenua and the Waiheke community, and used to increase the awareness and the profile of Kororā and their colonies across the entirety of Waiheke.

These goals support the learning and development of what the best practices are to help protect and regenerate Kororā colonies and their habitats, through collaboration with other Waiheke organizations, the Waiheke community, and mana whenua at a grass roots level. This will then form the foundations for a seabird focused project to be explored in the near future.

Written by Sue Fitchett in 2023