Kororā, also known as the Little Blue Penguins, is the smallest penguin in the world and is native to New Zealand. They were a common sight on the north coast, as we saw them jump into the dunes at dusk with the characteristic, slightly sloping gait, however the Ministry of Conservation (DoC) classifies their population as “endangered, declining”. Their deaths have shocked and puzzled locals, who in recent months have found hundreds washed ashore and decaying on the beaches of the North Island. 183 at Ninety Mile Beach came the same week that more than 100 were found discarded and decomposed in nearby Cable Bay. Locals photographed another dead herd of 109 at Ninety Mile Beach in late May, a resident who found 40 on Tokerau Beach, also in the Northland area, in mid-May. The DoC has other reports of at least 20 deaths on the same beach earlier this month. On Northland social media groups, locals discuss deaths with a growing sense of anxiety and alarm – are birds caught and thrown by fishermen? Is there anything in the water? Have they caught a new type of disease, such as bird flu? Graeme Taylor, DoC’s chief scientific adviser on seabirds, believes that more than 500 penguins have been washed away since early May 2022 and that the number could be as high as 1,000. It is impossible to give an exact number, mainly because some are found and buried by people, he says. Earlier in the year, he says, scientists from the Department of Primary Industries decided to test some of the dead birds in case a new virus or disease swept the colonies. They searched for infections and toxins. They concluded that the birds were starving to death. “It was found that all the bodies were very underweight. “These birds should be about 800 to 1,000 grams, but they were much less than that weight,” says Taylor. “There was just no body fat on them, there was almost no muscle to show. “When they reach this stage of weight loss, they can not dive.” Eventually, the birds simply die – from starvation or hypothermia due to lack of fat to keep them warm. DoC believes Kororā is not starving due to overfishing. On the contrary, climate change has created very hot waters for the fish they feed on. The data released last year saw the hottest ocean temperatures in history, the sixth consecutive year that this record was broken. In New Zealand, this has been combined with La Nina weather to create marine heat waves. As the water warms up, the small fish that eat the kororā go deeper in search of cooler water or leave the area altogether. “It simply came to our notice then [of penguin] “He can dive up to 20 or 30 meters regularly, but it’s not that good at diving much deeper than that,” says Taylor. The warm water temperatures during the winter had probably kept the fish away. Mass deaths of seabirds are not unheard of historically: strong storms, heat waves or weather events can cause birds to be washed ashore by the tens or hundreds. What has changed, says Taylor, is frequency. Previously, deaths in these numbers occurred perhaps once a decade. For the past 10 years, he says, there have been at least three years of mass deaths and their incidence has been rising. Ian Armitage, a consultant at Birds New Zealand that patrols the beach to track the number of dead seabirds, says the number of penguins found this year has been unusually high, especially in the far north. Recent storms and high water temperatures mean it expects more mass deaths. “This event is probably not over and will continue throughout the winter,” says Armitage. “Many more little penguins have been found.” As human-induced climate change continues to warm the globe and its oceans, the species could eventually become extinct in warmer parts of the North Island. “As you begin to see that this happens regularly, then there is not really much chance for the birds to recover from the events and rebuild the numbers,” says Taylor. In the colder waters of the South, he says, populations are still doing well. “But the northern population is definitely in a very bad situation. “And when we have summer events like this happening at the frequency that has been happening for the last 10 years, they will be really under pressure to be able to survive.”
