
The great south road
Every year tourists follow the wet road south to visit the extraordinary wildlife preserves of the subantarctic islands—the raucous penguin colonies, the perennial bloom of megaherbs and the austere and hostile beauty of the ice-laden Southern Ocean. Brett Phibbs travelled the great south road with Heritage Expeditions as part of his prize as the 2011 New Zealand Geographic Photographer of the Year.


The colony on Disappointment Island, which contains 90 per cent of the global breeding population, has been surveyed for the past five years. To minimise disturbance and gain a birds’ eye view, scientists fly around the island in helicopters, taking thousands of pictures which then have to be painstakingly joined together so that nests can be identified and counted each year. Early indications from this extensive study suggest the population is in decline, but the reasons are not yet known. To shed some light on what these birds do at sea, scientists track individual birds using satellite transmitters attached to the feathers on their back. The transmitters have shown that some birds are attracted to the cast-offs from fishing vessels, and noticeably change their behaviour around them, but how this impacts on the species, or even how it might benefit from the interaction, is still not well understood.

However, they have a gentler side, illustrated by this pair preening their hatchling. Chicks are easy prey and a dietary staple for fierce, predatory skuas. Adults guard their progeny constantly in the first few days of life and take turns to feed in the Southern Ocean while the other parent shelters the chick from the elements and predators under a small flap of skin called the brood patch, which is also used to incubate the egg.

Royal penguins are thought to be one of the most primitive of all the penguins, and their appearance suggests they were closely related to the ancestor of all the crested penguins. Today, they have the dubious distinction of being the world’s rarest penguin and places like Enderby Island form important refuges for the species, under threat from habitat degradation and introduced predators at breeding sites on the mainland.

Another reason for the widespread distribution of the species is its ability to stay alive at sea in masses of tangled fronds known as rafts. Free-floating kelp can remain alive and still reproduce for several months, and it is estimated that there are tens of millions of these rafts in the Southern Ocean at any one time. They not only assist in the dispersal of the kelp itself, but can also support mini-ecosystems of travelling marine invertebrates and other micro-organisms that otherwise would have no chance of crossing vast swathes of ocean.
Like forests on land, kelp forests are also important in maintaining biodiversity in the ocean, particularly near the coast. The dense stalks and fronds provide not only a haven from inclement weather but also shelter from the sun and protection from predators.

As a result, megaherbs such as the Bulbinella rossii (pictured), Anisotome latifolia (a member of the carrot family) and the subantarctic cabbage (eaten by early sealers to ward off scurvy) are once more prolific. The small birds that inhabit the island also benefited from the return of the megaherbs and other flowering plants. Among them is the Auckland Island tom-tit (pictured), which occurs nowhere else in the world and can be seen flitting around the low coastal vegetation or in rata forest. While it is mainly insectivorous, it also takes advantage of the megaherb seeds that are abundant in spring and summer.