Tourism

The Department of Conservation’s or Yellow-eyed Penguin ( Hoiho) Recovery Plan

Locals Pitch in to Help thePenguins TVNZ clip

2000–2025’s states that:

Tourism based on Hoiho is now a significant industry in Otago and Southland. The key identified impact on Hoiho by visitors is that an incoming Hoiho will not come ashore if it can see a person on a beach, or if Hoiho have landed they will go to sea again if people are seen (Wright 1998).

Disturbance at nest sites and during the moult is also likely to have an adverse effect on individuals.

The situation can be compounded by recreational use of some beaches by members of the public who have no interest in penguins.

Nature-based tourism is the fastest growing segment of tourism. In some readily accessible sites the popularity of eco-tourism is having an effect on nest survival rates.

Research shows that where there is extensive human interaction on a beach where adult Yellow-eyed Penguins need to cross to get to their nests and chicks, chick survival can be as low as 0.6. Whereas at nearby colonies that aren't accessible there is a survival rate of 1.7.

During the Yellow-eyed Penguin breeding cycle or moult, human disturbance may push a bird over the threshold from survival to starvation leading to:

Nest abandonment

Reduced fledgling weights - which mean the chicks have lower chances to survive their first year at sea

A reduced number of chicks

A reduction in the breeding population

Researching the problem

A You Tube clip of Yellow eyed penguins and tourists at Sandfly Bay, Dunedin.

Finding out just how stressed a Yellow-eyed Penguin can get, Otago university PhD student Ursula Ellenberg and colleagues measured penguins’ heart rate using an egg-shaped micro-recorder that was added to the other eggs in the nest.

As the penguin settles on the eggs to incubate them, the micro-recorder picked up their heartbeat transmitting it to the researchers’ hide. The researchers then conducted a series of disturbance experiments, in which a person walked slowly and steadily up to a nest, stopped a short distance away, waited for a minute and then walked away. Ellenberg and her colleagues found that female penguins took longer to recover from the stress of a visit by a human (i.e. it took longer for their heart rate to return to normal) than males.