While the whale team have been going great guns chasing those marine leviathans at sea, we shifted our land-based focus from medium-sized seabirds to the small ones. When invasive aliens (rats, cats, etc.) make their way to an oceanic island ► Read More…
Kia ora from Raoul! Our whale work is going slowly but steadily, and we have now successfully deployed 16 satellite tags, collected 52 tissue samples, have photographed around 70 flukes and made eight recordings of whale song. The Department of Conservation ► Read More…
Today we celebrate hump day as we reach the halfway point of our humpback study at Raoul Island. The last few days have presented us with some difficult weather, and Braveheart has shifted anchorages several times to tuck into the ► Read More…
Tom Iredale wrote of the 1908 Raoul scientific expedition’s indebtedness to the Bell family in his 1910 paper in particular the sons: “who whole-heartedly put themselves at our service, and it is due to their knowledge of avifauna of their ► Read More…
When I was last here in 2008 we saw Kermadec Petrels flying about Rayner Point where there is an acoustic attraction system set up, but we found no sign of their breeding on Raoul Island. These acoustic systems (there are ► Read More…
While the expedition team has been active at sea – great to see the results coming through – those of us on shore have been entertained daily and nightly by the whale action offshore. We can see and hear them ► Read More…
The Braveheart brought us safely to Raoul Island just after dawn this morning, after passing the southern Kermadecs in the night. We saw several humpbacks breaching as we steamed to our anchorage. Shortly after arrival we dropped our birders Chris ► Read More…
This morning we arrived off Raoul to be greeted with humpbacks performing, a pod of dolphins’ bow-riding, and plenty of seabirds. The island was a stunning sight as the morning sun slanted across the steep ridges and ravines, with everyone ► Read More…
We have been silent for the last few days while we steam towards Raoul Island. We arrived yesterday and rushed to squeeze in two dives to do some fish counts and photography. The Braveheart crew dropped off 2 people on ► Read More…
If a diver was dropped in the Kermadec Islands with no information about their location and then asked to figure out where in the world they were, it would be a real challenge. Tropical or temperate waters? The marine life ► Read More…
