An unexpected low over Raoul Island forced the Braveheart to relocate to a new location near the Meyer Islands early this morning. Nevertheless ‘Thomas the Tag Engine’ was on the water as soon as possible and off to a great

The humpback whales currently migrating past Raoul are travelling south from their breeding grounds in the tropical Pacific. This means that there are a lot of mother-calf pairs travelling together. Yesterday our expedition team was treated to the sight of

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

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

Hi outside world, it’s Richie Robinson here, guest blogger for today. I’m a photojournalist with NZ Geographic and I have the extreme privilege of being tasked to photograph one of the biggest animals in the ocean during The Great Humpback

One of the objectives for our visit to the Kermadec Islands was to collect blood and feather samples from Kermadec Petrels and investigate whether there are two separate populations of these petrels. After an initial burst of finding eight chicks

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

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

We woke at dawn to the scene of a silvery grey light blanketing the high volcanic cliffs and calm waters of Denham Bay, our anchorage of the last few days on the west coast of Raoul Island. Once breakfasted, the