Scattered alongside Raoul island are the Meyer Islands and Herald Islets (really just glorified rocks). These little lumps in the ocean are home to a truly staggering number of seabirds, as they are free from invasive predators. Raoul island was once home to cats, rats, dogs, pigs and goats – and humans which harvested seabirds in large numbers. For a long time, it has been devoid of breeding seabirds. Raoul is now pest free, and the seabirds are making a comeback, spilling out from the tiny havens of the Meyer and Herald islands.
I’m used to working on islands where the seabird life is nocturnal – shearwaters and petrels returning to land after dark to tuck into their burrows and feed their chicks. But in this strange subtropical realm, many of the seabirds are active around the islands during the day. Approaching the Meyer islands in a Navy RHIB, thousands upon thousands of specks resolved themselves into black-winged petrels, kermadec petrels, wedge-tailed shearwaters, red-tailed tropicbirds, greater frigatebirds, masked boobies, sooty terns, brown noddies and grey ternlets.
Over the smash of the surf on the rocks, the sound is immense. Chattering, whistling calls as birds chase each other through the skies above. The air around the islands rings with the life of thousands of seabirds. Their aerial displays to court mates and chase competitors. Spiralling in the thermals rising from sun-warmed rocks. Glowing as the morning light catches their feathers against the deep shadows cast along the cliffs.
Kermadec petrels fascinate me in particular. They come in all sorts of colour morphs – dark to light and everything in between – and they all have white wing-flashes that make them look like skuas. They’re surface nesting petrels, leaving their chicks on the forest floor rather than inside a burrow when they go to forage at sea.
As well as coming in a stunning array of colours, Kermadec petrels on the Kermadec islands also split themselves into two populations – winter and summer breeders. This variability is odd – most petrels are pretty synchronised in when they breed, and the differences observed in these birds may suggest that there are two distinct sub-species or species instead of one big population of Kermadec petrels resident on these islands.
The resupply is still underway, with loads being ferried by the helicopter to the base on Raoul. The bunkhouse glimmers white amidst the dark forest canopy. The interplay between the Canterbury and Raoul is a buzz of activity, with the RHIBS constantly blasting around the coastline, the helicopter almost constantly aloft. The ship itself meanders up and down the coastline in a constant holding pattern.
One evening we all pile down into the bowels of the ship – the loading deck where the massive door has been lowered so we can stare out into the ocean dark. Floodlights illuminate the water slopping against the edge, and armed with a few big nets, we’re trying to catch larval fish and whatever other small marine life is attracted to the lights. Led by the ever-enthusiastic Tom Trnski, we’re delving up some interesting critters to get an idea of what marine life the intersection of tropical and temperate waters produces around the Kermadec islands.
All too soon, after a few days of baking in tropical heat on the gunmetal grey decks while surveying for seabirds, we are turning southwards again. The resupply is complete, and the Canterbury is heading home to port in Auckland.
We head off into the blue once more, which shades to purple, and then gold. Sooty terns follow us, swooping across the monkey deck where we all bask in the last rays of day before being called below into the windowless dark. Black-winged petrels whistle along the surface of the sea. Raoul fades into the dusk.
