The 5am start is a struggle, in the chill starry blackness before dawn. We traipse down an empty road in the dark to hop aboard the comforting familiarity of Trevor’s boat, the steady thrum of the engine taking us out of the harbour into the slow sunrise. I curl up in my usual spot, face-first on the galley couch to try and trick myself into thinking I’ve had more sleep. But the temptation of the lightening sky is too much. The steady roll of a chopped sea keeps me awake, thrilling quietly at being back on the ocean.
The Pinnacles (Sugarloaf and High Peak Rocks) are a sharp collection of stacks just south of the Poor Knights islands. They’re sheer and guano-streaked, home to tākapu, the occasional visiting grey ternlet, and not much else. There are scattered salt-blasted scraps of vegetation, and a multitude of rock crevices that probably house common diving petrels and perhaps fairy prions. I’ve sailed backwards and forwards past them on cetacean surveys, and skimmed past on research trips to Tawhiti Rahi aboard the Dive! Tutukaka boats. They always seem small compared to the cliffy bulk of the islands.
This morning they are sharp in silhouette against the rising sun, gilded at the edges, and caught in a storm of waking seabirds. They seem taller, more solid. Gannets circle, floating effortlessly over the peaks on the stiff morning breeze. Volleys of diving petrels stream past at sea-level, neatly pied in their post-migration and freshly moulted plumage. The stark geology of the rocks reminds me of another dawn – at the Snares islands. The density of the seabirds isn’t quite the same, but the feeling of wildness is there. These chunks of rock are just too steep to be interfered with much by humans, making them ideal seabird habitat. In my mind I can’t help but turn the soaring gannets into albatrosses, and the relatively placid seas into the raging roaring forties.
We track around them on our way to Tawhiti Rahi – a day trip to rescue gear from the island that had to be abandoned during lockdown. Our field season is long over, chicks fledged from our study-plots, adults escaping on migration unburdened by the geolocation devices we needed to deploy. We’ve been waiting on the weather to get out here for a while, and I’m glad we did. Sometimes you need a glowing dawn at sea. The early starts are always worthwhile.
