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2025 Penguin Season Newsletter |
Kia ora
Results from the 2025 penguin breeding season are in. Here on the West Coast, as they do around the world, penguins face ever-changing challenges. Despite notable losses at key breeding sites, our Little Penguins (kororā) and Fiordland Crested Penguins (tawaki) continue to respond with remarkable resilience.
We have refreshed our newsletter with huge thanks to volunteer and artist Erin Dailey and have shown our top stories with links to the detailed news. We have shared our achievements, lessons learned and questions outstanding from the 2025 and recent penguin breeding seasons below.
I have a big interest in the ENSO oscillation, the shift between El Niño and La Niña conditions, and how they impact coastal conditions including marine and weather patterns. We are hoping to unpick how they impact kororā and tawaki breeding success with the help of our scientists; our improved data gathering will help them in this research. From our observations to date, it seems El Niño conditions, forecast this year, can adversely affect tawaki and La Niña conditions can adversely affect kororā. We'll be sharing expert analysis soon and, for now, I've shared my findings below with a little help from AI. Your support helps us to understand and respond to the rapidly changing conditions that our penguins face every day and we are enormously grateful. Our match-funding campaign continues for a few more weeks (see below); our huge thanks to those who have already responded.
Inger Perkins May 2026 |
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Little Penguin - kororā
2025 season updates |
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Kororā chick being held for microchipping |
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Microchips are 11.5mm long |
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31 new penguins microchipped |
31 kororā were microchipped this season, bringing the total to 77 across two seasons. We aim to microchip all penguins in the study colony that can be reached, both adults and then new chicks each year, once they are big enough.
Next year, after three years of data collection, this dataset of the demography of these penguins, along with breeding success data, will reach a point where it will start revealing survival rates and colony growth or decline. We will then be able to link that to foraging patterns and changing marine and weather conditions. Critical insights like these are key to guiding and informing future conservation efforts. |
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Penguin journeys during egg incubation |
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GPS logger attached to young kororā |
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Foraging study reveals extreme journeys |
Using tiny GPS and dive loggers, we were shocked to find that kororā from our study site travelled up to three times further offshore to find food during egg incubation, and stayed at sea much longer than in previous years: up to 3 weeks instead of the usual 5-7 days. For breeding birds, that meant a tougher time finding food, and a tougher time for the increasingly hungry parent left to keep the eggs warm.
Extreme journeys early in the breeding season are a likely indication of reduced prey availability within the usual foraging range. This may have been due to higher sea surface temperatures associated with weak La Niña conditions. It's possible that thermal stratification locally - warm surface water - locks nutrients and small schooling fish at depth. We will be investigating this in the coming months with the help of our scientists and will report back.
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Breeding success down on previous year |
Overall, we recorded more nest failures, underweight chicks, and early chick losses than in most previous seasons. At our main study site at Camerons near Greymouth (replacing the 'Knoll' site near Charleston), several nests failed, and many produced only one chick from the two eggs laid. With no evidence of predation, and taking into account tracking data from our foraging study, the signs point to environmental stress, probably reduced prey availability early in the breeding season.
The very poor season in 2022 also appears to be related to environmental stress, most likely La Niña conditions that peaked in early spring, part of a rare three-year 'triple-dip' phenomenon extending to March 2023. Those conditions led to elevated risks from weather extremes and we saw unprecedented marine heatwaves accompanied by dropping indicators of primary production such as chlorophyll levels, an indicator for phytoplankton, the base of marine food webs. We assume these conditions push prey fish out of the usual foraging range of kororā and we will be doing more work to understand that.
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Two healthy kororā chicks |
Despite tough conditions, kororā on the West Coast continue to show remarkable resilience. Many penguin parents successfully raised chicks despite significant offshore foraging challenges. Some colonies, notably at Joyce Bay, experienced a strong rebound in breeding activity compared to previous years. This is incredibly promising evidence of the adaptability of Little Penguins, and indicates that even when hope is fading, colony recovery is possible. |
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Fiordland Crested Penguin - tawaki
2025 season updates |
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Tawaki parent feeding healthy chick caught on trail camera |
Encouragingly, camera-monitored tawaki nests at our key study site showed high breeding success rates (~90%), though lower success was found using broader monitoring measures (~65%). Varied results likely reflect monitoring limitations, and the camera-monitored figure will be more accurate.
Monitored chicks appeared well-fed and showed normal growth rates, suggesting that food availability, unlike for kororā, was not a major issue for tawaki this season. |
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Tawaki ranger Catherine adjusts a camera without disturbing the penguin on its nest |
A small number of healthy tawaki chicks were found dead without signs of predation. Possible causes include parental loss or unknown environmental factors. We aim to continue and improve our camera monitoring so that we can learn more about such scenarios.
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Dr Thomas Mattern setting trail camera |
Predator management success for tawaki |
We have used cameras to monitor the risk of predation of tawaki eggs and chicks since 2014. This season, no stoats were seen at the tawaki colony monitored with cameras, which demonstrates the success of DOC’s landscape-scale predator control efforts there earlier in 2025.
From our previous monitoring, we concluded that stoats pose a major threat to tawaki when these mustelids are in plague proportions, and have been advocating at every opportunity for predator management to take tawaki into account. Thank you DOC! |
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What's happening in 2026? |
Over nearly 20 years, we have seen the challenges our penguins face grow, but we have continued to develop our ability to understand those challenges and respond.
Where we have already responded, with penguin protection fences, campaigns to protect penguins from loose dogs, and our much-valued education programme, we have seen reductions in the numbers of penguins killed on the road and by dogs as a result.
With your support, our ongoing penguin monitoring and research efforts will drive improved knowledge of kororā and tawaki, ensuring we continue to make a lasting impact on their future here on the West Coast and continue to work towards our Vision: |
"Sea and shore birds, and their habitat across the West Coast Te Tai Poutini, are healthy and thriving." |
Here's our focus for 2026: Continue microchipping new kororā chicks as well as adults that may be new to the study colony or that we haven’t been able to reach before. This will build a long-term dataset that tracks survival and population trends, and, with our other foraging study, help us better understand how changing environmental conditions may be affecting West Coast local penguins. Continue our kororā foraging study during egg incubation and chick guard stages. Upgrade old kororā nest boxes at the study site Maintain penguin protection fences that have been so successful in keeping penguins alive Improve tawaki monitoring with better cameras and batteries, and improve our understanding of the variable timing of egg-laying and thus chick rearing to improve our data collection and analysis. We will be monitoring forecast El Niño conditions and hope that they will not impact penguin breeding success. The last major El Niño event led to almost total breeding failure for tawaki in 2015. Maintain our education programme, supporting teachers and youth leaders to deliver educational resources. Update beach access signage to encourage responsible dog ownership: keeping dogs safe reduces the risk of dog attacks on penguins and other wildlife. Maintain our advocacy programmes to protect penguins, other endangered seabirds, and their nesting and foraging places here on the West Coast. And find a small way to celebrate 20 years of the West Coast Penguin Trust!
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Awhono School have been learning about penguins with Ranger, Lucy Waller (left, back row) |
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Our match-funding campaign is still live! |
Until 30 June, every donation up to $3,000 will be doubled. |
Thank you all for your overwhelming support when we launched this campaign earlier this month. The offer is still live until the end of June, so it's a great opportunity to support penguins and other endangered seabirds on the West Coast.
From now until 30 June, a generous donor from our community has offered to match every dollar that you donate to West Coast Penguin Trust, up to $3,000. As our penguins head into winter, and we plan for the next breeding season, now is a great time to double your impact! |
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Y O U C O N T R I B U T E : |
Help us build and repair penguin nesting boxes for the spring breeding season. |
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Y O U C O N T R I B U T E : |
Help us update signage to encourage dog owner responsibility and reduce the risk of dog attacks. |
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Y O U C O N T R I B U T E : |
Help us develop our research, education and advocacy programmes for the future of kororā and tawaki populations. |
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Thank you for supporting us. |
If you are able to contribute to this campaign, it will make double the difference to our work - our research, our education, and our advocacy programmes. |
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El Niño and La Niño v. West Coast penguins |
As noted in my introduction, the El Niño-Southern Oscillation or ENSO, is not only fascinating but likely critical for penguin breeding for different reasons, at different times and in different places.
With a little help from the AI app provided by claude.ai, I dug into this and have shared the results in a story on our website. In brief, El Niño conditions are bad for tawaki and kororā when food webs can collapse regionally, and La Niña conditions are bad for kororā, when food may be present but is too deep or may be hidden in murky water locally, caused by sediment from storm run-off trapped in warmer water near the surface.
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Fahlo bracelets helping penguins...
and many other at-risk animals |
I was recently given a lovely stone bracelet. It turns out that my Fahlo penguin bracelet was much more than a bracelet! Fahlo partners with nonprofits to both foster curiosity for wildlife and their conservation and to fund conservation efforts to protect our planet’s most at-risk animals and their habitats, including penguins and including the Global Penguin Conservation Society, which, in turn, is helping us.
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ON A NEED TO KNOW BASIS ... DOC hotline 0800 DOCHOT (362 468) Handy to know if you come across an injured penguin or any sick or injured wildlife that seems to be struggling whilst out there on the beach, river mouths or roads. If you see a little penguin / kororā on the beach it almost certainly needs assistance. If you see a Fiordland crested penguin / tawaki on the beach north of Fox Glacier, it may well need assistance. Biosecurity NZ hotline 0800 80 99 66 To report groups of three or more sick, dying or dead birds, marine mammals or other wildlife. Also, if you see or hear about a dead penguin, please let us know using our simple reporting form, ideally with a photograph and clear description of the location. If you can have a look and it's obvious or apparent, your thoughts on possible cause of death would be very helpful. We can then add the information to our database - which informs our conservation actions. If you can move the penguin out of sight and out of reach of tides and dogs, that will be helpful in case we need to collect it.
Thank you, we really appreciate your help! |
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