Penguin authority finds N.Z. a bountiful research centre

Press, 24 August 1988, Page 21

Penguin authority finds N.Z. a bountiful research centre

Tourism is good for the Antarctic — it regulates the behaviour of scientists and others working there, and prevents the pollution of the environment and the disturbance of wildlife.

This is not a tour promoter talking, but Dr Bernard Stonehouse, an Antarctic enthusiast who is one of the world’s leading authorities on penguins, and editor of Cambridge University’s “Polar Record.”

After more than 40 years of studying the Antarctic and its wildlife, Dr Stonehouse has concluded that tourism, far from being a threat, may be the saving of the continent’s most important values. This is because tourists want to see the continent and its environs as they expect to see it — not polluted, or decimated of birds and animals. “They won’t tolerate that kind of ugliness,” he says. “They’ll complain to their Governments, and the more people who see it, the more likely it is to be cleaned up.” Dr Stonehouse points out that all who visit the Antarctic are so affected by the experience that they become committed to the place. “That includes tourists,” he says, "and they have a good record of having the place cleaned up by being alert and kicking up a fuss. Tour operators generally have a very good record, too. They keep their noses clean — they have to.” He would like to see all Governments encouraging “self-con-trolled” tourism in the Antarctic, using small cruise ships rather than the big ones which are pouring 400 to 500 people ashore at some places in the Antarctic at present.

Excesses of conservationists

He does not object to the idea of accommodation being provided for Antarctic tourists either, but warns that the idea needs very careful monitoring. “There’s no reason why the Antarctic should be confined just to scientists,” says Dr Stonehouse. “All should be able to enjoy it. I’ve been very privileged.” Then, as if reminding himself that it can be a deadly hostile place: “It’s a nice place on a fine day.” The penguins of the Antarctic region are in little danger from man, Dr Stonehouse believes, unless people begin mining there, or drilling for oil. Even the fuss made about the French disturbance of Emperor penguins when they built an airstrip across some islands in Adelieland gets little support from him.

He takes the view that the airstrip may save human lives, and while he is very much in favour of penguins, he is also in favour of humans.

“There are a lot of very concerned conservationists who worry that we are doing a great deal of damage to all kinds of species unnecessarily. I entirely agree that we shouldn’t, and you could argue that the Antarctic is one place that man doesn’t have

Story: GARRY ARTHUR

to be, and the less we do there and develop it, the safer the animals are going to be. “But if we are committed to working there and finding out its possibilities for man, we can accept a little bit of damage from time to time. That’s inevitable, but we’ve got to watch it as ; closely as we can. “I think the ultra-conservation-ists may be doing a disservice to their cause by over-stating their case. I realise that they have to get publicity and funding, but I think they can damage their cause.” Pollution is a threat to penguins, but Dr Stonehouse says people are being very responsible these days. “When I went to Adelieland two years ago, our German icebreaker acted in accordance with the Antarctic Treaty,” he says. “We left the Antarctic just as we found it, leaving no debris or oil, not even cigarette ends. We were extremely careful, and this is the modern way.” It was the older Antarctic bases that did the major polluting. “They, including the abandoned bases, are big rubbish tips,” Dr Stonehouse says. “The rubbish never rots down in that climate, and it would be good if it could be cleaned up.” Dr Stonehouse served in the Fleet Air Arm in World War 11, and then with the Falkland Islands Dependency Survey (now the British Antarctic Survey) as a pilot, meteorologist and biologist. He came to Canterbury University in 1960 as a senior lecturer in zoology, and the next year initiated the department’s biological research in the Antarctic, where he directed studies of penguins, seals and fish. He returned to Britain in 1969. He returned to New Zealand in August to attend the first international conference on penguins at Otago University, together with 80 other scientists from nine different countries.

Otago was the right place to hold such a conference, he considers, because 40 years ago when a New Zealand scientist,

Lance Richards, was studying yellow-eyed penguins there, he was the only one in the world doing penguin research. He was responsible for making the now world-famous reserve on the Otago Peninsula for the royal albatross and the yellow-eyed penguin. Emphasis has changed over the years form research on the penguin’s anatomy to its life history and life cycles, and particularly its place in the ecosytem — what penguins feed on and what feeds on them.

Now the emphasis has turned to conservation. Penguins are being displaced by man, and Dr Stonehouse says it is important to find ways of protecting their place in the scheme of things. Fortunately, he adds, everyone likes penguins, and wants them to be protected. Even in Otago, the numbers of yellow-eyed penguins have been reduced very considerably in the last few years, and Dr John Darby, one of the organisers of the conference, is researching the reasons why. Dr Stonehouse

thinks the reason might be changes made to the bird’s habitat by man. But man is not always to blame. On the sub-Antarctic islands one of the crested penguins is dying off, but the cause seems to be a virus. “Whole colonies have been wiped out,” says Dr Stonehouse. “We only become aware of these changes if we continue to monitor them. We can’t do much about it — we can’t send vets down to dose them — but we need to know what’s happening. Monitoring is being done to some degree.

Plentiful and distinctive

“That’s the point of a lot of research — understanding how penguins live so that we can understand when something goes wrong. Then we may be able to do something about the manmade ones.” Dr Stonehouse says New Zealand is a very important centre of penguin research because it has lots of penguin species — two kinds of Little blue penguin; the yellow-eyed penguin found from Otago down to Campbell Island and nowhere else in the world; the erect-crested penguin of the Antipodes and Campbell Islands; the Fiordland penguin which breeds in the Fiordland and Stewart Island rainforests; and the similar but distinct Snares Island penguin 100 km south of Stewart Island. We have even had a visit from a wildly astray Emperor penguin that reached the southern coast of the South Island from Antarctica. Some penguins, such as the Snares Island variant of the Fiordland penguin, are found only in one isolated place. “It’s not easy to say why,” says Dr Stonehouse. “It might be because of a local food supply. If they have to dive deeper, they probably get bigger. If they have to shift to eating more fish than Crustacea, they might develop a different shaped beak.” Canterbury has its own distinctive penguin, the white-flippered penguin, which is a local variant of the Little blue or fairy penguin found only in New Zealand /and Australia. It is slightly heavier than the northern Little blue penguin, and has a distinctive white band along both edges of the flippers. They breed only on Banks Peninsula, Motunau Island and the neighbouring coasts.

Aviation rules in colony vicinity

Dr Stonehouse thinks the white-banded flipper might have developed for greater ease of recognition of each other in the water. “The white band would flash in the water,” he points out. “If a penguin was looking for a mate, she might say 'No, that chap’s different’.” A particularly numerous species are the Adelies, which

breed in huge colonies on the shores of the Antarctic continent. As that is also where man has his foothold on the ice, particular colonies have come under threat. Dr Stonehouse was instrumental in the 1960 s in having the United States Navy support force’s helicopters observe new flying regulations around the Cape Royds Adelle colony on Ross Island because they — together with visitor pressure — were upsetting the breeding pattern. Numbers had dropped dramatically, from 2000 pairs in 1955 to 1100 in 1962. Penguin anatomy was thoroughly studied in the early days of penguin research, and Dr Stonehoue found the old papers a big help when he was trying to discover how the well-insulated birds keep cool when they are being active and generating a lot of heat inside. He worked on the idea that penguins dissipate heat through their flippers, and sure enough, the old . anatomy books showed huge blood vessels leading into the penguin’s flippers, much bigger than needed for the tiny muscles there. “They spread the blood over the surface of the flipper, which acted as a radiator, and enabled them to keep their body surface temperature constant, no matter what they were doing.” Dr Stonehouse’s research continues. He is now looking at the relationship between different groups, and studying penguin evolution. He believes penguins must have evolved in the Southern Ocean while the continents were moving about on the surface of the Earth, 30 to 40 million years ago. “Penguins probably evolved in

the New Zealand area when it .was sandwiched between Antarctica and the Asian mainland,” he says. “New Zealand is high on my list, but it could also have been off the southern end of South America.

“I’m very interested in .tracing the stages of development of the southern ocean and the parallel development of penguins and seals. We have very little idea of what the penguin’s forerunner was like.”

First fossil near Kakanui

The fossil record has been no help, because even the oldest fossils are still clearly penguins. “What was the half-way stage?” Dr Stonehouse wonders. “I just hope it’s found in my time. It could be, and there’s a strong likelihood that it will be found in New Zealand.” The first penguin fossil ever found was discovered by a Maori near Kakanui, south of Oamaru, in the 1850 s, and the New Zealand fossil record is the most extensive. Even, so, no nearly complete penguin fossil skeleton has ever been found. The world’s largest fossil penguin remains were also found near Oamaru in 1930 — Pachydyptes ponderosus, which was about 1.5 m tall (half as tall again as the Emperor penguin) and weighed about 100 kilograms, three times as heavy as the Emperor. As Professor G. G. Simpson, of the University of Arizona, notes

in “The Biology of Penguins” edited by Bernard Stonehouse, the giant fossil penguin was not tall enough for basketball, but about the right weight for American football. , Professor Simpson says petrels appear to be the penguin’s nearest living relative. It Is now generally accepted that penguins are descended from flying birds. They have retained the bony elements of the flying wing and the prominent pectoral muscles associated with flight — but modified for flying under water. He says that as. penguins are wing swimmers, and not foot swimmers like some birds, they are no doubt derived from ancestral forms which, like diving petrels, swam with their wings extended under water. He says their present flightless condition must have arisen In early forms which , were no bigger than the smallest living ones — the little blue penguins of New Zealand. This is because the ability to fly would be lost as the birds increased their body size for more effective diving and hunting. Dr Stonehouse’s own theory is quoted in the book — that the penguin’s forerunners were small, heavy, short-winged birds that learned to plane for miles close to the surface of the sea, like hydrofoils, just as the pre-sent-day Pigeon guillemots do. Part of the bodyweight is supported by the surface film of water.

The next step for the protopenguin would have been to use the wings actually within the water rather than just above it, increasing its possible size and weight, and leading to a penguinlike development.