PENGUIN OIL INDUSTRY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LVI, Issue 17295, 20 October 1919, Page 6

PENGUIN OIL INDUSTRY.

HUNTERS ON MACQUARIES.

8000 BIRDS KILLED DAILY.

[BY TELEGRAPH. OWN CORRESPONDENT.]

CHRISTCHURCH, Saturday.

The methods employed by a party or. men o n the Macquarrie Islands in catching pen-juins, which thev boil down for oil, were described to-day bv Mr. E. J. Haynes, taxidermist- at Canterbury Museum, who recently visited the Islands. The birds, he said, came ashore on a flat, pebbly heacla and entered a natural cul-de-sac formed by a saddle. Usually two pen-guin-hunters stood by, one on each side of the cul-de-sac, and knocked the penguins on the head. Five experienced men averaged a total of about 8000 birds a day. The bodies were, carried to the digestors, where the oil was obtained.

In refuting a statement that the birds were driven alive into the digester, Mr. Haynes said it is utterly impossible to do this, but if it were it would be a more troublesome and lengthy process. It is mainly the royal penguin that is taken for oil, but the rock-hopper and the tufted penguin, known to New Zealanders as the Victoria,. are also killed. Mr. Haynes believes that it wotild be impossible to exterminate the royal penguin, but the lookeries of the other two specie? might be seriously reduced. The king penguin occupies several islands in the Southern Ocean, but the Maoquarries are the only islands in the New Zealand zoological area on which it breeds, and there it has large rookeries. If the hunters had carried on their work at those rookeries in Lusitania Bay the king penguins would have been exterminated as far as the Marquetries are concerned, but Mr. Hate!:, the lessee of the islands, insist? that that species should not, be interfered with. Mr. Haynes strongly supports the proposal to declare '..he islands a national reserve after Mr. Hatch's lease expires and to have all animal life there absolutely protected.