| Monday, 22. July
2002 |
Oamaru, New Zealand |
Wo-hoo. Despite my lack of scientific
progress at this state (due to DoC's indecisiveness, see below), I'm
able to present my first penguin pictures. Last night I went out for
a little midnight walk along the Oamaru harbour. I grabbed my camera
just in case a penguin or two would block my way. Well… they
did not block my way as such, but there was a lot of rattling and
honking on my left and right. These little blue ghost were, of course,
my good old friends the Little Penguins (Eudyptula minor),
who are without any doubt the major attraction in Oamaru. It has been
about 15 months since I last saw one of the guys in real life –
but everything was like in the good old days of my Little Penguin
MSc project (see also http://www.eudyptula.net
– sorry, only in German). The little fellas make one hell of
a noise; they are cautious but never too scared to attack if they
think you get too close.
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| The first two penguins started rustling
in the grass on my left – just as a warning. They ducked down
to avoid my camera (bastards!), then growled provokingly and waited
for me to scamper off. Which I did. At the base of the harbour breakwater,
several penguins romped between the rocks that had just been dug out
of the harbour a few days ago. What a din! One of the guys seemed
to have had a darn hard day. He crouched on the breakwater and didn’t
give a damn about me sneaking around. |
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| And that's more or less it.
Really nothing really exciting happened here. Why is that, you ask?
Well, there seem to be some problems with our permits for the Snares
Islands. The New Zealand Department of Conservation (DoC) takes
its time to decide whether we can go or not. At first it seemed
as if everything was clear; our research proposal was completely
overhauled leaving no critical aspects. But the last and decisive
'Go!' just doesn't come and we start thinking that the whole project
might fall to bits.
This, in fact, would be quite boring, as it would mean that I'd
have to concentrate on another penguin species for my PhD. This
would probably be Fiordland Crested Penguins (Eudyptes pachyrhynchus).
In the worst case I would need to redo this website… but let's
sit and wait.
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