Our Changing World – Seabirds under threat

Many of northern New Zealand’s seabirds are out of sight and out of mind for most of us.  

They live on the wing, migrating and foraging long distances across the open ocean. When they come to land to breed and rear chicks, they do so in remote coastal areas, or on small, uninhabited islands in Tīkapa Moana, the Hauraki Gulf. But these seabirds are under pressure.

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“They’re the most threatened group of birds in the world,” says Edin Whitehead, PhD student at Waipapa Taumata Rau University of Auckland. “They face threats at sea and on land, it’s a double whammy.” 

Climate change, mammalian predators, plastic pollution, oil spills, fisheries bycatch, diseases, light pollution – the list goes on. Whitehead investigated them all for a 2019 report titled Threats to Seabirds of Northern Aotearoa New Zealand.   

Putting together this report helped her identify some knowledge gaps which then guided the focus for her research.  

Whitehead is studying four species of seabirds that breed in the Hauraki Gulf but travel different distances for migration – from long distance (rako, Buller’s shearwater), to shorter (totorore, little shearwater, and tītī wainui, fairy prion) to the homebirds that don’t tend to migrate (pakahā, fluttering shearwater).  

She speaks to Claire Concannon about how her research is going, and about the impact that last year’s marine heatwave appears to have had on breeding for some of these birds.

Edin would like to acknowledge mana whenua of Tawhiti Rahi, Mauimua, and Pokohinu, Ngātiwai, Ngāti Manuhiri and Ngāti Rehua for the privilege of working in their rohe. Funding support for this research was from the Birds New Zealand Research Fund (2019, 2020, 2021) and the Newmarket Rotary Club Environmental Award 2022. This research is done in collaboration with the Northern New Zealand Seabird Trust.   

To learn more: 

• Listen to the full episode on Our Changing World. 

• The State of our Seabirds 2021 is a comprehensive publication edited by Chris Gaskin looking at seabird ecology, research and conservation for the wider Tīkapa Moana Hauraki Gulf region. 

• You can read the Threats to Seabirds of Northern Aotearoa New Zealand 2019 report here. 

• In good news, with extensive conservation efforts backing it, the tara iti fairy tern has just had its best breeding season in ten years.