Editorial: A Time to Act
KATE WATERHOUSE
Humans can be slow to get the message until a change forces itself into our lives and will no longer be denied. As I write, warming of the global climate is manifesting in wildfires and heat waves in Western Europe. Talk of oceanic tipping points being reached has made me feel ill, and I’d pushed such thoughts away, but now NIWA are forecasting another La Niña. While it’s good for the fire risk on Aotea after a couple of very dry summers, now the water tables are past full and I look up at the scars of that 2014 weather event on Hirakimatā and hope we don’t get another one like that.
Difference between forecasted sea surface temperatures and the long term average for this time of year. Red shading indicates that the ocean is currently warmer than normal, blue that it is colder.
But the chances are that we will get more of these bigger storms – a lesser-known fact about increasing global temperatures is that for every 1 degree rise, storms can hold 7% more water and the “tropical” climate zone is slowly heading our way. This La Niña means more prevailing northeast winds, bringing warm air down from the tropics, with a wetter summer and a corresponding lack of southerlies. More bad news for the fading Whangapoua bar, but it’s warming seas that are the real disaster. The increase in temperatures in the Gulf is worrying. The Moana Project was set up three years ago to help NZ prepare for rapid oceanic warming. It is using advanced models to predict when and where marine heatwaves will affect coastal and oceanic waters. You can jump on their site and see the forecast sea surface temperatures for the next seven days. It’s not good.
The warmer the Gulf gets, the more starving seabirds we can expect. These birds are bound to their chicks in burrows on our islands. There are thirteen species breeding on the islands between the Poor Knights, Aotea and the mainland. This is Te Moananui a Toi, the domain of Ngātiwai people, whose knowledge of bird populations and bird health goes back 30 or more generations. The ōi or grey-faced petrels are, I’m told, skinny and not in good health, and they are not being harvested for that reason. Why are birds starving? As the water warms, the food (small fish) moves into deeper water and seabirds must follow. And there is less of it, thanks to decades of decimation of small schooling fish like pilchards throughout the Hauraki Gulf Marine Park.
We’ve all seen the increase in undernourished penguins, but diving petrels, shearwaters and small petrels have to spend more time flying to find food and fly back to the burrow with it, and they are lighter and less able to rear a chick as a result.
There’s a few bits of good news— if you’re wondering why there seem to be more snapper around, yes there are. Some species thrive in warmer waters and snapper is one of them. Gannets are going great guns on Mahuki, where more than 6,000 birds are now thought to breed. One school of thought is that it’s because they too are following the fish to the cooler outer Gulf.
Kate Waterhouse beside riparian plantings established and new – Okiwi river, July 2022 (Photo: Rohan MacMahon)
Several years ago I asked black petrel guru Biz Bell about the low survival rates of juvenile black petrels – only one in ten of which return here by the age of three. To sum it up, birds are smaller and lighter than when she began her research in the 1990s. La Niña years weren’t good she felt, although she wasn’t yet sure why. But a hungry black petrel is more likely to go for readily available food – like squid baits, streaming out behind a long-line fishing boat. That is one reason tākoketai, black petrels, are so at risk from interactions with the fishing fleet.
But what have seabirds got to offer in helping us cope with climate warming? You might have heard burrowing seabirds like petrels and shearwaters described as “ecosystem engineers”. Sadly, they are missing in action throughout most of Aotea’s forests. No seabirds in burrows means no nutrients entering the forest soils from the sea via seabird droppings, helping them to regenerate and resist fire and rain events. No nutrients flowing out into the coastal zone, feeding those waters. Seaweed growth is heightened around islands where seabirds still breed, with knock on effects for the close-shore ecosystem. The trouble is, few of us have any memory of seabirds, yet Aotea is the biggest seabird island of any in the Gulf and it is down to us to make it safe for them to return.
It seems to me that doing right by Aotea comes down to the same basic actions.
Help the forests regenerate by eradicating the rodents that eat seeds and predate birds, and feral cats that do the same; attract burrowing seabirds back to feed the soil again; and plant natives – especially along streams, into wetlands and the areas of lost kahikatea and pūriri forests.
Help the seas regenerate by supporting a cessation of commercial fishing in coastal waters and any other measures that promote marine restoration – not just around Aotea, but for the whole Hauraki Gulf Marine Park – because we are affected by it.
On the Barrier we like to think we are sustainable. Some even like to think this is an unspoiled paradise, and perhaps, by virtue of living here that we’re somehow less responsible for what is happening to te taiao, the natural world. “Please keep doing what you’re doing, it’s wonderful.” is the sentiment we hear from our readers and members, and it’s welcome feedback. But it somehow shifts a weight of responsibility onto the volunteers that give their time to this trust’s work. There is no passing off responsibility for the whenua or the moana that sustains this community.
At the airport last Sunday I met two local environmentalists who knew my late sister Emma Waterhouse, former trustee and editor of this publication. She was so knowledgeable, they said, being from science backgrounds themselves. Emma was working within the international development and climate response system to lead change, but she ran out of time. Unlike her, I’m no scientist— I have a BCom/BA and a Masters in Creative Writing, and in 2023 I’ll begin a Graduate Diploma in Psychology. These aren’t the usual credentials for conservation leadership. But having spent a large part of my life in nature, in all its perfect detail, and in business and governance (which are somewhat less perfect). I am beginning to understand the value of whenua and moana, ki uta ki tai. Slow learner, I know.
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