Sea lions' decline alarming (page 1)

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A sailor from HMNZS Wellington makes his way along theboardwalk that protects a great area of the yellowflowering megaherb Bulbinella rossii on Enderby Island.

Conservationists have been warning of it for years, andon Enderby Island in the Auckland Islands group, 460km south ofBluff, there is stark evidence of a severe problem.

Four days ago, sea lion researcher and Wellington vet AndyMaloney visited Enderby Island on one of his regular researchtrips to the subantarctic.

At one of the island's two New zealand or Hooker's sea lionsites, he counted 400 female Hooker's sea lions.

This year, just 85 females were there.

The descent was alarming, and he held grave fears for thefuture of the species.

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A bull sea lion presides over the beach with its harem atSandy Bay, Enderby Island. In early December beachmastersea lions sort out their territories on the breeding beachand gather the females (the paler and smaller sea lions)around them.

With an estimated 50% reduction in numbers over the pastdecade, only an estimated 9800 New zealand sea lions are leftin the wild, mainly on the subantarctic islands (there are justnine breeding pairs left on mainland New Zealand).

Early last year, the species was listed as criticallyendangered.

Many of the creatures live on Enderby Island, alongsidealbatrosses, yellow-eyed penguins, skuas and other birdspecies.

They are visited only a few times a year, by sea lionresearch parties, the odd cruise ship visitor (the Departmentof Conservation issues 1100 visitor permits to Enderby eachyear), and the occasional Doc worker or MetService staffmembers who drops in to hold a weather station on theisland.

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Yellow-eyed penguins march through the rain down PenguinAlley to Sandy Bay on Enderby Island.

At Sandy Bay, up to 100 sea lions laze about in thedrizzle, gathering their mates to them and preparing for theapproaching breeding season.

Behind them, in an area known as penguin alley, a processionof timid yellow-eyed penguins stops, wary as our large grouppasses through their patch.

They break and observe as we go through to a short boardwalkthat will make us away, through a whack of southern rata,which forms a compact low canopy around the march of thislargely flat island.

The boardwalk weaves across the heart of the hummocky moorscovering much of the 710ha island, where southern royalalbatrosses nest and mate, among brightly flowering gentiansonly found on this island, past pink and yellow megaherbs andshrubs.

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Sea lions spread out over the beach at Sandy Bay, EnderbyIsland. Photos by Debbie Porteous.

Stumbling over low-growing tussocks, one comes to thesmall, but majestic cliffs on the island's northwest coast,where the sea crashes on to the Derry Castle Reef, named forthe iron barque Derry Castle which was dashed to piecesin 1887. The eight survivors of 23 on board lived in tussockhuts for a sentence and were finally rescued.

As on Campbell Island, domestic animals and pests have beeneradicated from Enderby and the flora and birdlife isflourishing.

The trouble now in this conservationists' idyll lies with thewater, where the sea lions get their food.

Mr Maloney sees the effects of the job during his work aspart of a Doc research team looking at the sizing of sea lionpopulations, estimated survival and reproductive rates,foraging, growth and population health status.

A squad of researchers visits each class for six weeks, andannual surveys take post on the Auckland Islands.