Commercial fisher Mike Terry, recently swapped his usual boat (pictured here) for his own recreational vessel to skipper a three-day expedition surveying the king shag population in the Marlborough Sounds.
Have you heard the one about the commercial fisher, an ornithologist and an endangered seabird? We have.
When researchers needed to survey one of New Zealand’s rarest seabirds, commercial fisher Mike Terry stepped up, offering his own recreational boat and local knowledge for a three-day expedition around the Marlborough Sounds D’Urville Island area.
Originally from the Sounds and now based in Hawke’s Bay, Mike teamed up with ornithologist Mike Bell, budding ornithologist and keen photographer Judah Gray, as well as other crew to survey king shags during their breeding season.
The Sounds are home to five different shag species, a rare concentration found nowhere else. This includes the king shag, a native bird found only in the Marlborough Sounds and classed as endangered. It’s exactly this kind of rarity that makes ongoing monitoring so important, and exactly the kind of work that benefits from someone who knows the water. Alongside Mike Terry’s local knowledge and boat, the crew drew on iwi knowledge and decades of on-the-water experience to help track the birds.
While king shag numbers appear lower than the last count, continued systematic monitoring remains important, particularly for a species that moves around a lot and is vulnerable. What stood out most, though, was the cooperation behind the trip. As Mike Bell put it, a conservationist and a commercial fisherman coming together to do something good for wildlife is exactly the kind of partnership our marine environment needs more of. It’s a good reminder that our industry is full of people quietly doing the right thing, whether that’s supporting a seabird survey, backing local conservation efforts or just keeping a watchful eye on our coastlines.
Read the full story from the Marlborough Express here: Marlborough App
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Above left: Ornithologist Mike Bell took part in the trip to monitor the King Shags in Marlborough Sounds.
Above right: King shags. Photo courtesy of the Department of Conservation.
