Mahi Kororā
Kororā Monitoring
We have begun night cathing and tagging of kororā for the season and had a fairly successful first night. There seems to be a lot of kororā activity at all our beaches this year but we will only be monitoring Wai iti and Urenui for now unitll we can build more capacity. I have been in contact with Ngāmotu Marine Reserve Society (NMMRS) about gaining my training certification so I can begin to train our whanau to help with this mahi. All our nesting boxes have been added to the main NMMRS database, audited, repaired and labelled and are ready hopefully for kororā to take up residence this season. We can now start weekly nest checks on these boxes. Last year not many of the wai iti boxes were used and unfortunately we cannot control this. There is just too much habitat there for them.
Kororā (Blue Penguin)
The rock seawall areas at Urenui and Onaero Beaches have become habitats for nesting Kororā. The Taiao Team has worked with interested parties to schedule maintenance on access ramps and any upgrades or rock repositioning to reduce the impact on Kororā and be outside of the nesting season.
We have used the North Island DOC Kororā dog in helping to GPS locate the nests and they will return prior to the scheduled work commencing to recheck the nests.
The Taiao Team are checking nests weekly and observing nests to identify the best Kororā candidates for a trial of our GPS tracking aspirations.
Nightly catch, tag and release of kororā at Urenui has been successful. 20 new kororā have been recorded to watch for their return in future seasons. We have seen a lot of kororā activity at all our beaches this year. Our Pou Taiao has completed her training certification, enabling whānau to be trained locally to help with this mahi. All our kororā nesting boxes have been added to the main NMMRS (Ngāmotu Marine Reserve Society) database, audited, repaired and labelled.
Kororā
Kororā up and down Taranaki coast have already begun nesting also. Nest box checks are undertaken weekly and we have two confirmed nests with two eggs each. We have completed one night of catching at Urenui which went well and we have Thomas Matten coming up from next week to conduct some more mirco-chip insertion training and hopefully sign Anne-Maree off as a trainer so we can train our own whanau in this area. Thomas will also be trialling some new GPS trackers on the Ngamotu population of Kororā, so we can learn more about this technology and how it can best be used on our local kororā You may remember that last year we had kororā foraging all the way
