Enderby Island

Date: December 30, 2024

After the Snares Islands, we continued on to Enderby Island which is part of the Auckland Islands Archipelago. Enderby Island is situated at the northernmost tip of Auckland Island which is by far the largest island of the archipelago.

As is usual on these kinds of trips, we went ashore in large inflatable dinghies. At Enderby Island we had a so-called wet landing where the dinghy goes as close to the coast as possible and then we wade ashore in high rubber boots. Before going ashore we passed a colony of yellow-eyed pinguins:

The yellow-eyed penguins are endemic to New Zealand.

Here is an Auckland teal, a flightless type of duck endemic to the Auckland Islands:

As seen on some of the pictures further below, Enderby Island is surrounded by cliffs and rocky shorelines, and the only landing point is Sandy Bay at the island's southwest end. This is also where the New Zealand sea lions have their breeding colony:

We walked on the grass inland from the beach to not get too close to the sea lions which can be a bit aggressive or playful depending on how you interpret the situation. Fortunately, one of our guides was very good at calming the sea lions, we called her the "sea lion whisperer".

After passing the sea lions we entered a small forest and got a picture of a male New Zealand bellbird. The bellbird has a characteristic song and while singing, the male stretches his neck and fluffs his feathers:

A nesting Southern royal albatross:

The Southern royal albatross is a very large bird with a length of 112-123 cm and a mean weight of 8.5 kg. It has an average wingspan of above 3 m. It is one of the two largest species of albatross, together with the wandering albatross.

Most of the royal albatross population is found roaming in a circle on the southern hemisphere between 30° S and 45° S. However, they only breed in the New Zealand subantarctic islands, the majority nesting on Campbell Island, with more than 8,000 pairs. There are much smaller breeding colonies on Adams Island and Auckland Island, and 69 breeding pairs on Enderby Island:

Probably an Auckland double-banded plover:

This is a flowering Anisotome latifolia, with the common name Campbell Island carrot. It is indeed part of the carrot family and is native to the Auckland and Campbell Islands:

It is a so-called megaherb, a group of herbaceous wildflowers growing in the New Zealand subantarctic islands. They are characterized by a great size, huge leaves and very large flowers, often in unusual colors. The megaherb characteristics may have evolved as an adaptation to the harsh weather conditions on the islands.

Picture showing the ragged coast opposite Sandy Bay:

There is supposed to be a light-mantled sooty albatross nesting somewhere on the above picture but we would have needed a better lens to capture it properly.

We walked for a while along the northern coastline:

We had a brief view of the gnarled wind-shaped rata trees with ferns and megaherbs in the undergrowth in the southeastern corner of the island:

A very persistent female sea lion held us up for a while outside the forest, while one of the guides was using her backpack to stop it getting any closer, the idea being that if the sea lion lashes out to bite it will bite the backpack rather than a hand or a leg:

A colony of Auckland Islands shags, another species endemic to the Auckland Islands:

These shags feed on the sea bottom by diving down from the surface and are therefore dependent on quite shallow waters for feeding. This combined with them not being very strong flyers means that they are confined to the Auckland Islands, unable to reach any of the other subantarctic islands or the mainland. That's a textbook description of how to make an endemic species.

Back on Sandy Bay beach with the sea lions basking in the sand:

The buildings visible in the background are part of a string of castaway depots placed by the New Zealand government on the subantarctic island in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to provide emergency supplies for victims of shipwrecks. The first of the depots to be used was in fact the depot on Enderby Island, the so-called Stella Hut. The eight survivors from the wrecking of the ship Derry Castle in March of 1887 on the northern most tip of Enderby Island managed to find the depot at Sandy Bay but unfortunately it had been looted and contained nothing but a bottle of salt! Instead, the castaways survived on shellfish and some wheat they had recovered from the shipwreck. 92 days later they found an axe head in the sand and proceeded to build a new boat from the wreckage of the Castle Derry. Two of the men navigated the boat to nearby Port Ross on Auckland Island, where they found a still intact government depot. They then picked up the rest of the shipwrecked crew and they all stayed at Port Ross until rescued by the sealing ship Awarua in July 1887.