Rare penguin rescued after shark attack on the West Coast

Tuesday, 7 December 2021

A Tawaki/Fiordland Crested Penguin being looked after in the Christchurch Wildlife Hospital by Karen Talbot.

A rare Tawaki/Fiordland crested penguin attacked by a shark off a remote West Coast beach has recovered after a South Island-wide effort.

There are only about 7000 Tawaki penguins left, making them the third rarest of the world’s 10 penguin species.

Gerry McSweeney, who owns the Wilderness Lodge Lake Moeraki near Haast, said the penguin was found in a very sick state by Irish visitors on November 23.

A Tawaki/Fiordland crested penguin has a remarkable tale of recovery after being attacked by a shark off a remote beach.

They found the injured bird when they were walking the Monro Beach Walk, which runs from the Wilderness Lodge down to the Tasman Sea.

Monro Beach is home to a small Tawaki/Fiordland crested penguin breeding colony.

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“On the beach they discovered a very sick Tawaki washed by the waves on to the beach, where it was cooking in the sun,” McSweeney said.

While one of them stayed to give the penguin some shade, the other rushed back to State Highway 6 to ring the Department of Conservation (DOC) for help.

DOC called McSweeney and asked him to go down to the beach to retrieve the penguin and see if it could be saved.

Development West Coast's Geoff Marks, with the penguin in a box early in its remarkable road to recovery.

He biked down to the beach and found the penguin had been badly bitten, probably by a shark.

“Severely injured wildlife usually cannot be saved,” he said.

“Also, when penguins or other special wildlife are found on a beach, they are often just resting and do not need us to intervene.

Gerry the Tawaki penguin at the Christchurch Wildlife Hospital.

“In this case there was clear evidence that its injuries were operable and it could probably be saved.”

He took the penguin back to the lodge in a backpack, where it cooled down in a pond, drank water and began to revive, he said.

Geoff Marks, Glacier Country marketing manager officer at Development West Coast, was visiting the lodge and drove the penguin – carefully resting in a wine box – 90km north to DOC in Fox Glacier, where officer Anya Kruszewski and her team stabilised the bird for the night.

The next morning they drove it another 160km north to Hokitika.

Now in a special Air New Zealand bird box, the penguin was placed on the first flight out of Hokitika Airport and flown 250km over the Southern Alps to Christchurch.

The Christchurch Wildlife Hospital, founded 14 years ago to treat sick and injured native birds, took in the severely underweight penguin and, with the help of trustee Karen Talbot, stabilised it with water and nutrients for a week before its major operation.

Vet Pauline Howard operated on December 1 to fix the penguin’s lacerated feet and stitch up big bite marks on its back but its survival chances were thought to be only about 50/50.

But the next day the Tawaki penguin was thriving and eating lots of fish.

Once the penguin, named “Gerry” at the hospital, is fully recovered, he will be released into the ocean off Monro Beach.

From there he will swim southwest to join other Tawaki penguins for the next two months, halfway between New Zealand and Antarctica.