With his muzzle off, Miro is a regular pooch, sidling up for back scratches and rolling in the sand.
But when his handler slips on his muzzle, the German short-haired pointer goes straight into work mode. He weaves back and forth along the Kaiteriteri headland, skirting up slopes, scoping out caves and snuffling through coastal grasses.
As a trained conservation dog specialising in seabirds such as penguins, petrels and shearwaters, Miro was an integral part of the Big Little Penguin Count, held earlier this month.
This is the second time the survey has been conducted, and Tasman Bay Blue Penguin trustee Linda Jenkins says Miro helped pinpoint 152 active burrows between Tapu Bay and Split Apple Beach.
That is slightly down on the 173 active burrows recorded across the same area in October 2020. While an increase would have been encouraging, Linda says kororā, or little blue penguins, have faced significant challenges since the previous survey.
For the past two years, rising sea surface temperatures have driven anchovies, a major food source for blue penguins, deeper and further offshore.
“It puts them out of range for adults who are foraging to feed chicks,” she explains.
The result is chicks starving and fledglings leaving the nest underweight. The community has noticed an increase in little blue penguins washing up dead or dying, and Linda says there is no reason to believe the same will not happen again this year.
These “starvation events”, coupled with habitat loss from coastal residential development and deaths caused by car strikes, boat strikes, dogs and feral cats, continue to threaten the local population.
With avian influenza looming, Linda says another challenge could be on the horizon.
“That’s another curveball that’s come into play.”
However, she says the timing of the survey is ideal because it provides a valuable “pre-H5 baseline”.
The data strengthens the trust’s advocacy efforts by clearly identifying penguin habitat.
“Just because you don’t see a penguin on the beach, doesn’t mean they’re not there.”
The findings are also proving valuable for the wider community, with Linda saying most people are receptive to protecting little blues in their neighbourhoods.
“That does give us hope that, as time goes on, more and more people are aware of the penguins and they become guardians, looking out for them.”
Miro and his handler Joanna Sim travelled from Hunterville to conduct the survey. Joanna says that her five-year-old dog can sniff out a burrow in one minute that might take humans half an hour to find.
Linda agrees that working with a “highly trained, highly intelligent dog” like Miro makes the process far more thorough and efficient.
“We definitely found burrows that we had no idea about,” she says. “His nose was the confirmation.”
The trust hopes to conduct the next survey in three years.
