A forgotten whale on the brink of extinction is sounding an urgent wake-up call in the Hauraki Gulf. Joanna Wane reports
Bryde's whales are pretty fussy about what they eat. A couple of years ago, one trawling for fish off the coast of South Africa hoovered up a diver by mistake, closing its enormous jaws on his waist before spitting him back out — unharmed — in distaste. Expelling the thousands of microplastics a single whale ingests with every mouthful of food it swallows, right here in our own backyard, isn't so easy.
If you've ever spent time out on the water in the Hauraki Gulf, there's a chance you've passed within a few metres of one of these 40-tonne feeding machines wallowing just below the sun-dappled surface. It's one of only three places in the world with a resident (rather than migratory) community of Bryde's whales, yet most Aucklanders don't even know they exist. Until a few weeks ago, that included me.
Classified as nationally critical, these baleen whales are ranked right up there with the kākāpō as one of our most severely threatened species, at an immediate high risk of extinction. No one is sure exactly how many we have left. The last official estimate, in 2013, put the population at around 135.
"So we're almost 10 years behind and that's a real worry, because we have no idea what our numbers could be, whether they're dwindling down to the 50s or doing okay. We have absolutely no clue," says marine biologist Krista van der Linde, who manages WWF-New Zealand's marine species programme.
"They're right on the doorstep of Auckland and hardly anyone knows about them. That's really crazy. They're in the top threat classification, the same as the Māui dolphin, and still people don't know what they are. That tells me there is a fundamental flaw in the management of this species — it's the forgotten threatened whale."
Van der Linde spent five years accidentally observing Bryde's whales (pronounced "broo-dus") while studying dolphins for her PhD.
The Hauraki Gulf is a whale nursery ground and she saw mothers with their calves, teaching them to breach and how to feed by banging their heads on the surface to aerate the water. Some of the whales would scatter as soon as they were aware of the research boat approaching; others were so curious they'd come right up and eyeball the crew.
Scientists view whales as a keystone species that can red-flag dangerous environmental changes. In the Hauraki Gulf, the Bryde's population is our equivalent of a canary in the coal mine. "Apex predators like these reflect what's happening in the whole marine environment," says van der Linde, "and their absence can tell us when something is going really wrong."
In 2020, a State of the Gulf report by the Hauraki Gulf Forum found a degraded ecosystem on the verge of collapse, with a 50 per cent decline in fish stocks due to unsustainable fishing practices, marine dumping and sediment and nutrient run-off. Eleven of the 14 most commonly caught fish were at risk of disappearing entirely, and more than 15,000sq km of shellfish beds had been lost.
That depletion in fish stocks has caused ripples right through the food chain. A University of Auckland study using DNA barcoding to analyse the contents of Bryde's whale scat found their diet shifted significantly from predominantly fish in 2011 to 60 per cent plankton in 2016 — which is where the side dish of microplastics comes in.
Small organisms that float near the surface where Bryde's like to feed, zooplankton eat tiny bits of plastic that have found their way into the sea. With every gulp of plankton-laden water, researchers estimate, a whale consumes about 24,000 microplastics — some three million a day.
To highlight the vulnerability of the species, WWF-NZ has launched a Bryde's whale action plan that aims to raise public awareness of the wider environmental crisis in our waters.
In January, a pod of colourfully painted, Insta-ready whale tail sculptures popped up at various locations scattered across Auckland for the launch of the Whale Tales art trail. The designs were commissioned from 80 artists, including the likes of Otis Frizzell, Cora-Allan Wickliffe and a team from Wētā Workshop. There's also an interactive app you can download to "collect" sculptures and unlock their stories by scanning QR codes.
On April 29, the entire collection will go on display for the weekend at Silo Park before being auctioned on May 2 to raise funds for WWF-NZ's healthy oceans campaign. Projects include community grants for freshwater and coastal restoration, an app to record marine-mammal sightings, and developing a system to trace fish from catch to sustainability-conscious consumer — the first step, perhaps, towards mandatory labelling.
Currently, only 0.4 per cent of New Zealand's oceans are fully protected. In the Hauraki Gulf Marine Park, which stretches from Auckland to Coromandel, advocates say at least 30 per cent of the entire area needs to be placed in effective marine protection areas to give habitats, fish stocks and other sea life a chance to recover.
The Government has just announced the temporary closure of depleted scallop fisheries in Northland and most of the Hauraki Gulf/Coromandel. Submissions to the Department of Conservation also show strong public support for a proposal to create the first new marine reserve in the gulf for more than 20 years, covering 2350ha off the northwest coast of Waiheke.
However, the Government's new strategy to revitalise the health of the gulf, announced in 2021, has been criticised for being too slow and not going far enough.
The latest State of the Gulf report (so far, there have been six of them) highlights the ongoing struggle between economic development and population growth on one hand, and environmental loss on the other. "It's too late to reverse the effects of many past actions, or inactions," it concludes. "However, we can decide the future."
Livia Esterhazy, who's been head of WWF-NZ since 2017, admits the lack of progress is depressing. Crayfish are already functionally extinct in the gulf and snapper populations have been decimated by recreational and commercial overfishing. Kina, which those predator species once kept at bay, are now on the rampage, grazing kelp forests to obliteration and creating rocky "kina barrens" on the seafloor.
Snapper numbers do appear to be rebuilding. "But to what end if the whole ecosystem has been destroyed?" she says. "It takes years and years to return to what it was — and very little to destroy, because it's all on such a knife's edge."
Part of the problem is that it's hard to believe in an impending marine Armageddon when the Hauraki Gulf looks so beautiful.
On a stunning late-summer day, I joined Esterhazy for a whale-watching trip on the harbour. As we sat on the boat's front deck, with the city skyline disappearing behind us, a pod of dolphins came along for the ride. Even being drenched by an occasional rogue wave crashing over the bow couldn't drive us inside.
Esterhazy says living in a country where we're surrounded by natural beauty has made us immune to the fact that it's sick, with plastic debris suffocating our oceans and the highest proportion of threatened species on the planet. "We're a Pacific nation, surrounded by the ocean on all fronts. It's a place to play, to get your kai from. Our economy depends on it. But beneath that silver reflective light we're seeing on the water today, people just don't understand how destroyed it is."
Auckland Whale & Dolphin Safari runs eco tours on the harbour and the catamaran we're cruising on doubles as a marine research vessel, collaborating with a number of university studies and contributing data to international citizen-science projects.
Some 70 per cent of the world's oxygen is produced by ocean plants, skipper Darren Mills tells us, as we power towards Kawau Island, crossing from the green waters of the inner gulf to the edges of blue where zooplankton feed. Fascinated, we peer into a glass jar swimming with tiny organisms scooped from the surface. Up close, these miniature creatures that are so vital to the marine food supply look disturbingly prehistoric.
Esterhazy has never actually seen a Bryde's whale and we're not destined to today, despite our sharp-eyed crew (unlike the more flamboyant sperm whale, they don't tend to show off their tail flukes when they dive).
She calls Bryde's whales the "panda of the ocean", after learning about their behavioural traits from expert conservation biologist Rochelle Constantine. "When she told me how friendly and playful and lazy they are — cruising about sunbathing and eating all day — I thought, 'That's exactly like a panda.'"
An associate professor at the University of Auckland, Constantine was part of the "S*** Happens" research project that analysed those whale poo samples to identify dietary changes. She also spearheaded a voluntary protocol to reduce boat speeds in the Hauraki Gulf, where 17 Bryde's whales were killed between 1989 and 2014 as they were feeding or resting near the surface. Since the agreement has been in place, not a single Bryde's death from ship strike has been officially recorded.
Artist Anna Leyland, who joined us on safari for the day, was asked to submit a Whale Tales design after taking part in The Big Hoot, where decorated owl sculptures were displayed around the city then sold at auction to raise funds for the Child Cancer Foundation.
She used a pattern from her painting Sentience to create her tail design, which includes symbols referencing her son's Pacific heritage. Placed by the Holy Trinity Cathedral in Parnell, it's titled Sentient Beings of the Sea.
Born into a yachting family — that's how her parents met — Leyland has treasured childhood memories of being out on the water. "The ocean has a huge energy about it that's magical," she says, turning her face to the wind. "It is peace to me."
New Zealand still has a chance to turn things around, says Esterhazy, but we need to act now before the marine ecosystem tilts so far out of balance that it can't recover. Providing safe harbour for the Bryde's whale would be a good place to start.
Van der Linde would like to see money spent on a new abundance estimate study for a clearer assessment of the current population. All of us could think twice about the plastic we buy and how to dispose of it.
It was renowned primatologist Jane Goodall who once described dolphins and whales as "ancient and wonderful sapient and sentient beings" — and it's her clarion call that Leyland shares in her Whale Tales story:
"How would we be judged by our great-great-grandchildren and all unborn generations if, knowing what we do, we do not fight to prevent their extinction?"
Registration for the Whale Tales auction on May 2, to raise funds for WWF-NZ's healthy oceans campaign, is now open to the public