Mystery of Dunedin’s missing albatross eggs may never be solved

Otago Peninsula Trust ecotourism manager Hoani Langsbury says staff at the Royal Albatross Centre were horrified to learn four fragile northern royal albatross (toroa) eggs may have been stolen from Dunedin’s sanctuary for the vulnerable seabird species. Photo / ODT

The Department of Conservation says it may never crack the case of Dunedin’s missing albatross eggs.

DoC raised the alarm this week that four northern royal albatross (toroa) eggs were discovered missing from Taiaroa Head on Otago Peninsula during daily monitoring of the colony’s nests on Thursday last week.

Doc coastal Otago operations manager Annie Wallace said because the investigation continued to come up empty, it increasingly pointed to an orchestrated effort to steal the protected eggs.

If anyone had been “blundering around” the DoC reserve on Wednesday night last week, it was unlikely they could have avoided being seen on the CCTV footage that had since been collated and reviewed, Wallace said.

While the investigation was continuing, the reason for the eggs to go missing could remain a mystery unless people came forward with information, she said.

“It feels like it’s been really well planned. I think there’s a high chance that it will remain unsolved,” she said.

The suspected theft had shocked people locally, nationally and internationally.

Armchair experts have put forward their own theories as to what happened.

Commenters have suggested the eggs could have been blown off their nests, an idea Wallace called “implausible”.

“’If they had, there would have been evidence, and four would have blown away on one night.”

There were similar issues with those who believed predators were the culprits, she said.

Some people had come to DoC suggesting stoats rolled the eggs away and took them to their dens.

Yet that phenomenon involved eggs of species that were much smaller than albatross eggs.

Moreover, rangers had searched all over the headland, uncovering nothing, she said.

Predator trapping, undertaken across the headland, had caught nothing.

Staff had not seen predators on CCTV cameras of late. And a predator would not have been able to get four eggs away in one night with no evidence, she said.

The CCTV cameras on site provided good coverage of all the normal access points to the reserve.

Port Otago’s security footage had been reviewed to assess whether the reserve was accessed by water.

Specialists were required to access further footage available, from Blue Penguins Pukekura. However, Wallace said she feared it was unlikely that footage would turn up anything either.

No stone would remain unturned, but the investigation had ruled out seemingly plausible explanations for the eggs’ disappearance.

There had been “a lot of discussion” about a potential market for the eggs, Wallace said.

Investigators had been in contact with staff who dealt with the New Zealand Customs Service and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.

“They’re looking into that,” Wallace said. “They haven’t come up with anything yet, but that’s not to say there’s not things going on internationally that we don’t know about.”

Two jewelled geckos (moko kakariki) were taken from Otago Peninsula, in 2010.

One was smuggled into Germany and later sent back to New Zealand after being spotted on Facebook in 2013 by Dunedin herpetologist Carey Knox.

Albatross eggs at the colony have also been targeted once before.

At that time, in 1938, one of Dunedin’s early conservationists Lance Richdale spent weeks over the breeding season protecting nests at the colony. - ODT