Thomas, please ask, can I please ask you why tawaki are doing so much better than the yellow island

penguin? The yellow-eyed penguin.

Well, I mean, the most obvious answer to this is because they breed further away from humans than hoi hoi do, than the yellow-eyed penguin does.

But the real difference is that lies in their behavior.

Tawaki, from all that we've learned over the past 12 years with the Tawaki project, seem to be very versatile in their behavior.

They can find food in... very differing marine environments, be it the open coast along the west coast, be it inside fjords, or even around the really shallow waters of Rakura, Stewart Island.

Tawaki seem to be able to cope with any kind of condition that the environment throws at them.

Is that right? Where do they actually go to feed and how long does it take them?

And the divergence in how much they're surviving, is that due to one of them is breeding in one place, one of them is breeding in another place, the conditions of those places?

Yeah, that's a very good question.

I mean, when we started this project...

We just thought of them as one species, right, the erect crested penguin.

And they have been ranked endangered on the IUCN Red List, you know, since 25 years, pretty much like hoi ho.

You know, everybody talks about hoi ho and what we can do to save them.

No one talked about the erect crested penguin.

them.