he
labyrinth of islands and peninsulas that make up the Marlborough Sounds
is the first sight travellers have of the South Island when arriving
by ferry from Wellington. The sounds are the northernmost extension
of the Richmond Range, an alternating series of many-branched narrow
valleys and sharp-topped ridges drowned since the end of the last
Ice Age. The shelter offered by this maze of sounds and islands attracted
early navigators and much of the South Island’s first scientific
research was done here.
Cook was probably the first European to sail into the Sounds. Arriving
on 15 January 1770, he needed to careen and clear his boat of marine
growths and found the ideal place at what is now called Ship Cove,
off Queen Charlotte Sound.
Queen Charlotte Sound was known as Totaranui by the Maori for its
large stands of this fine canoe-building timber. It was here on
the first morning at anchor that the ship’s company was awakened
by the singing of birds ashore'. Such magnificent dawn choruses
are no longer and, ironically, it was probably rats which went ashore
from the Endeavour while it was being careened that started
the demise of the birdlife here.
While here, Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander spent their time ashore
collecting specimens of both plants and animals, although both noted
that the vegetation was a little disappointing. Among the birds
collected were 'three birds having wattles,' and it has been suggested
that these were a saddleback, kokako and huia. However, as the huia
was confined to the North Island, the third bird was probably an
immature saddleback (in the South Island the juvenile differs so
much from the adult that some early Pakeha regarded it as a distinct
species).
On 18 May 1773, during his second voyage to the Pacific, Cook returned
to Ship Cove. With him on this voyage he had a new ship scientist,
the German Johann Rheinhold Forster, who was accompanied by his
son Johann George Adam Forster as his artist. The Forster party
collected the morepork, the falcon and two species of shag. They
also took the first recorded native land mammal - the long-tailed
bat.
It was in Queen Charlotte Sound that, with the best possible intentions
and among the worst possible results, Cook made the first deliberate
release of land mammals in this country (geese were liberated earlier
at Goose Cove, in Fiordland). Near Ship Cove, Cook set free pigs,
sheep and goats. The sheep quickly died, causing Cook to report
sadly: 'Last Night the Ewe and Ram I had with so much trouble brought
to this place, died, we did suppose that they were poisoned by eating
some poisonous plant, thus all my fine hopes of stocking this Country
with a breed of Sheep were blasted in a moment.'
The liberation of pigs and goats also had its setbacks. He released
a boar and two sows, and a few days later a pair of goats, with
the comment: 'There was no great danger that the Natives will destroy
them as they are exceedingly afraid of both ... The Goats will undoubtedly
take to the Mountains and the Hoggs to the Woods where there is
plenty of food.' Any fear the locals had of these animals was quickly
allayed - when Cook returned six months later all but one sow had
been eaten. Only slightly deterred, Cook released more animals (some
distance from the nearest pa) and from these most of the wild goats
and pigs noted by the early Pakeha settlers in the South Island
were descended.
In late May 1820, the Imperial Russian ships the Vostok and
the Mirnyi under Captain Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen,
arrived. The Russians did some collecting here, taking tui, pigeons,
parakeets and falcons as well as a number of ducks, seabirds and
shags. They also took two examples of the Maori dog (kuri).
The next scientific party to come to this area
was French, in 1826 on L'Astrolabe, under the command of
Dumont D’Urville who was on his second voyage to New Zealand,
having visited the Bay of Islands some years earlier. The French
concentrated on the large island to the west now named for D’Urville.
Unlike Banks and von Bellingshausen, D’Urville found the bush
strangely quiet:
No birds, no insects, no reptiles even, this complete
absence of any living creature and the unbroken silence create a
solemn almost sinister atmosphere. Going through these gloomy, solitary
places, one felt as if one were transposed to the point in time
when nature, having produced the members of the vegetable kingdom,
still waited for the decree of the Eternal to bring forth the living
creatures.
Despite these observations, the expedition scientists,
Jean-Renee Constat Quoy and Joseph Paul Gaimard, collected numerous
birds here, including kaka, kokako, tui and two previously unknown
species, the South Island fernbird and the grey warbler.
D'Urville Island was once mooted as an island sanctuary,
similar to Kapiti and Little Barrier islands. It was here one of
two populations of little spotted kiwi had survived after vanishing
from the mainland. In the 1970s it was found that because of predation
by cats and stoats only three birds remained on D’Urville and
these were taken off the island. A pair was sent to Maud Island,
but by 1982 stoats had followed them even there, so the surviving
female was moved yet again to Long Island. Kakapo have also been
released on Maud and these should establish themselves if the stoat
population can be kept down by trapping.
Due north of D’Urville Island is Stephen’s
Island, notable among other things for the dubious fame achieved
by the lighthouse-keeper's cat. In 1894 this animal brought in 11
specimens of an unknown wren, which was quickly recognised as a
new species. Not quickly enough, however, as within a very short
time the cat had destroyed the entire population. Recent fossil
finds indicate that this bird had relatives on the mainland before
the Pakeha arrived which were probably wiped out by the Polynesian
rat (kiore).
Stephen's Island is also home to the country's
largest population of tuatara. This animal is not a lizard, as most
people think, but the survivor of an ancient reptile order called
the Rhynchocephalia, or beakheads, which died out elsewhere 60 million
years ago. About 50,000 tuatara - at least half the known population
- are found here, and these were looked after by the lighthouse-keepers
(who no longer have cats). With the automation of lighthouses it
was feared that the tuatara population would be ulnerable to poaching
by reptile collectors, so the Department of Conservation has stationed
a ranger on the island. Stephen’s Island also boasts the native
Stephen’s Island frog, giant weta and a healthy population
of lizards - one unique.
A number of seabirds that are scarce elsewhere
nest on Stephen’s Island. The island is riddled with the burrows
of fairy prion, which they share with the tuatara.
At the entrance to Queen Charlotte Sound are colonies
of about 500 of our rarest shag, the king shag. Being related to
shags which frequent sub-Antarctic waters, the king shag beats its
wings to dry them rather than impersonating a kipper like most other
. Probably they would have been waiting a long time in the sub-Antarctic
for the sun to dry them out.
