The Great Big Little Penguin Count video by NSW Environment and Heritage

Transcript

00:00 The Great Big Little Penguin Count is not something that's happening in isolation.

00:04 It's part of a larger program called Seabirds to Seascapes,

00:08 because penguins and seabirds don't function in isolation to the rest of the environment.

00:15 So studying our little penguins is actually allowing us to understand

00:19 part of the bigger ecology picture of New South Wales and of our environment,

00:25 and working with Seabirds to Seascapes, where there is facets working on seals,

00:30 as well as ecology in Sydney Harbour, we're able to tie it into a bigger picture.

00:36 Understanding how our penguins are faring in terms of a difference in their populations

00:41 from previous estimates, as well as how they are managing with a changing climate,

00:47 is a really useful tool to understand both the health of our penguins, which we all love,

00:52 and also the health of our marine environment.

00:57 So with the Great Big Little Penguin Count, what we're trying to do is survey the birds

01:02 as they come ashore at the perfect time of year, which for us is when every bird

01:08 that comes up that beach is replacing a bird that's either sitting on eggs,

01:13 or has been on eggs all day, or sitting with young chicks, which they do do as well.

01:18 The Great Big Little Penguin Count needs to be set with a standard.

01:23 We need to understand some of the long-term trends, even though it's only a three to four year program,

01:28 we need to understand some of the long-term trends, as well as the snapshots.

01:32 So on single islands like Bowen Island, it's a snapshot, it's going to be just a single count.

01:37 But we have five groups of islands stretching from the most southerly breeding population,

01:42 which is Montague Island off Narooma, and the most northerly, which is Broughton Island

01:47 off Port Stephens on the mid-north coast.

01:50 We also have several islands in between, or island populations.

01:54 We have one on Snapper Island, which we're looking at every couple of weeks,

01:58 and that's for us to fully understand what's happening with a wild population

02:01 in terms of timing for our actual surveys, and how the season looks, how it actually plays out,

02:07 so we understand what impact may be on penguins, which if we're going to do sequential monitoring

02:14 of the same sites every year, we want to know whether half the population left towards the end of the season,

02:20 because something untoward happened at sea.

02:22 So we have a number of these steadfast colonies that we check.

02:25 So five main islands, and then several other islands this year,

02:30 including Bowen Island and another island in Batemans Bay called Toll Gates.

02:35 [Music]

02:41 [BLANK_AUDIO]