Sailing the subantarctic islands
Imogen Foote has recently returned from the trip of a lifetime, sailing around New Zealand’s subantarctic islands.
Imogen is undertaking a PhD in Biological Sciences at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington. Her research focuses on two albatrosses—the Antipodean and Gibson’s.
“These closely related albatrosses only live in a very small area of the world, on some of New Zealand’s subantarctic islands,” Imogen says. “They are currently highly threatened, but more information is needed in order to help manage conservation programmes for them.”
Imogen is aiming to complete full genome sequencing for the endemic birds. This will provide data about the species’ genetic diversity, and the similarities and differences between them. It will also help inform decisions about whether these two declining populations should be managed together or separately for conservation purposes.
“The main threat to these birds is longline fisheries targeting predominantly tuna and swordfish. The albatrosses are attracted to the bait on hooks behind the boats and then get caught. This is a problem for such big birds with long life cycles as the populations are really sensitive to mortalities like this,” Imogen says. “They are also at risk from marine pollution and climate change.”
Imogen’s trip to the subantarctic islands gave her the opportunity to observe the albatrosses in their natural environment.
The trip was organised and supported by Heritage Expeditions, an ecotourism company. It runs sight-seeing trips to the islands, and also offers scholarships each year for people aged 18 to 30 who want to learn about the area. Imogen was a recent scholarship recipient.
On the trip, she visited all of New Zealand’s subantarctic island groups—the Snares Islands, Auckland Islands, Campbell Island, Antipodes Island and the Bounty Islands.
“Trips to the subantarctic islands are infrequent and expensive, so it was a real privilege to have the opportunity to go and have most of my costs covered by the scholarship,” Imogen says. “It was also amazing to meet so many different people, both the other scholarship recipients and the other people on the sailing trip.”
Doctors, artists, photographers, and other scientists were on board.
“It was also of course amazing to see the albatrosses I’ll be studying, because this is the only place in the world you can see them breeding. I also got to see the New Zealand sea lions I studied for my Master’s at their main breeding site in the Auckland Islands, which was exciting.”
Now that Imogen is back home, she’ll be getting stuck into the lab work that will help her identify the genome sequences for the two albatrosses.
“A research team went down to the subantarctic islands and collected genetic samples for me, so now that they have returned I can get started on the lab work,” Imogen says.
Imogen says she is looking forward to the next challenge in her PhD, which is writing and learning the code she will need to assemble the genomes of the birds.
Imogen hopes to continue working in conservation once she finishes her PhD. She has an extensive background in zoology and genetics, and she is keen to keep researching in this area and contributing to conservation efforts.
Imogen’s PhD research is supervised by Associate Professor Peter Ritchie and Dr Geoff Chambers.