Visiting the subantarctic islands

Grappling with our history of colonisation and our climate future

Mar 25, 2022

A note from Louise:
Kia ora! This newsletter is a bit different - I wanted to reshare a talk I did in 2019 about climate change and the subantarctic islands.
Way back in 2014, I was a post-grad student at the University of Waikato, finishing my Master’s in Media & Creative Technologies. The focus of one of my papers was making films for competitions and the excellent Dr Hanne Nielsen sent me the Footage for the Future film competition - its goal was to communicate why the Southern Ocean is an important part of the world’s ecosystem and how it’s threatened by climate change.
Long story short, my short film placed first and my prize was a week-long trip down to New Zealand’s subantarctic islands, courtesy of Heritage Expeditions. In 2019, I gave a Pechakucha (a presentation format where you show 20 slides for 20 seconds) during my campaign for Hamilton City Council. If you’d prefer to watch this rather than read it, you can check the recording here (although I’ve made a few small changes).
I have thought about these islands a lot in the years that have followed, particularly as we’ve begun to experience the tangible effects of climate change. We’ve taken steps to undo the ecological harm from trying to colonise the subantarctics - now we need to take responsibility for the role we play in climate change. We owe climate action to all our neighbours, not just the uninhabited ones, as sea level rise is already having disastrous consequences for Indigenous communities across the Pacific. It’s well past the time for us to step up and do better - for ourselves and for the world we’re a part of.
Clockwise: on the Spirit of Enderby leaving Bluff, Mt Honey on Motu Ihupuku (Campbell Island), on a zodiac heading to Tini Heke (The Snares), and on Enderby Island.

Tēnā koutou katoa! First of all - I find it helpful to explain I did not go to Antarctica. The subantarctic is its own region, and New Zealand looks after several islands - and because I wasn’t leaving New Zealand, technically, I managed to convince my insurers that my contents policy should be valid for what I took with me! With that all in place, we headed out on a 1400km round trip, leaving from Bluff on a beautiful summer’s day in January.

This trip costs about $7,000-10,000 dollars per person. This was 2014, I was a very poor Master’s student, but I was there as a Spirit of Enderby Youth Scholar after winning a film competition. There were four other scholarship recipients on the trip with me - and we were the only other guests under the age of 50 there.

I also had to send in an application stating how I would advocate for the subantarctics once I came home. I spoke about the incredible honour it would be to document a world heritage site - and how understanding what life is like there can help us realise the importance and urgency of acting on climate change.

A photo taken on a fish-eye GoPro, with the wide-angle capturing the width of the ship, with four young people standing on the bow, looking at the camera - the one holding the handle of the GoPro is Louise. Behind them you can see the horizon, the dark blue ocean, and a blue sky with white clouds. — A selfie I took on the bow of The Spirit of Enderby - a fully ice-strengthened expedition vessel, built in 1983.

Tini Heke (The Snares)

A photograph of a zodiac dingy, with eight people abord, surrounded by birds in the water. Everyone is wearing raincoats, warm clothing, and life jackets. At the front of the zodiac, Louise is sitting, wearing a yellow beanie. — Out on the water around Tini Heke (The Snares) - the only photo I didn’t take (shared by one of our guides), as I’m sitting at the front of the zodiac in the yellow beanie.

Our first stop was Tini Heke (The Snares), where introduced land mammals were never established - making it one of the most pristine places in the world. Land access is only permitted for research, so we experienced the island by zodiac. 80% of the main island is covered in tree daisies which grow 5-10m tall. But Tini Heke is also covered in bird life - millions of sooty shearwater (muttonbird) arrive in spring for the breeding season, but my favourite was undoubtedly the Snares crested penguin. I love anyone who wears a bold outfit, and the Snares crested penguin definitely have their own look going on.

A photograph of a group of Snares crested penguins standing on a rock. They're small birds, with a black back, white fronts, large yellow eyebrows, and red beaks. They're all in different poses across the rock. — A group of Snares crested penguins that I photographed from the zodiac.

A photograph of a huge piece of rock on the edge of the island, which extends up into forest out of frame. Dotted along the smooth rock are Snares crested penguins - there would be dozens and dozens perched at different places along the rockface. — The penguin slide 🐧🌊

One of the most spectacular sites of Tini Heke is the penguin slide - with many showing incredible balance and grace that I definitely wouldn’t have. You can see just how high it goes in this photo and get a glimpse of the masses of seaweed growing at the bottom. The penguins were also completely unbothered by us - just getting on with whatever penguins spend their day doing.

Enderby Island

A photograph with two sea lions in the foreground, sandwiching a person in between them. The person is looking away, to the rest of the party walking away safely. — Making new friends - the trick was to drop your backpack and slowly walk away (with someone else coming to pick it up for you once they’d lost interest). If you ran (as some did), they would chase you 😂

When we visited Enderby Island, one of Motu Maha (the Auckland Islands), we were required to stay several meters away from all wildlife, and DOC recommends keeping a distance of 20 meters from sea lions and seals. The only problem is, no one told the sea lions about these rules. Some of them were very very curious, and we were instructed not to encourage them. Sealions are very much like puppies - especially ones who have new visitors to play with.

We spent the day at Enderby walking a loop around the entire island, and DOC had put in some boardwalk to help protect the island. Enderby was a very interesting experience - the scenery was incredibly diverse, from following penguins around cliffs, finding sea lion skeletons on the beach, to rata forests.

A photograph with white timber forming a walkable platform with chicken wire over the top. To the left and the right is thick mounds of moss and scraggly plants. — The boardwalk across Enderby Island - much better than trampling the terrain.

Two photos side-by-side of the same plant in different colours. On the left, the small buds are white, with a dark pink on the inner circle - and it's small round leaves a mixture of greens, oranges, and yellows. On the right, the buds are streaked with bright magenta and the leaves are a dark green. — Some of my favourite plants on the island were these - which were spread across the coastal parts of the island in many different colours.

I’m a big gardener, and I love plants - and the subantarctics are the place to see plants and flowers which don’t grow anywhere else in the entire world. One of the other scholarship recipients was from the Dunedin Botanical Gardens and was seed collecting for the Millenium Seed Bank, but my main problem was that the plants really liked me.

We were there in summer, and the average temperature was around 10-12 degrees, and windchill makes it feel even colder - so layers are your friends. My mum made some track pants before I left, and turns out track pants are excellent if you’re a sticky seed pod and want to move around the island. I like to think I would have positively contributed to the spread of several plants around the island that day.

A photograph looking down on a pair of legs. They're wearing navy trackpants, made in a fluffy polar fleece, which is covered from the ankle up to the knee in tiny seedpods. The shoes are black low-top Converse, which are covered in mud and debris. They're standing on marshy green plants. — RIP my track pants

A photograph of large tussock grasses which almost reach up to the horizon line, but a small sliver of ocean is visible in the distance. — ❗ Danger tussocks on Enderby Island ❗

My other problem was that, as a photographer, I was almost always last in the group. This involved me being left alone for one stretch of the island where you do not want to be alone. These tussocks were as tall as me, which is fine, but there were also sea lions as tall as me hiding in these tussocks. At one point I turned a corner and walked right into one sleeping and very nearly escaped being sea lion dinner.

Auckland Island

A photograph of a harbour, with a beach in the foreground with two zodiac boats ashore, glassy dark water goes out to a ship far away in the backrgound, and behind that hills and dark clouds. — Our zodiacs beached on Auckland Island, with the Spirit of Enderby in the distant background anchored in the harbour.

A photograph of the frame of a hut, which is now just a skeleton - with debris from the building blocking the floor and doorways. There is a tree growing through one side. — One of the huts used by New Zealanders stationed to look out for WWII ships using the subantarctics as a passage.

Ngāi Tahu are the mana whenua of the subantarctic and have stories about Motu Maha (the Auckland Islands) and archaeological findings there dating back to the 13th century. However, neither Māori nor European permanent settlements were successful - not to mention the nine shipwrecks recorded. On our voyage was a person from Rēkohu (Chatham Islands), who was following in the steps of his tūpuna who travelled here.

Another person was the daughter of a scientist who had been stationed on Auckland Island in World War II when New Zealand was paranoid Axis warships would use the route to sneak around the Pacific. We visited the huts he stayed in, which were now in ruin. It was incredible to talk to people who had such personal connections to the islands.

Motu Ihupuku (Campbell Island)

A landscape photograph of the bottom of two hills, with a bushy spruce tree in the middle. There is scrub and plants around, but no other trees anywhere. — The Loneliest Tree in the World 🌳

A photograph with the back of a person taking up third of the frame, in the centre is an albatross sitting on it's nest amongst some tussock and mega herbs, and in the background, looking down to the bottom of a mountain is a ship in a harbour, followed by more mountain on the other side. — One of the albatross we saw, perched on their nest, with my bunk-mate in the foreground, and the Spirit of Enderby in the far distance.

Motu Ihupuku (Campbell Island) was our final stop, and it also had visible signs of human interference. It’s home to the Loneliest Tree in the World - a 100-year-old spruce, with the nearest tree 222kms away on the Auckland Islands. There were more failed attempts to settle this island, and by 1840, all the island’s land birds had been wiped out by rats. It wasn’t until the 1980s that we began to undo our damage.

In 1987, the remaining cattle were removed, the last feral sheep by 1991, all the cats mysteriously died out in the 1990s, and by 2006, the world’s largest rat eradication project had been successful, and the island was rat-free. The Campbell Island teal was reintroduced in 2004, and an absolute highlight for me was seeing the thriving albatross colony.

A photograph of different mega herbs - some with tall white filament and dark red-burgundy pollen, and silver leaves, other with golden-yellow pollen. There are a variety of different leaves and grasses filling the frame. — Some mega herbs on our walk through the albatross colony

A photograph taken with a self-timer, with Louise standing with their arms out, looking at the camera - they are wearing a raincoat, long pants, a thick white scarf, and a green woollen headband. Behind them is a wide landscape looking out across two large bays and an island on the righthand side. More directly behind them is a harbour with cliffs going straight down to the ocean. — Looking out to Dent Island (on the right), Cattle Bay, and Northwest Bay, on the western side of Motu Ihupuku (Campbell Island)

On our first day, we walked through the albatross colony, and through mega herbs in flower, and I was completely struck by just how incredible this place was. It rains 325 days of the year, the wind reaches over 99km/hour on at least 100 days of the year. Yet there were birds and plants which were perfectly happy here, and perfectly happy when we didn’t make their lives any harder.

Climate change has been something I’ve thought about since I first understood what it was. Humans are just a blip on the world's timeline, yet our capitalist and colonial systems place us over everyone and everything else we share this planet with. Our world is incredible and spectacular and one of a kind.

We had harmed these islands by putting our needs above the environment, and it had taken decades to undo it. Most of us are in agreement about climate change - 84% of New Zealanders think we can reduce climate change, and 79% agree we need to act now, but we’re not convinced the politicians who need to act, will.

A photograph of an albatross in flight from underneath, sailing in the air towards the lefthand side, one of their wings is almost fully extended. Behind them is a grey sky. — An albatross in flight

A photograph of a wide landscape. In the foreground is tussock and mega herbs, in the background are mountains and a small harbour. The top third of the photograph is obscured by thick grey cloud. — Looking out across Motu Ihupuku (Campbell Island) to Six Foot Lake and Monument Harbour, from the southern side of Mt Honey

I spent my last day halfway up Mt Honey, while the rest of the group attempted to reach the summit - thinking about how I would advocate for these islands when I got home. I knew I would use my photographs and my footage, but I wasn’t sure what else I could do. It’s strange to think a trip to our most remote islands would be the catalyst for a local government campaign a few years later, but it was.

I was so humbled to spend time in a place that was so extraordinary in so many ways - but it also made me realise that we need to use every avenue we can to make sure it was protected. We know climate change is a problem, we know some things have to change, we just have to be courageous enough to do it. Thank you.

A photograph of an ocean wave - the ocean itself is dark navy, almost black. The froth and foam on top of the wave is a bright white, while the wave itself is a cold pale blue. — The Southern Ocean from the deck of the Spirit of Enderby.

Say Cheese Louise

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