New Zealand's wild south in a frenzy

On a marine safari around the Otago Peninsula PHILIP ENGLISH finds many levels of the food chain in action.

New Zealand wildlife is not known for playing out scenes of the eternal struggle. No, the sort of spectacle enacted in an African game park does not occur in the New Zealand landscape.

But off the South Island coast we do have predatory mammals with sharp teeth; we have prey on the run and native scavengers and interlopers in some ways similar to the biodiversity at an African waterhole. It just happens to be at sea.

When animals like New Zealand or Hooker sea lions, sharks, barracuda (and shoals of smaller fish), penguins and other seabirds come together suddenly in a feeding frenzy, the experience equals the excitement of viewing a lions' kill in the wild or following elephants on foot in the African bush. It is just not as dangerous to the viewer.

Raw nature can be seen just off Dunedin - fast developing a reputation as the New Zealand wildlife destination. With the right weather and sea conditions, it is not uncommon to find oneself in the middle of a tempestuous battle for survival involving creatures from several levels of the food chain.

A cruise on the venerable Monarch, built in 1952, guarantees a multi-species experience.

The vessel, skippered by Colleen Black, New Zealand's first woman to gain a deep-sea skipper's ticket in the 1970s, sets off every day of the year.

Cruises of one to eight-and-a-half hours take in the northern royal albatross breeding ground at Taiaroa Head, at the mouth of the Otago Harbour, as well as fur seal habitats and shag, gull and penguin breeding sites. Monarch Wildlife Cruises and Tours is an ecotourism award winner.

Because of its location on the mainland, the albatross breeding ground is the only one of its kind in the world.

Depending on the season, the giant birds - with wingspans of up to 3.25m - are courting and mating, nesting, hatching chicks and feeding them in a year-long cycle. A closer inspection of the head offers an extraordinary diversity of other wildlife.

And if the albatrosses are out at sea and weather conditions allow, the Monarch will go after them..

On a still, clear, late-summer day, Black headed offshore with daughter Fiona as spotter. "There are albatross there, off to our left." An albatross zooms by. "That's a shy albatross following us." It soon overtakes the Monarch. "See how the albatross fly, gliding low and fast. There are four little blue penguins to our left ... There is a feeding frenzy. There are fur seals in there and there are barracuda."

By now the sea is alive and the Monarch is in the middle of the frenzy. There are big fish chasing little fish, birds diving, penguins swimming, fur seals hanging off in the distance and within a metre or so of the boat there's a New Zealand sealion, the world's rarest, with a long silvery fish between its huge jaws. Menacingly, about half a dozen sharks flash back and forth just beneath the surface.

The only things missing were dolphins, but, all up, around 20 species of seabirds, including rare Stewart Island shags, put in an appearance.

Mainland Dunedin offers more attractions for those wanting to encounter wildlife and history. The WestpacTrust Royal Albatross Centre at Taiaroa Head is one.

The birds on the colony are studied and protected from predators (and tourists) by the Department of Conservation, with enthusiastic support from the Otago Peninsula Trust. The centre offers professional tours of the colony, historic Fort Taiaroa tunnels and the 1886 Armstrong disappearing gun.

Sealions, albatrosses, seals and seabirds are not the only special inhabitants of the peninsula, however.

The peninsula offers perhaps the best viewing of the world's most critically endangered penguin, the yellow-eyed or hoiho, both in the wild and in a carefully managed private reserve.

The local ecotourism venture, Wings of Kotuku, offers nature guides for sunrise viewing of the penguins appearing from their overnight roosts in the dunes behind Sandfly Bay and waddling regally down to the sea before slipping into the tide for a day's fishing.

Watching the penguins dip into the waves is worth the half-hour walk over a huge dune in the dark, even if only a handful of the dandy birds (the world's third-biggest penguin) appear.

You can inspect the penguins more closelyat Penguin Place, not far from Taiaroa Head. Here, farmer Howard McGrouther and fellow conservationist Scott Clarke run their own penguin-restoration project, with hides, tracks and tunnels laid out like a D-Day movie set. Visitors can get closer than a metre from the birds.

It is a full-on private conservation project aimed at saving the birds, so the environment is heavily modified. Penguin Place has won multiple tourism awards.

A visit to the peninsula should include time at the University of Otago Marine Studies Centre. The welcoming centre is geared towards children with marine science and education in mind, but anybody curious about the sea and its creatures will be interested.

The WestpacTrust Aquarium, also at the centre, offers all sorts of marine life to view, from seahorses to small sharks and close encounters with shore and rock-pool creatures in shallow tanks.

The centre, open from noon to 4.30 pm, also offers special programmes, including one on seaweeds and how to gather, prepare and eat them fresh from the sea - and, by arrangement, trips on the centre's research vessel, where visitors can watch the scientists at work.