Rena spill field report

Auckland NZ Bird Rescue volunteer Sandra Kyle visited the Oiled Bird Response unit in Tauranga 10 days after the initial grounding of the Rena. This is her report.

I am writing this as the last tank on board the Rena is being pumped dry of its 358 tonnes of oil, and some of the 4,000 registered volunteers are on the 100th beach cleanup at Papamoa. What an unfortunate incident the grounding of the Rena has been! Around 1400 birds are known to have died, and we can only guess the actual amount of oil-soaked birds who have drowned, or, having incurred damage to their feathers, became easy prey for predators. New Zealand is known as the seabird capital of the world, and as the oil spill sadly coincided with the breeding season, the effects from the Rena oil spill are likely to be felt for years to come.
But in every dark cloud there’s always a silver lining, and in this case, it has been the magnificent response to the disaster; a combined effort of professional agencies and volunteers from New Zealand and abroad. From the public interest in the disaster, to the amount of people willing to volunteer, to the people who knitted and sent in jumpers for Little Blue Penguins, it is heartening to see that New Zealanders really care about our wildlife.

Within hours of the Rena grounding, Maritime New Zealand had declared a level 3 emergency, and had started talking with the Bay of Plenty Regional Council, DOC and Massey University experts. While parallel work began on the salvage and beach clean-ups, the task of constructing a wildlife facility near Papamoa was started on Day One, ready to receive marine birds who inevitably would be affected by any oil spilled.

The first birds came in three days later, found floating in the water near the vessel, and within a week, hundreds of dead birds, mainly Little Blue Penguins, had been found washed up on beaches from Maketu to Mt Maunganui. This area is frequented by the rare and endangered New Zealand Dotterel, http://www.doc.govt.nz/conservation/native-animals/birds/sea-and-shore-birds/nz-dotterel-tuturiwhatu/ and to save them from being contaminated from oil, wildlife teams began capturing them pre-emptively to ensure the sustainability of the population. They are currently (a month after the disaster) being housed in purpose-built aviaries – along with hundreds of penguins in long-term penguin enclosures – until it is safe to release them into the wild.

When I visited the Wildlife Response Centre ( ‘Tent City’) on Sunday 16th October, there were about 100 live birds in care. Around 1,000 birds who had succumbed to the oil were being stored in the Post-Mortem tent awaiting sorting and biodata tests to be completed. I had to register at the gate manned by the New Zealand Police, and be checked off on the volunteer’s list. It was a purposeful environment I entered, with staff in fluro-vests walking around and talking into walkie-talkies. As a delegation of media were there, I asked, and was granted, permission to join them. Our first stop was the penguins’ swimming pool, where, once they had been cleaned of oil, the korora were brought several times a day to keep up their fitness by exercising, and also to encourage them to preen their feathers as part of the vital waterproofing process.

It was really cute to watch them diving and swimming around and popping up on the ledges to rest or peer at the people looking at them. I know from our work at the Green Bay Centre how easy it is to fall in love with these little fellows – like other animals, they all have their own characters.

Next door there was another swimming pool for shags, who also must have been asking themselves what on earth had happened to their daily lives! When I saw the shags I thought of our dear Pam Howlett, the “mother of Bird Rescue” who died last year. She was devoted to cormorants, and carried a photo of her favourite – ‘Fogg’ – with her at all times.

When a live oiled bird comes into the centre it is processed at the ‘Intake Tent’ where it is triaged, tagged and has bloods taken. Then it goes into a heated holding pen where it is monitored, and tube fed until it is its turn to be washed. To wash the bird it is first coated in canola oil to loosen the denser oil it is coated in, then washed repeatedly – and very carefully – in warm water mixed with dishwashing detergent until all the oil has been removed.

The bird is then taken to be rinsed, which involves washing it with a high pressure hose. Neither washing nor rinsing is very comfortable for the bird, and the penguins I watched had to be held firmly to prevent them from wriggling around too much. But it is absolutely essential to make sure every bit of oil and detergent is out, otherwise the bird will not be able to waterproof itself again, and will die as soon as it is released back into the wild.

After 20 minutes of washing, and 10-15 minutes of rinsing (for a penguin), the bird is finally ‘clean’. From here it is transported to the ‘Clean’ tent where it is put under a heat lamp to recover. The birds are tube fed and hydrated, and taken to the pools for their daily swims. Of all the penguins washed, only one had not made it through the process, but I fear that wasn’t the same for other, less robust, birds.

Throughout the day I had some conversations with staff and volunteers, including Curt Clampner, an American, from International Bird Rescue. http://bird-rescue.org/ He told me that in environmental terms, the Rena spill was not large – he had been involved in an oil spill in South Africa that involved more than 20,000 birds. I also spoke with Craig Shepherd, the Wellington ‘Duck Man’ http://www.duckman.co.nz/ who was one of the first volunteers to make his way to Tauranga. Although most of the affected birds were LBPs, there were also diving petrels, white fronted terms, fluttering shearwaters, albatrosses, dotterels and kingfishers who were being processed at the Centre. We weren’t allowed to go into the holding tent where the oil-covered birds were, and I am glad – I think I would have found it too upsetting. But it was great to see the clean birds who came through – who literally owed their lives to this operation. After my afternoon at the Oiled Bird Centre, I went to visit a friend in Rotorua, and stopped at Lake Rotoiti to feed a friendly swan. As I watched it floating so majestically towards me, and then cautiously approaching to feed from my hand, I remembered why I love birds so much – all birds. But our marine birds are particularly vulnerable to oil spills, and at a time when offshore drilling is being debated, it begs the question of how we will be able to respond to a much bigger disaster, should it occur.

– Sandra K, Volunteer NZ Bird Rescue