Not the only mammals on the Island - December 12th

You know there is a saying that you are never more than a few metres from a rat? Right now we are probably further from not only rats but almost all other mammals than you are. There are no bats on Rangatira, but mammals other than us do land here. And they seem to do so whenever I go fishing! New Zealand fur seals are beautiful in the water, lazily waving a flipper at me, totally at home just metres from the waves crashing onto the rocks. And even when she goes away I can’t get a bite! I guess as soon as she showed up all sensible blue cod suddenly remembered an urgent appointment elsewhere and no longer even pretended to be interested in the flagging tape that I’m using as bait.

There is a long history of sealing in the Chatham Islands. The Moriori had a custom of waiting until the seals were asleep on the rocks and would kill only the animals that they needed before leaving the colony still asleep on the beach. If there was any blood on the rocks they would be careful to scrub it clean or else the colony would be able to detect it and would leave that site.

As was often the case though, once sealers from the rest of the world arrived, huge numbers of seals were killed in a really short time and it has taken 150 years for their numbers to start to recover. NZ fur seals spend much of their time at sea and even today are easily caught in fishing nets by mistake. I decided that this seal’s need for fish is greater than mine so I pack up and head back to the food store at the hut to see what I can forage in there for supper.