I first landed on Pokohinu / Burgess island in the Mokohinau group in 2017, to help my Master’s supervisor with his long-term seabird research project. In the intervening nine years, I’ve worked on Pokohinu almost every year, sometimes more than once, as part of that continuing research project, my own PhD research, and now for the research of my Master’s student. Every trip is a joy, for the same reason that the first one was. The island is a seabird sanctuary, despite being covered in a mishmash of recovering coastal forest and the grassy remnants of years as farmland to sustain the lighthouse keepers. In nine years, the vegetation has grown and grown, and many of our nest-boxes for seabird monitoring are buried under thick layers of pōhuehue and ngaio.

The nightsong of the Mokohinau islands is phenomenal. You can hear it from a boat, anchored in one of the many little coves and bays. When we’re there for research, we hear it wrapping around the hut once we’ve finished work for the night. For my PhD research, I spent weeks staying awake all night long to wait for pakahā (fluttering shearwaters) to return with their little GPS backpacks. The swell of seabirdsong at dusk as the air darkens from orange to purple to black – the ebb and flow through the night as birds return to the colony, pass overhead, and leave again as dawn approaches – and the sweet transition to the calls of korimako as the sun rises are patterned into my soul.

In nine years, the vegetation has taken off, and the reptile abundance has skyrocketed. In nine years, the calls of kākāriki and korimako have become more and more common. I wonder what the island will look like in nine more years, and nine after that. I’m hoping to return next year, to continue the work and make a nice round ten years since I first started my seabird science journey. For now, I’ll leave you with some photos from this trip, nine years from the very first one that made me absolutely sure that I’d found the thing I want to do for the rest of my life.