Chris Hepburn

1. EXPERIENCE IN AOTEAROA/NZ COASTAL ENVIRONMENTS

CRAWFORD: When was your first memory of spending a significant amount of time on or around New Zealand coastal waters?

HEPBURN: I guess younger than five, at Tahunanui Beach in Nelson, playing on the beach there.

CRAWFORD: Did you have a holiday home there?

HEPBURN: That's where we lived, on the back beach at Nelson.

CRAWFORD: Were you swimming, taking swimming lessons - that type of thing?

HEPBURN: I think we were allowed to swim. We moved to Rarotonga [Cook Islands] when I was four, something like that. In between Tonga and Tahiti.

CRAWFORD: What was your family doing way up there?

HEPBURN: My dad was teaching, he was a schoolteacher there. He was head of English. We were only there for three or four years. That's where I got into underwater stuff.

CRAWFORD: That was at the age of five?

HEPBURN: Yeah. My first day of school was over there. 

CRAWFORD: How long did you spend on Rarotonga?

HEPBURN: Probably about four years. Then we came back to Cromwell, which is about as far away from the sea as you can get in New Zealand. On the Clutha River.

CRAWFORD: Another teaching gig for your dad?

HEPBURN: Yep.

CRAWFORD: So, you went from an almost entirely marine environment, to an almost entirely non-marine environment, at least by New Zealand standards?

HEPBURN: Yeah, it was quite a cultural change. From somewhere that's quite immersed in Polynesian cultures, to something that's quite different from it.

CRAWFORD: You returned at about the age of nine or so?

HEPBURN: Yeah, probably. Eight or nine, sort of around that age.

CRAWFORD: Did you spend any significant amount of time at holiday homes, or touring to places on the coast?

HEPBURN: I guess it was the early 1980s through to about the ‘90s, we spent a lot of time at Kaka Point. My Auntie had a holiday home there, so we would go down there a couple of times a year, at least for a couple of weeks. Just go down and go fishing on the coast there.

CRAWFORD: You would've been mid-teens by this point?

HEPBURN: Yeah, yeah. Round that sort of age. We did a fair bit of fishing there, at the Clutha mouth. 

CRAWFORD: When you say ‘we’, was this you and your dad or you and your mates?

HEPBURN: Yeah, my dad and my brothers.

CRAWFORD: And you were line fishing?

HEPBURN: Yeah. Off the shore.

CRAWFORD: What kind of fish we looking for?

HEPBURN: Just anything. We were just playing. So, Spotties [Wrasse], Blue Cod. We never caught any Blue Cod, just caught Spotties. And a lot of trout fishing - Kahawai.
 
CRAWFORD: In the river or off the coast?

HEPBURN: Both. Always off the rocks, or at the river mouth, or up the river. We were mainly fishing when we were down here, because we did a lot of freshwater fishing up in Central Otago. We were mainly going saltwater fishing. I was pretty obsessed with fishing in the sea, because you would never know what you would catch. You knew what you were going to catch up in the rivers. 

CRAWFORD: This was several weeks a year?

HEPBURN: Yeah, maybe a couple weeks a year.

CRAWFORD: Ok. An active interest in fishing. Any other activities like sailing or boating or anything else?

HEPBURN: Not really. Maybe go for a bit of a swim. But it was quite funny, the disconnect between. I wouldn't go in the water there. It was quite different from what we used to.

CRAWFORD: Different from Cromwell?

HEPBURN: Different from Rarotonga. It's completely different. A tropical lagoon system can be one of the most exposed coastlines in New Zealand. We just didn't get in the water. We were quite frightened of it, I would say.

CRAWFORD: Because of the hydrodynamics?

HEPBURN: It was just dirty. You couldn't see anything. Cold. Waves. There weren't many people diving back then. You didn't even see people in the water.

CRAWFORD: What about surfers?

HEPBURN: I can't ever remember seeing a surfer. 

CRAWFORD: And yet now, both swimming and surfing are big deals in that region.

HEPBURN: I don't remember seeing any at the time. People would go swimming at the beach. But I don't remember seeing any surfers, and I don't remember seeing people skindiving. There were wetsuits, masks, and scubadiving. It wasn't very common. Even in the 1980s.

CRAWFORD: I'm guessing at some point you started to show an interest in scubadiving?

HEPBURN: It wasn't until I was down here at university in Dunedin.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Hold on to that for a second. Your seasonal pattern with the holiday house at Kaka Point, was that pattern generally the case until you started university?

HEPBURN: Yeah, pretty much.

CRAWFORD: You started university when?

HEPBURN: 1993.

CRAWFORD: Here at Otago?

HEPBURN: Yep.

CRAWFORD: What program were you in?

HEPBURN: I got a zoology and botany degree.

CRAWFORD: You would've been about 20 years old?

HEPBURN: Yeah, I guess so. I didn't really start to get into scubadiving until my little brother… he started diving probably at the end of my study, may be in 1997. Something like that. He started snorkelling and diving, so I just started hanging out with him, and got back into it again.

CRAWFORD: When your brother was diving, where was he doing that?

HEPBURN: Around the harbour, the Otago Harbour.

CRAWFORD: Whereabouts in the harbour?

HEPBURN: The first place I went in the water snorkelling here we were at Harrington Point, just at the entrance of Otago Harbour, right at the narrowest point where it goes out.  I wore a balaclava and an ill-fitting wetsuit, and it was frickin freezing in the middle of winter. 

CRAWFORD: That diving was with your brother, and you were mid-20s, an undergrad student?

HEPBURN: Yep.

CRAWFORD: Was that a combination of scubadiving and snorkelling?

HEPBURN: Yep. We snorkelled and dove everywhere we possibly could. Every day, everywhere. In the water a lot.

CRAWFORD: Did you do any spearfishing?

HEPBURN: Not till later. I started spearfishing in the 2000s, probably around 2003, something like that.

CRAWFORD: But at this point it was just free diving and scubadiving?

HEPBURN: Yeah, just playing around. Getting Crayfish, if we could.

CRAWFORD: What's the next big change in your coastal activities?

HEPBURN: I graduated about 1998, and then I started a Ph.D. That was 1999.

CRAWFORD: Here at Otago as well?

HEPBURN: Yes. It was at Harington Point, the same place I did my first snorkelling. The reason it happened was that [I found a bit of kelp], and I took it to my Supervisor. She had just finished her postdoc in Canada. In the kelp, there was the same animal that she had worked on in Canada. So, I started my Ph.D. with her on that.

CRAWFORD: Same animal here, as an invasive species?

HEPBURN: No, it's on the Pacific Coast. It's not invasive on the North American West Coast, though it is invasive on the East Coast and cause a lot of damage.

CRAWFORD: But it's native here?

HEPBURN: Yeah, it seems to be. It's hard to tell sometimes. Because some of this stuff could have come over in the old ships. We don't know.

CRAWFORD: What was the specific nature of your Ph.D.?

HEPBURN: It was nutrient relationships, like mutualism and how things operated together; whether it was antagonistic or mutualistic.

CRAWFORD: When did you start that research?

HEPBURN: 1998/99.

CRAWFORD: You finished around 2003, 2004?

HEPBURN: Yeah, 2003.

CRAWFORD: I would imagine that you spent a large proportion of your field seasons in the water?

HEPBURN: Yeah, we did a lot of diving around the mouth of the harbour. Scubadiving and freediving. Whatever was required to get the job done.

CRAWFORD: Mostly around the harbour mouth?

HEPBURN: The mouth of the harbour, and further north around Warrington, Karitane, those sorts of places.

CRAWFORD: When you say the mouth of the harbour, does that mean inside the breakwater? Near the groyne? Where?

 HEPBURN: No, it means the other side. on the Taiaroa Heads side, Harington Point is the next headland in. Through the spit wharves on the other side. It's right out, so you've got the mole, the breakwater - it's on the other side of the harbour. The first point in from Taiaroa Head is Harington Point. So it's got waves, it's partly exposed. 

CRAWFORD: That field work was 1999 to about 2004?

HEPBURN: End of 2003. I also did a part-time position down at Stewart Island for a year, on and off working at Paterson Inlet. That started about 2001.

CRAWFORD: Was that a contract?

HEPBURN: Yeah, it was a research grant that my Supervisor got and I did it, and it sort of built a bit off the work I had been doing for my Ph.D. We were tagging kelp down there. Doing a lot of diving there as well.

CRAWFORD: Tagging kelp? What was the purpose of that?

HEPBURN: Measuring growth.

CRAWFORD: That was in Paterson Inlet, close to the neck, close to the mouth? Or further in?

HEPBURN: It was all around Ulva Island. Manawahei, Nugget [northern side of Ulva]. You probably know all these places now. Inside of Native Island. Did a bit on the outside of Native Island.

CRAWFORD: Anything in Big Glory Bay?

HEPBURN: No, we didn't work and Big Glory.

CRAWFORD: Up towards Freshwater River?

HEPBURN: No, it was out further. Ringaringa Beach. You know the beaches on the outside? Sort of around the outer regions.

CRAWFORD: That was for one year? Did it displace the thesis work you were doing?

HEPBURN: I was doing a bit of both.

CRAWFORD: 70:30? 70% Stewart Island?

HEPBURN: Nah, it was 50:50.  I still had my scholarship work to do back up here [University of Otago].

CRAWFORD: While at Paterson Inlet, that was both free diving and scubadiving?

HEPBURN: Yep. A lot of time on the boat too. We spent hours and hours out there, and a lot of time in the water.

CRAWFORD: And that was 2001?

HEPBURN: Yep.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Your Ph.D. comes to a completion in 2004. Then what happened?

HEPBURN: I did a postdoc on ocean acidification in the Botany Department. That was more focused on the north Otago Coast. We moved our research effort up to the Karitane area. I supervised students working on that section of coast.

CRAWFORD: With reference to your research, what topics were you working on?

HEPBURN: Lots of different things, but we focused on scubadiving, snorkelling, in situ stuff, so we were in the water a lot. Ocean acidification, things that drive primary productivity.

CRAWFORD: Karitane region? Did you go into the estuary, upriver at all?

HEPBURN: We were just on the coast, in the kelp forests.

CRAWFORD: About a kilometre from the bar?

HEPBURN: Oh no. We were right along, from further north up around Cornish Head, those reefs further north. But Mainly focussed on the Huriawa Peninsula, which is quite close to the bar. It's just the next bay around. But also a lot of places further south. We had a good look around.

CRAWFORD: That was one year, or multiple years?

HEPBURN: Probably until about 2008. What's that, maybe three years - around there.

CRAWFORD: What happened in 2008?

HEPBURN: I got a postdoc here at Otago [Marine Science]. Working on customary fisheries management, looking at indicators of productivity.

CRAWFORD: How much of your time for that postdoc did you spend on or around the water?

HEPBURN: Heaps. That's what it was, it was field-based, doing assessments of Paua fisheries, and relating them to kelp growth rates. Basic fisheries information for a bunch of different management areas all around.

CRAWFORD: Lots of field survey work, combination still of scuba and free diving? Or mostly scuba now?

HEPBURN: A lot of free diving, and scuba too. We tried to do as much as we could for free diving - it was just easier. If you can hold your breath long enough, you can get quite a few things done. The scope of what we were doing has extended out. When we’re talking about the work I was doing, I was also working in Fiordland. And also did trips to southern Stewart Island, and things like that.

CRAWFORD: Where those one-off things?

HEPBURN: Probably a number of times for Fiordland. I’ve probably been over there about eight times, or something like that.

CRAWFORD: At Milford Sound? Doubtful?

HEPBURN: Milford and Doubtful, yeah. Mainly Doubtful.

CRAWFORD: What kind of work did you do there?

HEPBURN: Seaweed work. Also did work on some quite big surveys that were seaweed-related. Crayfish. I did some work for monitoring the tail race out at Manapouri.

CRAWFORD: The what?

HEPBURN: The tail race - you know, the Manapouri Power Station? It pumps water into Doubtful Sound. There's a monitoring program there, so we went and set up monitoring sites throughout Doubtful Sound and Milford Sound.

CRAWFORD: That was part of an environmental assessment?

HEPBURN: Yeah. They just had students doing odd jobs here and there. Yeah, a fair bit through that area. I know it fairly well. I've done a bit of diving there. And some diving just for fun as well.

CRAWFORD: Ok. That takes us up to what, about 2010?

HEPBURN: Yeah, around there. 

CRAWFORD: What happened then?

HEPBURN: In 2011 I finished that postdoc. Where I worked for the stuff when we worked at Waitutu. We are going down there next year to look at some stuff. We worked at Kaka Point, a place called Te Puna O Wai Toriki [customary fishery area]. Which is a place there, East Otago. We also worked up here at Port Levy.

CRAWFORD: Is that out on the north side of Banks Peninsula?

HEPBURN: Yeah. And East Cape of the North Island.

CRAWFORD: Were all of these customary fisheries related projects?

HEPBURN: They are all reserves, ‘customary fishery protection areas’ they call them. We were providing baseline information for management.

CRAWFORD: This was part of a multiyear field assessment in support of reserve designation?

HEPBURN: It was more the beginning survey, so that their community ... Ngāi Tahu could assess how they were doing with their management interventions. More or less it's grown and they’re just looking at doing rotations. They've got huge numbers of these reserves, I’ve probably got about a dozen now that we've worked on. So, it's a big job. But we continue to go to new places and to do all that sort of stuff.

CRAWFORD: That work started, effectively, around 2008?

HEPBURN: Yep. 2011 I got a job here [Otago] as a Lecturer in Science. And I continued that work on since 2008. That customary fisheries work is a key part of what I do, and it has been since 2008.

CRAWFORD: When you took on the new responsibilities as a Lecturer, did your time in the field decrease?

HEPBURN: Yes. Yes it has.

CRAWFORD: By 20%? 50%? 80%? If you had to guess?

HEPBURN: Well, compared to what I was doing as a postdoc, when I was in the field every day that the weather was good, it was a decrease of about 80%. I'm just thinking, my memory is not all that good - maybe too much diving. I'm thinking about the number of times I went diving this year, and it would be pretty minimal. I might have had two weeks of diving this year.

CRAWFORD: Right. Now you're a Lecturer in a major university's marine science department. You’ve got teaching responsibilities, graduate students, postdocs of your own. That all adds up.

HEPBURN: Yeah. The diving gets reduced, at least for the meantime.

CRAWFORD: What else changed, if anything, in terms of your activities?

HEPBURN: They probably broaden, just a little bit. Supervising students, working on a range of projects that are quite different in different places.

CRAWFORD: Let’s specifically focus on Southland, Fiordland, Foveaux Strait, Stewart Island. Over the past ten years what kind of projects have you been directly involved in?

HEPBURN: Probably exclusively at Stewart Island, I've mainly been working. I guess at Waitutu as well, which is sort of getting out into Fiordland, doing baseline surveys there.

CRAWFORD: Baseline surveys for Paua?

HEPBURN: Yeah. I'm just trying to think about Stewart Island, how many Masters students I've had go through there. 

CRAWFORD: When did those student projects start?

HEPBURN: We probably started 2011/2012. That's when we started working down there. We went down there and did a big scallop survey of the inlet - that was right in the middle of winter. We surveyed about ... I think it was 15,000 hectares of Paterson Inlet. We swam the whole bloody thing. I've also had field classes down there a bit. And I've dived during them. We went and did a dive out at Bench Island - that was kind of memorable. That would have been about 2011, probably just when I started. We had students doing scallop work, Sharks - the Sevengill work, seaweed, aquaculture work, basic kelp forest ecology. We might've had maybe 10 students.

CRAWFORD: Tell me about the Shark work.

HEPBURN: Jordan Housiaux’s doing work on Sevengill Sharks, tagging and looking at their population in Stewart Island.

CRAWFORD: Population, in terms of distribution?

HEPBURN: Distribution, genetics, migration.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Population discrimination, population structure, individual movement - abundance and distribution?

HEPBURN: Yeah, mark and recapture methodology.

CRAWFORD: Who's doing the recapturing?

HEPBURN: We are. Using tags, But that hasn't been very successful. So, using marks on the animal.

CRAWFORD: What kind of tags?

HEPBURN: They’re from a place called Hallprint.

CRAWFORD: Are these harpoon tags?

HEPBURN: Yep.

CRAWFORD: If you see an animal, you can probably, if you know what you're looking for, see that it is tagged or not?

HEPBURN: What we found is that the tags get covered up quite a lot with crap. It seems as though it's a very large population there, but Jordan can talk about that better than I could. The Sharks were shedding the tags. One of the tags was found at Moeraki - the tag was just sitting on the beach - from an animal that had been tagged at Stewart Island.

CRAWFORD: When did that Shark tagging work begin? Soon after 2011?

HEPBURN: Nah, that would have started last year [2014].

CRAWFORD: So, it's only been two years or so then?

HEPBURN: Yeah, so she's writing it all up at the moment.

CRAWFORD: Two field seasons at Stewart Island?

HEPBURN: Yes, last year and this year. She's finished now. She didn't get that many recaptures. Will Rayment's got a student starting on these Sharks next year. They'll continue the work that Jordan had started.  

CRAWFORD: What's the most important thing, do you figure, that research has shown about these Sevengillers in Paterson Inlet?

HEPBURN: Probably that there is a reasonable population of them there. It's hard to know, it's still pretty preliminary. Also, we didn't find any on the open coast. That seems to be quite interesting.

CRAWFORD: When you say a decent population abundance, if you had to guess what would we be talking about?

HEPBURN: Hundreds, yeah. They catch them a lot in trawls. They are quite a common fish. And when you are spearfishing, you see them a lot.

CRAWFORD: Trawls in Paterson Inlet?

HEPBURN: No. That's just from talking to the [commercial] trawlermen who catch them.

CRAWFORD: They catch them with your tags on them?

HEPBURN: No, not really. Recently, that was this winter, the guys went down, I couldn't go this year, and did a big survey of the Bravo Islands, a Paua survey.  Bravo islands are at the entrance of Big Glory Bay. 

CRAWFORD: Just east of Ulva Island?

HEPBURN: Yeah. I'm probably not remembering a lot of the things we've done down there. But I'd say that I've had a wee bit of a look around.

CRAWFORD: And you have had several fingers in several pies over the past decade.

HEPBURN: Many pies, yeah.

CRAWFORD: Well, when you talk about having 10 graduate students, and they're not sequentially lined up on the same project, you're looking at several different things ...

HEPBURN: Yeah, that's right.

CRAWFORD: Does that pretty much bring us up to date?

HEPBURN: Yeah.

2. EXPOSURE TO MĀORI/LOCAL/SCIENCE KNOWLEDGE SYSTEMS

CRAWFORD: In terms of the degree to which different knowledge systems have affected your understanding of marine environments, obviously the science knowledge system has had a major effect.

HEPBURN: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: To what extent has Māori and Local culture and knowledge influenced your thinking? To what extent have there been interactions?

HEPBURN: Are we talking about Sharks specifically, are we talking about interactions generally?

CRAWFORD: Marine ecosystems generally.

HEPBURN: I'm strongly influenced by that. 

CRAWFORD: What are the principal mechanisms by which knowledge from Māori culture is coming to you?

HEPBURN: By working with people.

CRAWFORD: Traditional people?

HEPBURN: Yeah. So, listening to them, having conversations over cups of tea, going and collecting kai with them, doing research with them.

CRAWFORD: Is it the complete range then, from casual observations to research partnerships?

HEPBURN: It's just like talking to old people - when we learn from what they've done and their experiences. I'm not that good a listener, but I like to listen, and try and learn from what people tell me. In that situation, when you know the person, and you've worked with them and you respect them, then you listen to them. And that's the thing.

CRAWFORD: When they tell you a story, if you hadn't had that kind of connection with them, you might not think twice about the story? But if you know them, and they get to know you, and they're telling you something, it sticks with you in different ways?

HEPBURN: Yeah. Coming straight out of Cromwell as a kid, I wouldn't listen at all. I had this funny idea about how things were in the world. I wouldn't say that I'm captured by Māori, though some people would perhaps say that I am. I'm an independent scientist, and I always will be. I've just seen so much. The real people that do the job, the kaitiaki - they understand a lot of stuff. They're not arrogant about it. They know they understand very little, but they understand some things that are right. And when we do science, we find they are pretty much bang on with their ideas. Their ideas about management and stuff like that.

CRAWFORD: Give me an example.

HEPBURN: You know, principles of ecology, providing refuge, fisheries management for breeding stock, things like that. We went through a big process of trying to protect the Paua fishery, at East Otago Taiapure. You know, thinking about bag limits and output controls and rotational harvests and all sorts of stuff. And in the end one of the kaitiaki’s said “Well, why don't we have a wade-only fishery? Just like it used to be.” And it works in the modern world, and it's smart. That's one example of where ecology and that kind of knowledge, fits a hell of a lot better than say commercial mechanisms of management. And that's the great thing of that connectivity. It's a good fit.

3. WHITE POINTER DISTRIBUTION AND ABUNDANCE

CRAWFORD: Going back to your earliest days, what was the first time that you remember hearing about or seeing a White Pointer?

HEPBURN: Oh, I had a picture in a book of a pretty scary looking Great White, I still remember it.

CRAWFORD: This is when you were a kid in Nelson?

HEPBURN: Could have been in Nelson, could have been in Cromwell. I just remember this picture of a horrible looking Shark eating something. That's my first memory of a Great White. 

CRAWFORD: That was your first memory? You didn't have any exposure, you didn't hear any stories, up in Nelson?

HEPBURN: Nah, not that I remember.

CRAWFORD: What about the Cook Islands?

HEPBURN: Not Great Whites.

CRAWFORD: Ok. So, you picked up books on marine stuff at some point …

HEPBURN:  I had sea fishes of New Zealand books since I was about eight. 

CRAWFORD: Other than the books, when was the next time that you heard about or saw a White Pointer?

HEPBURN: On tv.

CRAWFORD: Was this as a teenager?

HEPBURN:  Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Ok. What's the next thing?

HEPBURN: That I had heard of Great Whites? Just some stories that were floating around Dunedin.

CRAWFORD: You would have been at University when you heard those stories?

HEPBURN: Probably when I started diving. That was when people started talking about them.

CRAWFORD: When you and your brother were diving in Otago Harbour?

HEPBURN: Not us. It would have been people in dive courses, dive instructors. Yeah, people like talking about Sharks in the dive community.

CRAWFORD: What did people in the dive community, the dive club, the divers, what did they have to say? What did you hear?

HEPBURN: The classic story, it was a guy at Aramoana that got his leg bitten off while he was spearfishing, and bled to death. That was the one that stuck with me.

CRAWFORD: Other than recounting the story, was there any suggestion of places or things to avoid, or any type of guidance?

HEPBURN: Well, people just say all the time, "Don't go diving in that bay" or "don't go there, there are great whites there."

CRAWFORD: Which bays?

HEPBURN: At the mouth of Otago Harbour. But they're full of it.  Those people wouldn't know. 

CRAWFORD: How would you know, as a kid?

HEPBURN: I was pretty sure about it. You hear stories of where they are.  You've probably heard of the Shark that they always crap on about called KZ-7, and it used to hang around the [Taiaroa] Heads a lot, just at the end. 

CRAWFORD: What do you know about KZ-7?

HEPBURN:  It used to hang around the Heads a lot, and it was big.

CRAWFORD: Do you know why it was called KZ-7?

HEPBURN: Because of the famous plastic Americas Cup sailing boat, I would assume. KZ-7. 

CRAWFORD: Do you know what the link would be between the boat and the Shark?

HEPBURN: It was about the same time that the Shark arrived, I guess.

CRAWFORD: To the best of your knowledge, where did KZ-7 hang out?

HEPBURN: Oh, this is just stories from old drunken dudes. Just around Taiaroa Heads, at the end of Otago Harbour. Aramoana. That region. The harbour sometimes. 

CRAWFORD: Into the harbour?

HEPBURN: People told me "Yeah, you should've been out here the other day, there was a Great White here." Whatever.

CRAWFORD: it seems clear that you are a sceptic, with regards to White Pointers in the harbour or at the harbour mouth

HEPBURN: No. I'm a sceptic of people identifying them. I'm not a sceptic of believing they are there. I believe that they are there.

CRAWFORD: Ok. We have two different issues here. First, why do you believe the White Sharks are there?

HEPBURN: That's part of their range.

CRAWFORD: On the basis of what evidence do we say ...

HEPBURN: Well, people who are trustworthy have seen them there before.  But there are people who are just absolutely full of shit.

CRAWFORD: So, let's talk about the trustworthy ones. Who are the trustworthy people, whose observations of the White Pointers you trust in this regard?

HEPBURN: People who have done a lot of diving. Someone like Ate Heineman says to me "I saw a Great White," I'll believe it. If someone like Jim Barrett from Stewart Island says he saw a Great White, I'll believe him. But if some fella on the side of the road says he saw a Great White, or he was attacked by a Great White in the surf, I wouldn't be 100% convinced that it was a Great White.

CRAWFORD: I understand. You're coming up through the science system, you are becoming a trained sceptic because in science we train our students to be good sceptics. To not jump to conclusions, not believe without appropriate evidence. Believe in the possibility, but don't assign the probability unless there is evidence. And the reliability of the person who is telling you is important. Had you heard from Ate or other reliable sources that White Pointers were around the Heads? 

HEPBURN: No. Well, I hadn't known Ate for very long.

CRAWFORD: I meant somebody like Ate. Any reliable knowledge holders.

HEPBURN: Yes.

CRAWFORD: Other reliable people had said there had been sightings, and you took that to indicate the animals are around?

HEPBURN: Yeah, yeah.

CRAWFORD: Let me boost up one level. For all of the 30+ years that you have spent on, around, and largely under the surface of New Zealand coastal waters, have you ever seen a White Pointer in the wild?

HEPBURN: No I haven't.

CRAWFORD: Despite all of those years, and being in places where White Pointers are either reputed or known to exist?

HEPBURN: I've never seen one.

CRAWFORD: In terms of people who you consider to be reliable, how many different credible sightings would you have heard about first-hand? What range: 0-5? 6-10? more?

HEPBURN: 0-5.

CRAWFORD: Very rare?

HEPBURN: The observations I believe are Steve Wing from across the corridor here [Marine Science, Otago]. He said he saw one in Fiordland, and he saw one in Port Pegasus [Stewart Island] as well.

CRAWFORD: Whereabouts in Fiordland?

HEPBURN: I don't know. I imagine in Doubtful Sound, somewhere like that.

CRAWFORD: [Discussion about project classification levels for human encounters with White Pointers: Level 1-Observation, Level 2-Swim-By, Level 3-Interest, Level 4-Intense] In terms of Steve Wing's description from Fiordland,  I don't know that you would recall - but if you did, what interaction level do you think that was?

HEPBURN: I'm not sure if the Shark changed its course or not, but they saw it and it was coming towards them.

CRAWFORD: Oh, it was an underwater observation?

HEPBURN: Yeah, yeah.

CRAWFORD: You think it was maybe a swim-by in the sense that the animal didn't break stride?

HEPBURN: They've got a picture of an underwater slate, and saying "That was bloody big" and someone said "There was white to it." But it must have been there for a wee while.

CRAWFORD: Maybe a Level 3 if it was around for a bit.

HEPBURN: Yeah, yeah. And then Port Pegasus, a similar situation.

CRAWFORD: This was Steve's observation again?

HEPBURN: Yeah. He's the guy here who has seen them.

CRAWFORD: What was the interaction like at Port Pegasus?

HEPBURN: Pretty much the same I think, but you could ask him.  I've also heard of a Shark bothering a dive class at Shag Point.

CRAWFORD: North of the Otago Peninsula?

HEPBURN: Yes. I've heard of them being on the bottom, and the Shark being around the boat.

CRAWFORD: Circling around the boat? Between the divers and the boat?

HEPBURN: Yeah, but I wouldn't know how reliable that is. The other reliable one was ... I'm just thinking if it was this last summer, no it was the summer before last ...

CRAWFORD:  Two summers ago?

HEPBURN: The guys were at a place called Papatiki. Do you know where that is? It's in Paterson Inlet, just outside the entrance to Bravo, to Big Glory Bay, sort of opposite Native Island - to the east.  The guys were doing scallop work, doing survey work and tagging. They were looking at scallop movement, growth and stuff.  They were working, and a Great White came along the tide line that was there. It didn't interact with the divers. The guys on the boat followed it, they just wanted to keep an eye on it, because there were a bunch of divers in the area.  Then they went across and got the divers out of the water.

CRAWFORD: Who was in charge? Who would have had the best vantage point?

HEPBURN: Bill Dickson. He drives the Polaris. He's worth talking to. He's got a lot of experience around Stewart Island. He understands science, because he spent a long time working with scientists and students. Bill is not full of it. He will tell you the truth.

CRAWFORD: Ok. That was another observation; it might have been a Level 2, but could have been a level 3. Did you get the sense from him that the animal was doing anything except cruising by?

HEPBURN: No, but it put the shits up the students.

CRAWFORD: Right. So that's another confirmed sighting of a White Pointer by a reliable observer?

HEPBURN: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: And that was two years ago?

HEPBURN: Yep. And from that we bought Shark shields, and got everything all ready to go for diving. So now we dive with Shark shields.

CRAWFORD: Tell me about the Shark shields.

HEPBURN: They are an electromagnetic unit that you wear. You have a battery on your leg, with a tail that comes off, and it's like wearing an electric fence in many ways. You get shocks, and it's not very much fun to wear. We talked to a Professor from Adelaide University in South Australia. He had lost a student to a Great White. We talked to him about what we should do, and what was the best course of action, because we didn't want a knee-jerk reaction to it. 

CRAWFORD: He’s a scholar, and the victim was his student?

HEPBURN: Yeah. it was pretty bad. We didn't want to have that risk ... That's not so much that we were trying to avoid ourselves getting in trouble, going to jail and all the rest of it. But we wanted to be sure that if something happened that we could say to the parents of a student or staff member, that we did everything possible to protect them in what we were doing. We were really changing our approaches to diving, Trying to minimize the risk of what we were doing. Focusing diving more in winter, stuff like that.

CRAWFORD: Did you do any evaluations of the Shark shield technology?

HEPBURN: We had a review of it ...

CRAWFORD: A review that you did?

HEPBURN: No, no. There were some reports on it, on different things about using the Shark shield on different sorts of Great Whites. There is some science on it, it was good enough for us to say "Yep, we're going to use that."

CRAWFORD: How much do these units cost?

HEPBURN: I think it cost us about $10,000 for about 12 of them. They're quite expensive. I don't know how much the students are using them now. We did a big survey of the Catlins, a lot of headlands and stuff down through there, a lot of Seal colonies, so we wore them then. And I would wear them down at Stewart Island. They are available, but you don't have to wear them.

CRAWFORD: You don't have to? The students have a choice?

HEPBURN: On the open coast around Stewart Island, you have to wear them. But in the inlet, in some situations like being a kelp forest, you just get tangled and stuff, so you didn't necessarily have to.

CRAWFORD: But definitely, steps were taken.

HEPBURN: Yeah, we were quite concerned about it. But we didn't observe anything for a long time.

CRAWFORD: You had mentioned something about Ate's observation? That he was the type of knowledge holder; you would considered to be reliable. Do you remember if he saw anything about these White Pointers around the harbour?

HEPBURN: He said he hasn't seen many. One was Port Pegasus, he had one come right up to him.

CRAWFORD: In terms of KZ-7, did you have any reliable knowledge holders, people you consider to be reliable, that confirmed that there was a resident large White Pointer in that region?

HEPBURN: It's all hearsay. It could come from a reliable person, but how reliable was the information that came to them?  So, it's kind of hard to evaluate.

CRAWFORD: So, nothing directly from a reliable knowledge holder?

HEPBURN: Not directly no. One of the guys, our technician when we were diving off Cornish Head just north of Karitane, probably in the early 2000s, and they saw a big Shark. They said it was not a Sevengill, but they weren't sure if it was a Mako are not. They thought it might have been a Great White, but it wasn't confirmed. 

CRAWFORD: That would be a swim-by?

HEPBURN: Yeah. With whatever it was.

CRAWFORD: Right. Keeping all of that in mind then, when you think about New Zealand coastal waters - North and South Island in general -  what regions do you understand to be places of higher then typical aggregations of White Pointers? I mean they can be seen, they can be found, anywhere. But when you think about places where White Pointers tend to be in numbers - where are those places?

HEPBURN: Seal colonies.

CRAWFORD: Wherever there are Seal colonies?

HEPBURN: Yeah, I would be careful diving anywhere near a Seal colony.

CRAWFORD: Let's divide this into two things. Let's think about it geographically, first of all.

HEPBURN: Well, obviously the islands around the Foveaux Strait are the places I would say are high risk. And probably places I haven't dived ... I've dived a little bit around Jackson Bay. But not on the islands off there. I would assume they would have a good population of Great Whites as well.

CRAWFORD: What about Banks Peninsula?

HEPBURN: Up there, quite a lot of historical information about it. Guys showed us a tooth about this long, and there were pictures of Great Whites that have been taken out of Port Levy which is right next to Lyttelton Harbour. I would not be surprised if there were reasonable numbers around there. But how could you tell, you can't see anything. That's the thing, with diving and quite low visibility water. We're not really in a situation to be able to see them a lot. And they probably see us - we just don't know. Sharks, all sorts of Sharks. It's rare to see a Shark when you're scubadiving.  I'm just trying to think back, the number of Sharks I've seen scubadiving - very low numbers. Like I've seen a sickly Blue Shark swim by, I've had Sevengills swim over me, Carpet Sharks. The only time you see Sharks is when you're spearfishing or when someone's fishing. That's when you see them. Otherwise, doing research - nope.

CRAWFORD: Let's talk about seeing Sharks when other people are fishing. Give me an example of that, please. Have you ever been diving, when somebody else was fishing nearby?

HEPBURN: Yeah. We were out doing some survey work up at Karitane. It was really low visibility. And a guy came out fishing. Instead of waiting for us to finish diving, he started fishing. A Shark turned up while we were working. We looked across our quadrat, and the Shark was coming straight in - a Sevengill. It wouldn't leave us alone, so we got out. 

CRAWFORD: it was harassing you?

HEPBURN: Oh yeah, it was just around. And you couldn't see anything. It's fine if you got a bit of visibility, but with something like that, it can hurt you in a major way. You just have to be careful.

CRAWFORD: What kind of visibility?

HEPBURN: Would've been a couple metres, at most.

CRAWFORD: You also made the point that you were reasonably convinced that these animals can detect Humans way better than Humans can detect them?

HEPBURN: I think so. Yeah, they would have to be able to be.

CRAWFORD: What about Cook Strait? Marlborough Sound? Any reliable sense that is a ‘sharky’ region?

HEPBURN: I don't really know much about that region.

CRAWFORD: What about North Island, generally?

HEPBURN: Just the odd one that pokes by. Big females, it seems. Just from media reports, stuff like that. Kaikoura’s probably got a few. Seal colonies, deep water. But it really wouldn’t know.

CRAWFORD: What do you know about some of the recent research that has been conducted about White Pointers in NZ coastal waters?

HEPBURN: I've had a wee bit of experience with Malcolm Francis’s supervision of Jordan, so he worked on that stuff with Clinton Duffy. I haven't followed it too much, but mainly migrations is what I've picked up on.

CRAWFORD: What do you know about the techniques that were used, and the conclusions that were reached?

HEPBURN: I think they were satellite GPS-tags. They tagged the Sharks and watched where they went. This is just from memory, and it's not really my field, but I think the Sharks were seen in northern Australia. Tonga, places like that. They were moving a lot further than had perhaps been expected.

CRAWFORD: Anything about the photo ID work?

HEPBURN: Not sure. Don't know. I would assume they might be looking at markings and things like that. That's what we do. Because I work with Dolphin people who have don’t want to do tagging. They use visual marks - they don't whack a tag into a Dolphin. In some ways it's a lot better.

CRAWFORD: Although using visual identification doesn't tell you where it goes when you're not visually observing it.

HEPBURN: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: As someone who has worked on a project where Sharks were being tagged, do you have any concerns regarding the effects of tagging on individual Sharks?

HEPBURN: Well, I would hope that it would be covered in an ethics review that they would have to go through to actually handle an animal
like that. From what I've seen, they've got vets on board, and they seem to be using some pretty high tech. I imagine the proportion of fish that they were tagging, compared to the population, would be quite low. That's not one of the things that keeps me awake at night.

CRAWFORD: In terms of the importance of Foveaux Strait, Titi Islands, Stewart Island - why do you think the White Pointers and there?

HEPBURN: Ah, I'm not a specialist in that.

CRAWFORD: No, but you are a marine ecologist, and you have worked with Sharks, and you have worked specifically in that region, and you know a hell of a lot more about New Zealand coastal ecology than I do.

HEPBURN: Availability of marine mammals, I would say.

CRAWFORD: Definitely one plausible hypothesis that would jump to mind. In terms of that region being an aggregation site for feeding?

HEPBURN: Yep. I would say that's probably most likely. But I gather there are theories that they are breeding there, but I'm not really sure how strong the evidence is.

CRAWFORD: Do you think that, a similar hypothesis that could be put forward to explain the aggregation of White Pointers around the Otago Peninsula?

HEPBURN: Yeah. Yes, it certainly could.

CRAWFORD: That the animals are primarily here for feeding?

HEPBURN: There is an excellent abundance of marine mammals along this coast. A lot of bays and islands up here. It's quite a productive area, with upwelling and canyons.

CRAWFORD: It's very productive, both directly and indirectly. The White Pointers are also known to feed on fish. What do you know, if anything, about the relative contribution of fish versus mammals in White Pointer diets?

HEPBURN: I don't know anything about that. I would have assumed that in this area it would be dominated by mammals. They don’t seem to be netting any large fish in commercial gear, certainly in those bigger sizes.

CRAWFORD: Around the Otago Peninsula?

HEPBURN: Generally.

CRAWFORD: What about around Stewart Island?

HEPBURN: Yeah, might be.

CRAWFORD: Do you think that, in general, White Pointers around southern New Zealand, they would generally have a predominance of mammals in their diet - relative to fish?

HEPBURN: I think it would have to be. In the past there was Hāpuka/Groper. Large fish, but they are long gone.

CRAWFORD: What about the changes in marine mammal abundance over the past 20 or 30 years?

HEPBURN: I guess that you're talking about the increase in Fur Seals, though there has been a decline in other marine mammals - Dolphins and the like. Yeah, there's more Seals around.

CRAWFORD: Dramatically more?

HEPBURN: I wouldn't say it's dramatically more. There are a few more Sea Lions around in certain places on our coast. I just think people are exaggerating a little bit. There are some good numbers coming back in places, but compared to what was here …

CRAWFORD: Maybe that's more a reflection of how badly the Seal population had been hit in the first place?

HEPBURN: Probably more Sea Lions - I see a lot more of them. But Seals have always been here. Would have been, at least in this area.

CRAWFORD: Have you not noticed a dramatic increase in Fur Seals around the Otago Peninsula over the past 20 or 30 years?

HEPBURN: Not from memory. You have to look at the data. I have some observations, but I'm not looking at them much.

CRAWFORD: What about Stewart Island? Have you noticed any dramatic changes there?

HEPBURN: Well, I've only been diving down there for a few years. When we were working in Paterson Inlet you'd see the odd Sea Lion. It's rare to see Seals in there. 

CRAWFORD: Any reason that you can think of that might explain why there wouldn't be so many Seals in Paterson Inlet?

HEPBURN: Because they feed off the shelf. They feed in deeper waters. Sea Lions are feeding on reefs. So the Seals are further offshore, feeding on small fish, squid, stuff like that. That's what pisses me off when people talk about what a problem the Seals are for fisheries. I hear it every day, at all these meetings - sorry I'm getting off track. The Marine Protection Forum, “It's all the Seal’s fault.”

CRAWFORD: Let's talk about White Pointer breeding. I mean these animals have to reproduce someplace. They are large animals. Very rarely do we get any indication of their courtship behaviour. They are live bearing and have to copulate. To some extent they pick and choose when they engage in reproduction. Some people have suggested that the southern end of the South Island could be a mating ground as well. Have you heard those types of things?

HEPBURN: Yep.

CRAWFORD: And what do you think of those ideas?

HEPBURN: I don't know. Could be. I've heard several things about the Dunedin Coast as well, as a mating area. 

CRAWFORD: Based on any kind of evidence?

HEPBURN: Nah, just people saying.

CRAWFORD: If courtship and mating was taking place, how would we even know?

HEPBURN: Hard to know. It can be a pretty quiet place in deep water.

CRAWFORD: In terms of the work that you've done on the Sevengill Sharks in Paterson Inlet, is it a place where courtship and/or mating occurs for that species?

HEPBURN: We don't know. They aggregate up fresh water, up those arms. That could be associated with getting rid of parasites, or perhaps some sort of feeding that occurs up there. We don't know.

CRAWFORD: In terms of Paterson Inlet I think you are aware of one very clear example of a White Pointer in there, within the last two years.

HEPBURN: I've heard of others, from people down there.

CRAWFORD: From people that you would consider to be reliable?

HEPBURN: Yeah. There was an observation of one in Golden Bay, not exactly sure about the details, it was secondhand information. They see them around. Jim Barrett was telling me that when he was going across to the aquaculture facility, seeing one. Slowed his boat, as it drifted off into the depths he could see eye to eye - it was quite scary.

CRAWFORD: Does Jim Barrett work for the farm?

HEPBURN: He runs his own oyster farm. Jim's on the Mataitai Committee. So, they do see them.

CRAWFORD: Have you heard or thought that perhaps it didn't use always be the case? Or perhaps the animals have always been going in there, and we just don't see them often.

HEPBURN: I have a feeling that the animals are there and we just don't see them. And if you don't do Human activities that attract these Sharks, you don't tend to see them.

CRAWFORD: Let's focus specifically. What are those high-risk activities that would attract the attention of a White Pointer?

HEPBURN: Spearfishing.

CRAWFORD: Spearfishing, in terms of a struggling fish? The smell of a captured fish?

HEPBURN: Yeah, everything. But mainly the struggle of the fish. Just the locations that you end up when you're spearfishing. Off points, next to deep water. It's a great place to go spearfishing, but it's also a great place to get ambushed.

CRAWFORD: in terms of a vertical strike?

HEPBURN: Yeah. I'd have to say that we were actually spearfishing quite close to there, where they do the Shark feeding. That was probably a number of years ago now. I don't think they do that anymore.

CRAWFORD: Tell me about that. You had said before that you dove on Bench Island?

HEPBURN: We didn't go spearfishing out there. We went and had a look for some Crayfish there. We went spearfishing in a place called Bob's Point, I think it is. It's quite an interesting place. We did a fair bit of work at a place called West Head out of Port William. Bob's Point sticks out right there, and I'm fairly certain that they do the cage diving around there. 

CRAWFORD: Bob's Point is just northwest of Halfmoon Bay? You've done spearfishing there, or diving there?

HEPBURN: All sorts. Diving, spearfishing, putting down light loggers in kelp.

CRAWFORD: Well that's interesting, because you said you've done it in the past, but you wouldn't do it now.

HEPBURN: No, I wouldn't do it now, because I learned more about the risk.

CRAWFORD: What do you know more about the risk now, that you didn't know then?

HEPBURN: Just the number of people that I have talked to. Scientists are talking about it, and the locals are talking about seeing the White Pointers more, Maybe I just got smarter about it. I don't know.

CRAWFORD: There are few things that you mentioned about that already. Number one, it could be your sense of risk, or perception of risk and associated responsibilities. Number two, it could be an increase in abundance of the White Pointers - that there are more of them now then there were 10 years ago or more. Number three, it could also be a change in White Pointer behaviour. 

HEPBURN: Could be any one of those.

5. WHITE POINTER ENCOUNTERS - EXPERIENCES OF OTHERS

CRAWFORD: What do you know about White Pointer attacks on Humans in New Zealand? Where? When?

HEPBURN: Chatham Islands. There was an attack on Kina Scollay. Had a bit of a nibble. When was that? Must to been mid 1990s. There is that one I was telling you about at Aramoana. I think that was in the late-70s. and around that time there were also attacks on the beaches here [Dunedin], St. Clair and around there. I've heard of one down at Riverton, but that was a Sevengill. I also heard about somebody getting nibbled at Karitane as well, but I'm fairly certain that was a Sevengill too. I think some of these ones where people get attacked in the surf, and there's not a hell of a lot of damage, or tapped, bumped, whatever it is.

CRAWFORD: in those nearshore cases, you think the more likely culprit is the Sevengiller?

HEPBURN: I think so, yeah.

CRAWFORD: Is that because White Pointers are not as likely to be in the surf?

HEPBURN: I wouldn't expect them to be in the surf. It just doesn't seem like their kind of habitat. Not favourable territory for a Great White to be in. 

CRAWFORD: But would you expect a Sevengiller to be in the surf?

HEPBURN: Yep. Because they feed on crabs and things like that. Paddle Crabs and flatfish, things like that.

CRAWFORD: In terms of Sevengiller-Human interactions, if you had to characterize their usual level of interaction, could they be expected to show that kind of Level 3 or Level 4 engagement with Humans?

HEPBURN: Oh yeah. If you've got fish in the water, they'll come right up to you. I was out having a snorkel at Karitane with my wife, and I said “Come over and have a look.” She came over, and it came right up to her side and started sniffing, and I thought “Shit, it’s going to bite her.” Then it swam away. Derek was out there, he works for Ngāi Tahu now. He was out there diving in the kelp forest, and sitting there having a pee - just sitting in the water, and he felt something and he thought he had a bit of kelp around his leg, and he looks down and it's a Sevengill sucking his leg - it was just sucking it. But I've heard rumours about that, peeing in your wetsuit.

CRAWFORD: What have you heard?

HEPBURN: I was diving out at the Mole [Aramoana] once, and this South African guy came up to me. He said “Don’t pee in your wetsuit. Most people who get attacked by Sharks pee in their wetsuit.” And I'm like “I'm not sure if it's before or after, it's kinda hard to work it out sometimes.” I don't know if that's one of the things that Sharks like.

CRAWFORD: Sharks in general? White Pointers in particular?

HEPBURN: Well, they certainly have Great Whites at Cape Town. But again, interactions with the public on the beach when you have time on your own - they tend to be a little bit silly.

CRAWFORD: Do you think that the White Pointer attacks are level 4 predatory - the Sharks knew what they were doing? Or Level 4 - mistaken identity? Or maybe Level 4 - something else?

HEPBURN: Mistaken identity.

CRAWFORD: The Sharks thought they were getting a Seal, or something else?

HEPBURN: Or they would just testing to see what it was, and they bit too hard for the Human. Because I can't see any value in them … It has to be a mistake. Why would you be directing your attention on people? From my understanding, this is quite a well-adapted and focused species. They don't want to get hurt, they don't want to risk getting damaged. So they're going to be hitting from below.

Copyright © 2017 Chris Hepburn and Steve Crawford