During the move towards a paperless office, Elis digitised Edward’s slides from a trip to Campbell Island in 1996 and shared them on Flickr. The album has adorable images of fluffy albatross chicks at the Bull Rock colony.
“We appreciate being able to use images that other people make available via Creative Commons, so I thought I would do the same” Edward says.
“Getting to Campbell Island was an immense privilege, and it is much better if people are able to use the photos, rather than having them languish in the filing cabinet.”
One of New Zealand’s subantartcic islands, Campbell Island has a unique flora and fauna that includes Campbell albatross (also called Campbell black-browed mollymawk), eastern rockhopper penguins and megaherbs – unusually large flowering plants.
“What’s interesting about the trip is that I went as a volunteer to help Susan Waugh (now Senior Curator Sciences at Te Papa) with her PhD research on albatross. Later, Susan contacted me to do some analysis on seabird bycatch mitigation that ultimately led to me starting Dragonfly. The trip was really the start of my interest in albatross and bycatch.”