Lake Moeraki

January 24

Today we did a lot of walking through the ancient rainforest. This is entirely original and primary forest, as the area is too remote and the soil too poor for it have been cleared even by the Māori. Overall in New Zealand, the land was 80% forested in 1000, 40% forested when Cook arrived in 1770, and is 23% forested now. The ancient trees are staggeringly tall and many are covered in epiphyte ferns which give them the lumpy appearance of Avatar. There are also a huge variety of ferns in this temperate rainforest, from sturdy bracken to the “filmy fern” that is only one cell thick. And it is genuinely a rainforest: on average it receives a half-inch of rain per day, which puts the current drought (the last rain was January 5th) into perspective. The river is running very low, ferns are drying, and it is only the 2nd time in 33 years that the lodge has they to water the lawn. 

We saw both Hector’s and Dusky Dolphins on the coast of the Tasman Sea, and apparently this is the first reported sighting of the two species intermingling. We also saw an example of rainforest sourced pharmaceuticals: there is a local mushroom that invades the larval stage of cicadas, overcoming their immune system, consuming them and then releasing spores to do so again. The immuno-suppression element was extracted, but proved to be too powerful for human use. A synthetic version was used in the first oral medicine for multiple sclerosis. 

Tonight before dinner we watched as Gerry fed Long-finned Eels… these creatures only grow one centimeter a year, so the ones we saw (at least four feet long) are over one hundred years old. Because they grow so slowly they are not farmed, unlike salmon for example. This means that eel sushi is made from wild eels — Gerry asks that we eat salmon sushi instead! 

Late in the evening (dark comes about 10 pm) we went out to see glow worms, tiny larvae with phosphorescent tips to attract bugs to the sticky tendrils that hang from their bodies. The effect is a cliff side of non-blinking fireflies.

Pictured:Dusky Dolphins, Long-finned Eels, the mushroom