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involved in the effort to protect them. The educational aspect has
no doubt been most responsible for the enormous public support
that DOC has earned for its many conservation activities. For
instance, a bill to place a levy on fishing operations would
probably have been unpopular among a certain portion of New
Zealanders and legislators would have been reluctant to pass such
a piece of legislation. However, when a bigger percentage of the
public voiced approval for the DOC recommendation, the
lawmakers were emboldened to enact the law. In addition, New
Zealand declared that the reach of its sea territory extends out
200 nautical miles from any coast. Such a huge ocean territory is
difficult to patrol to be sure, but law-abiding nations usually honor
one another’s declared maritime claims. So only the illegal fishing
must be dealt with by DOC patrols.
Chapter 11. Enderby Island
The next port of call was an island among the Auckland Group:
Enderby, comprised of 1730 acres, considerably smaller than
Campbell. Enderby is also of volcanic origin but is much lower in
height. Whereas Campbell has mountains and cliffs up to 1640
feet high, Enderby attains only 147 feet of altitude. Yet whatever
Enderby lacked in cliff and mountain grandeur, it more than made
up in panoramas because of the megaherbs. We had believed
that those on Campbell could not have been topped, but they
were! And, Enderby also hosted the mysterious rata forest and its
magical denizens: the yellow-eyed penguins. Other endangered
species inhabit this beautiful little island as well: two types of
albatross (the Gibson’s and the white-capped), the Hooker’s sea
lion, southern right whales, snipes, brown teal, and a small colony
of eastern rockhopper penguins and one species of parakeet, the
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