Meet Moana, the newly named Royal Cam albatross chick at Taiaroa Head.
Moana is the Māori name for ocean, sea, wide expanse of water. He manu o te moana – A bird of the sea.
Newly named albatross chick Moana looks to the camera.
Moana’s name was announced live on the webcam yesterday, after our month-long ‘name the chick’ competition closed. Room 7 at Tainui School were drawn as the lucky winners and we look forward to hosting the class at Taiaroa Head shortly.
We’d like to say a big thank you to everyone who voted or submitted a name in the competition. We received nearly 2600 name suggestions and of the final 5 names, Moana received 395 votes (32%).
The live webcam has been viewed around 400,000 times, equating to 7 million minutes – nearly 14 years of minutes watched!
We will continue to film Moana until she fledges around September.
Ha ha – the ‘live’ stream is hilarious! (Or maybe I just caught Moana at a sleepy moment :-). I still think ‘Prince’ was a great name, but not for a girl, I guess. Go well, He Manu o te Moana Nui!