Smithsonian.com

These Northern California abalone divers have bagged their limits and are out of the water again safely. On some "ab" dives, tragic accidents happen. Photo courtesy of Flickr user ingridtaylar.

They’re clammy. They’re rubbery. They’re often deep-fried in vegetable oil. And though the red abalone of California was once a staple of dirt-cheap seafood shacks, this big slippery sea snail is today one of the most prized seafoods in the world.

Abalone is also the goal of one of the most dangerous recreational games in America. Abalone diving season kicked off in Northern California on April 1, and though no fatalities have yet been reported, well, let’s just knock on wood. Because since 1993, at least 54 people have lost their lives while pursuing abalone, including eight in 2008 and seven in 2007, and rare is the season in which at least one diver doesn’t perish in the cold and rough waters of the North Coast. Yet so fervent is the urge to get in the water and bag one’s daily limit of three abalone that many divers who have driven hours to get to their favorite spot only to find the sea surging and violent just brave the waves anyway. Sometimes they die. Kelp may be the greatest of hazards to the diver, who are prohibited from using SCUBA gear. This spectacular seaweed, so gentle in appearance and symbolic of the California coast, occurs in nasty thickets in many locations. Kelp may grow more than a foot per day, and in the summer sun during calm periods, kelp forests can burgeon seemingly out of control until the fronds layer the surface like a carpet. Underwater, the long, cord-like stipes hang ceiling to seafloor. Among the rocks at their base is where the abalone dwell. Some divers wait until a large storm rips these kelp plants from the seafloor, clearing the water, while most just deal with it—the sensation of long, rubbery cords of kelp sliding over one’s legs is familiar to any abalone diver. Many carry knives strapped to their lower leg to cut through the kelp should they become entangled. Ironically, divers have drowned when their knives become snagged on the kelp.

Other divers die of exhaustion or heart attacks, sometimes collapsing on the rocks after a particularly strenuous dive. Among the least of dangers is the great white shark—though the fear of being eaten is one of the most persistent and haunting. In 2004, a well-known diver in Mendocino County was decapitated by a shark in one swift attack. Though dozens of abalone hunters have died from other causes since, Randy Fry remains a name that Northern California divers speak with a tone of regret and unmistakable dread. Today, many divers, as well as kayakers and surfers, wear “Shark Shields,” a relatively new device that emits an electric field that may deter sharks as large as great whites.

So, what is all the fuss and excitement about? For many people, abalone means nothing more than an excuse to get wet in one of the world’s most beautiful underwater settings. For some divers, it’s a treasure hunt—all about locating the big snails and prying them out of their crevices and holes. For a few divers, eating abalone isn’t even the point—collecting them is. After sacking their limits an driving home, they hand out the snails to their friends. (I recently joked with one such diver that she might just hunt for rocks instead and leave the abalone, which may be decades old, to their peaceful business.)

For others, abalone hunting is an obsessive game of numbers. These dedicated trophy hunters will take nothing but “tens,” that is, abalone at least 10 inches wide. (The minimum legal size is seven inches.) So particular are “ten divers” about this hallowed but arbitrary dimension that they usually measure and record their catches down to the hundredth of an inch, with the difference between a 10.64- or 10.47-inch abalone being a worthy distinction. The shells they polish and display on walls, and there is even a website dedicated to the hunt for huge abalone called Abalone Ten. Large abs, as divers often call their quarry, often occupy dark crevices 20 feet or more beneath the surface, and one may wonder as shivers creep up the spine how many divers have drowned with their heads stuck in an underwater cave.

A red abalone in its natural habitat—unwittingly being pursued by some 35,000 divers. Photo courtesy of Flickr user NOAA Photo Library.

The snails, meanwhile, keep meekly minding their business. They slide slowly across the seafloor, seeking kelp scraps, their chief food source, by day and returning to cracks and caves by night, and little do they know of the storm that their existence stirs—a storm of economic activity, weekends spent camping, poaching busts and car chases, photo ops, celebrations and family feasts … and funerals.

By the numbers:

Of about 35,000 licensed abalone hunters in California, more than 50 have died in the past 20 years.

Of about 300,000 licensed hunters in California, 27 died in accidents from 1994 to 2009.

20: Fatal mountain lion attacks in North America since 1890, including 6 people in California.

934: Commercial fishermen killed in America between 1992 and 2007.

6,000 to 8,000: Estimated total number of mountain climber deaths on Mont Blanc.

The Great Blue Hole of Belize was named by Jacques Cousteau as one of the world's top diving sites. Photo courtesy of Flickr user DrJohnBullas.

I am not a SCUBA-certified diver and I may never be. Instead, I free dive and have been for about 13 years, mostly along the coast of California, and I have no interest in introducing tanks, tubes and pressure valves to the simple relationship I have with the water. I can only imagine the burden of swimming with all the mechanical gadgetry and gear on my back that tank divers must wear, or the logistical nuisance of having to fill the tanks prior to each dive. Free divers must fill only their lungs, and sometimes just 5 or 10 feet beneath the surface we find all that we might ever hope to: the mangrove thickets of Belize, alive with nurse sharks, reef fishes and even crocodiles, or the kelp beds of California, where many divers spoiled by tropical reefs may be born again as they discover this unmatched habitat. But SCUBA technology grants access to a deeper world that I, again, can only imagine. And I think that the magic of SCUBA diving can be simmered down to one flat and obvious fact which an old friend and diving buddy once illuminated for me as we debated the pros and cons of air tanks:

“Dude,” he said. “You can breathe—underwater!”

There’s no arguing with that. And so we go, tanks and tubes and valves flowing with pressurized air, into the finest SCUBA diving destinations in the world.

Great Blue Hole, Belize. Jacques Cousteau visited this site in 1971 and declared the Great Blue Hole of Ambergris Caye to be among the best diving locations in the world. The Great Blue Hole is a wonder of geology, a 410-foot deep sinkhole located within the Belize Barrier Reef system and was created through forces similar to those responsible for the underwater caves of the nearby Yucatan Peninsula. The Hole is more than twice as wide as it is deep, making it less like a bottomless pit than a huge pothole, yet the vertiginous void may offer divers something of the feeling of facing off with the edge of the world. Descending into the hole, one will encounter local residents like groupers, various sharks, great barracuda and a diversity of other species. Bottom topography consists of sand, reef, many varieties or coral and ancient limestone stalactites, as well as caves and dramatic outcroppings that look like cathedrals. Visibility may exceed 150 feet and surface water temperatures rarely dip below 80 degrees Fahrenheit.

Wrecks off Papua New Guinea. Things under the sea may be categorized into two classes: naturally occurring or the far less common anthropogenic. And that’s where diving can get creepy—coming across tools and devices and vehicles, objects that weren’t supposed to end up here but which, through some mishap or disaster up above, sank into watery graves. The sea floor is littered with manmade stuff, and few underwater adventures may be more thrilling than exploring a wreck. World War II was an era in which Davy Jones acquired a wealth of collectibles for his locker, and a great many planes and ships went down around Papua New Guinea. The Boeing Blackjack B-17 bomber is just one of the region’s popular dive wreck dives, sporting a very recognizable cockpit and turret guns. Discussing the “best” wrecks seems a bit callous, considering that many people have died on them. Some wrecks, though, are sunk intentionally, without casualties, as tourist draws and habitat enhancers, such as Papua New Guinea’s Pacific Gas, which has rested in 145 feet of water off of Port Moresby since 1996. On the wrecks where human lives may have ended, dive with respect.

On the Thistlegorm wreck in the northern Red Sea, divers find intact cargo from the World War II era. Photo courtesy of Flickr user mattk1979.

Red Sea, Egypt. Surrounded by land, the Red Sea experiences a temperature range much like that of a continental lake, with waters in January as cold as 65 degrees Fahrenheit and, in the late summer, as warm as the high 80s. Furthering the flux in temperatures is the north-south extent of the Red Sea, which crosses almost 15 degrees of latitude, from 30 degrees north into the tropics, where its waters touch the coasts of Eritrea and Yemen. The Red Sea wreck of the Thistlegorm, a British vessel sunk in 1941 during an air strike, is said by some to be the “best” shipwreck anywhere, with motorbikes, guns and vehicles still intact and viewable. In the realm of living things, whale sharks occur here in some abundance, and they’re just the biggest of the 1,100 fishes to be encountered in the Red Sea. About 200 of these species occur nowhere else. Marine mammals include the sluggish, vegetarian dugong, which grazes on sea grasses in the shallows and in lagoons. Further from shore, the sea floor plunges to some 10,000 feet deep. In many ways, the Red Sea is much like the equally splendid Sea of Cortez in Mexico—a sea also two miles deep, also a product of tectonic activity, also ranging from tropical to temperate, also of giant temperature range, also surrounded by desert and date palms, and also one of the most beautiful places in our mostly salt-watery world.

Great Barrier Reef, Australia. The most renowned diving location, the Great Barrier Reef is also the biggest barrier reef and, like nearly any tropical reef, a hotbed of colorful coral snags and zillions of striped fish darting in and out of the cracks and, well, you know—all the same stuff you’ll see in the travel brochures and computer screensavers. We could, I’m sure, go on all day about warm-water reefs—of Bermuda, Thailand, Micronesia, the Caribbean, the Mediterranean. Those and others like them are the places that most “best diving” lists consist of, and the Great Barrier Reef, like them, deserves every medal it wears around its neck. But what more is there to say by now about clownfish and big friendly grouper and how clear the water is?

Monterey Bay, California. And so I come home, to the waters of the American West Coast. They’re often murkier, surgier, spookier and gloomier than the seemingly airbrushed beauty of the tropics—but I’m just one diver of many who first fell in love with the world underwater in the stately kelp forests of the California coast. Those of Monterey Bay might be the most famous, teeming as they are with rockfish and surfperch in the water column, lingcod on the bottom, abalone in the rocks and, backstroking over the kelp fronds on top, sea otters. The average “vis” in places—such as Point Lobos State Natural Reserve, just south of Carmel—is 30 to 40 feet but can be as much as 60 on the best of autumn days. A jaded SCUBA jock who lives in a thatched beach hut in the Maldives might spit on such conditions and go back to bed, but for temperate-zone divers, even just 25 feet is like magic. The waters off Northern California, too, are frigid. Go in without a hood here, and it’s an instant head-freeze so shocking that you might almost pass out. Many divers even wear drysuits, though most can pull off several hours in the water with a 7-millimeter wetsuit. But for the beauty below sea level here, it’s worth braving the elements—the towering trees of kelp, the shafts of sunlight slicing through the canopy, the schools of fish silhouetted against the gloomy blue. Kelp forests grow all along the West Coast, Alaska to Baja, as well as around the world, from New Zealand to Chile to Japan to Scotland. Almost anywhere, in fact, where water touches shore is worth a dive—with or without air tanks on your back.

There are no clownfish or coral fans or gentle reef sharks here, yet the kelp forests of the California coast provide underwater scenery that no tropical reef can quite equal. Photo courtesy of Flickr user Diving_Mullah.

Few landscapes have inspired the author quite like the Picos de Europa of northern Spain. Photo courtesy of Flickr user jroblear.

Many years ago, my dad, living in the French Alps with my mom and us kids for a year, asked his own dad if he and my grandmother would come and visit us. My grandfather, who lived in Redding, California, a semi-rural city in the southern Cascades, answered, “Why would I go to France? There are still places in Shasta County I haven’t ever seen.” He was only half serious—but truly, he wasn’t a committed traveler. Like many others of his breed, he was content simply to stand in his own boots, anywhere.

But others of us can’t quit moving. Why? What is it we look for over mountains and across oceans? Why isn’t a cozy fire in the living room enough? What do we find, or hope to find, in distant locations that can’t be found at home, whether we live in New York City, in Anchorage, in Austin, or in the scrubby hills of Shasta County? To have a look into the heads and hearts of other travelers, we’re asking readers a few questions about  traveling. The eight-question survey can be accessed here. In answering them, we hope you learn as much about yourself as we do about you. We plan to publish some responses in the May issue of Smithsonian magazine.

Here is a sampling of our questions, and a few of my own replies to get us started:

What historical time and place would you most like to visit in a time machine?

It would be very tempting to book a dinosaur safari somewhere in Pangaea, but I think the most emotionally stirring experience would be to stay right where I am, in San Francisco, and flash back 600 years, well before any Europeans had even glanced at the California coast. I would stalk through the sand dunes of my future hometown, identifying the hills that today I ride my bicycle up, the ponds in Golden Gate Park I walk my dog around, the oak forests of which today only a few trees remain and other features of geography now covered by asphalt. I would tread carefully, for there would be grizzly bears roaming this prenatal San Francisco. I’d go in mid-August, and on those long summer days I’d walk the shoreline of the virgin Bay and the Pacific Coast, especially at low tide, when the riches of the ocean, like clams and scallops and abalone, lie exposed to sight. And I expect that from the shore of modern-day Fort Point, under the modern-day Golden Gate Bridge, I would see salmon—huge, silvery Chinooks—splashing their way by the thousands into the largest estuary on the West Coast. And perhaps I would try to explain to the indigenous people I meet on the bank that someday these wonderful fish would almost all be gone. And could I bring with me in the time machine some basic cold-water snorkeling gear? Because the life to be found in our local kelp beds is awesome in 2012, but just imagine in the pre-Colombian era! The lingcod as big as railroad ties, the clouds of rockfish, the halibut stacked in the sand—and the great white sharks. And could I bring a beer in the time machine, too? No—not to drink just yet. Instead, I would hike up Twin Peaks and dig a hole deep in the sand and rock, and bury an Anchor Brewing Company “Old Foghorn” barleywine. Then, after a long look around at the wild, almost people-less San Francisco, I’d snap my fingers and go back to the future. And go find that well aged beer.

What animal would you most like to see in the wild?

A big cat, for sure—but which one? A tiger or a leopard would be a world-class thrill, but these creatures are seen almost strictly by paying tourists on guided safaris, which in parts of Africa and Asia are the only allowed means of enjoying the back country. So, I’d stay in the New World and venture somewhere into mountain lion country. It could be Idaho, Argentina or, heck, Shasta County. A symbol of the American wilderness, this animal—called puma, cougar and a barrage of other common names—is so elusive that no tourist service could ever come close to guaranteeing clients the sight of one, yet common enough that hikers, on their own and without a guide leading the way, may encounter one if they look hard enough, long enough and far enough. Veteran hikers know that it can take years to cross paths with a mountain lion. And if that lucky moment should ever arrive, I must savor it, envying the puma’s stealth, strength and beauty before it vanishes, probably forever, back into the woods.

What world festival would you most like to attend?

Wild mushroom festivals, beer festivals and salmon festivals come to mind, but I think I would enjoy none more than the World Durian Festival, in Chanthaburi, Thailand. Based in the world’s center of durian orchards and culinary appreciation, this festival lasts more than a week during the height of the durian harvest season, when the market stalls and street vendors are laden with heaps of this large, spiny and notoriously fragrant fruit. Certainly, there are people who would be unable to bear the potent potpourri produced by mountains of durians. You people might go to the annual August watermelon festival in Salmanovo, Bulgaria. But for others of us who are overcome with desire when that durian smell wafts our way, Chanthaburi in May must be paradise. The festival also features other local jungle fruits, street food, crafts and jewelers—and if, after a week of feasting on creamy durian, you still want more, linger on, because in Southeast Asia fresh durians can be found all year.

What travel destination is most overrated?

Beaches are so overrated. I can’t help but frown when I see yet another listing of the “world’s best beaches.” This almost invariably means crowds of people, colorful umbrellas, resorts, loud club music all day long and lots of sand—and every time a beach makes a list, still more people will go there that summer. For me? No beach, please—just a rocky shoreline of barnacles, kelp and tide pools.

Let us know your responses to these and other questions about travel

Andrew Bland, brother of the author, shivers and shakes after a frigid abalone, or paua, dive in Akaroa Harbour.

At least 48 earthquakes rattled Christchurch on January 2. People here are losing track as the ground keeps shaking and fears of more big temblors have them walking on their tiptoes. In the city center, the devastation from last February’s 6.3 quake remains plain, as condemned buildings stare bleakly over the nervous city. And with the memories of that deadly day still vivid, two more large earthquakes struck Christchurch on December 23, and on the second day of this year the shaking hardly stopped at all.

“We haven’t slept much in the past 24 hours,” said a weary-eyed cashier at the airport currency exchange office as she handed me a few bills and tried to produce a smile.

But for my brother, my parents and me, January 2, 2012 was a day of no consequence. In fact, it never happened. Somewhere between leaving San Francisco on the first, flying west and crossing the International Dateline, January 2 vanished; we arrived on the third.

We rented a car and left the city immediately—not that we were following the advice of blogger Bridget Gleeson, who recently listed Christchurch as one of 11 places in the world not to visit. No, Andrew and I simply wanted to get checked in to our hostel, put on our wetsuits and get in the water with time to catch dinner’s main course. So we drove east in our Subaru wagon, hugging the left side of the road as we wound outward onto the Banks Peninsula, toward a small seaside town called Akaroa. From here the road turned sharply uphill for the final miles and ended at the Onuku Farm Hostel, a green and grubby little cluster of shacks, huts, outhouses and hammocks, all clinging to a 30-percent slope about 700 feet above sea level.

Andrew and two of the Onuku Farm Hostel's permanent residents.

Andrew and I grabbed our wetsuits, spears and snorkeling gear and scrambled down the mountainside. The woods were thick with ferns, eucalyptus and strange native trees that doubled over periodically when enormous green New Zealand pigeons settled upon their branches. Sheep grazed abundantly, making for scenery like Scotland’s—yet the green hills gave me a bizarre feeling that, at any moment, a pterodactyl or tyrannosaur might suddenly appear through the treetops. For there is a prehistoric strangeness in the wilds of New Zealand, and I think I have pinned it down: It’s the absence of native mammals, except bats and pinnipeds, which gives the impression that one is walking in the age of dinosaurs.

At the water’s edge, we suited up and jumped in. It took a moment to adjust to the shock of the cold before we could begin diving—and we had to hunt for our paua fast, as we wouldn’t last long in this frigid sea. The water was murky, and at the bottom we sifted through the kelp and vegetation, looking for the small abalone clamped to the rocks. The larger ones we pried off using butter knives, and we filled our bags. We looked for fish, too; Andrew saw a large trevally dash past him in the glacial green shadows, and large wrasse slipped through the cloudy water, in and around kelp fronds like phantoms haunting a forest. But we speared none and, after 30 minutes, crawled from the water a few degrees from hypothermic. We shivered ourselves warm again in the summer sun before hiking back up the mountainside to the hostel. Paua require some diligent preparation, and we spent an hour in the open-air kitchen clubbing the snails’ feet with beer bottles to tenderize them for the frying pan. We began cooking at 8:00, when the sun was still high, and it only got fully dark by 10:00. By then we’d packed away a feast of paua, local wine and brown rice. The next night we ate nine paua, and by the time dinner was done we had all decided we could go weeks without any more slippery piles of sautéed sea snail.

The perilous ridge and summit of Mount Cook. Photo courtey of Flickr user Carlos Lopez Molina.

Today, we drove for hours south and west on the coastal Highway 1, a bleak route through suburbs, sprawl, malls and endless offerings of gas and fast food. We saw the ocean just once on our left side, though we were reminded that, not far away, New Zealand’s famed natural beauty glimmered and shined. On the western horizon ran a range of jagged mountain peaks that sawed at the ceiling of clouds like shark teeth—the Southern Alps. We had a few glimpses of Mount Cook, the 12,000-foot peak that bears snow all year and has taken the lives of scores of climbers. We drove through Ashburton, Timaru and Waimate, turned upstream along the Waitaki River, and finally stopped in the river town of Kurow, where a trailer park was all we could find. The wind was howling almost too hard to cast flies, and it began to rain. I gave the river a few casts, then turned my back, but Andrew walked and waded for four hours. He returned an hour before dark and said he saw several large brown trout and received a strike from one, which broke his line. He plans to skip coffee and be on the water again before sunrise. Such is the power of the brown trout, New Zealand’s favorite invasive species.

Next week: A New Zealand fishing report that includes fish.

Milford Sound, in Fiordland National Park, offers some of New Zealand's most thrilling scenery. Photo courtesy of Flickr user Hector de Pereda.

As the Europeans went about settling new lands in the 18th and 19th centuries, there were at least three things they rarely left home without: grapevines, rats and brown trout. The last–Salmo trutta--is a favorite quarry of fishermen everywhere. Though native to western Eurasia, brown trout have been released into watersheds around the globe–but in few places have they thrived, flourished and conquered as they have in New Zealand. Seeing that I’m flying tomorrow to Christchurch, my fly rod is packed.

Years have passed since I’ve taken a proper cast at a wild trout, and now I must step back into the water, for both the North and the South islands of New Zealand host thriving populations of brown trout almost implausibly large and abundant. The fish first arrived in 1867–the brood of English stock–and they took to the almost countless streams and lakes of New Zealand like Himalayan blackberries along an American highway. The browns grew huge–especially at first–sometimes weighing well over 20 pounds, and as they multiplied, they also dispersed; they went to sea, swam up and down the coasts and nosed their way into virgin rivers where few, if any, salmonids had gone before. They devoured local species and generally reset the balance of New Zealand’s aquatic ecosystems. Over time, the brown trout collectively sized down, and today they average three to five pounds–still, very big, and a huge tourist draw. Loved though they are, browns are an invasive species–and in places the government is dealing with them as a pest.

We’ll be touring New Zealand with a guide. His name is Andrew. He’s my brother. He traveled here last January and tells us anyone would be a fool to visit the South Island and not see the cliffs and marine scenery of Milford Sound, perhaps the closest thing the real world knows to the fabled “Cliffs of Insanity” that Andre the Giant and several friends scaled in the film The Princess Bride. The sheer walls of rock that plunge into the deep waters here also skyrocket out of sight, as boatloads of tourists gape from below. Cameras barely do justice in Milford Sound.

Elsewhere in the wilderness of Fiordland National Park, there are few, if any, roads, and the adventurous traveler faces the tempting prospect of vanishing into the mountainous temperate rainforests. From the ocean on the west side and Lake Te Anau on the east, fjords penetrate deep into the Southern Alps of the national park, and Andrew and I are speculating whether to paddle kayaks into Te Anau’s western arms, which wind deep into wild country that few people on Earth ever see.

In our baggage we also have snorkeling gear and wetsuits, with plans to spend many days in the ocean collecting the paua–that’s local vernacular for what most English speakers call abalone–which cling to tidal and subtidal rocks almost as abundantly as barnacles in places. So promises Andrew, who also tells me that the traveler who arrives at a hostel bearing a sack of paua for the cast iron (or a large brown trout for the broiler) is a man for whom new friends will soon arrive.

This two-foot-long brown trout, about to be released, is about as pretty as trout get--and for anglers a top reason to visit New Zealand. Photo by Andrew Bland.

And we’ve packed rain gear. Though we go to New Zealand in the peak of summer, it won’t be dry; the South Island extends into high enough latitude – as far south as 46 degrees – that it intercepts the wettest of westerlies weather much like coastal Oregon and Washington do. Annual rainfall can exceed 300 inches in parts of Fiordland, and if the skies are persistently gray, there’s always the drier, warmer wine country.

Other attractions in New Zealand:

Marlborough Sounds Maritime Park. A second-best by some opinions to Fiordland National Park, this immense region of islands and inlets is located in the very north of the South Island and receives just a fraction of the rainfall that soaks the South Island’s west coast. Towns and villages, and warmer waters, make it altogether a more hospitable place.

Longfin eel. These beasts prowl many of the waterways of New Zealand–and fly fishermen regularly spot them snaking through the shallows along the shoreline. Though seen as fair game by some fishermen, the eels, which may live for a century and grow to six feet, are also a beloved artifice of natural heritage and a declining species, imperiled by destruction of watersheds.

The longfin eel lives in streams and lakes throughout New Zealand. Photo courtesy of Flickr user Tonyfoster.

The glaciers. In the Southern Alps, glaciers like Fox and Franz Josef invite tourists and trekkers to see and even venture onto these massive flows of ice, each remarkable for their relatively low latitude and elevation; both terminate at less than 1,000 feet of elevation, amidst temperate rainforest. Also remarkable, as climate change impacts other glaciers in New Zealand and rest of the world, Fox and Franz Josef glaciers have actually advanced in recent years.

Dolphins at Kaikoura. At this small east coast cape north of Christchurch, tourists may enter the water and swim with groups of the dusky dolphin. The dolphins show no fear of their admirers and will swim within yards of submerged divers, yet just how Kaikoura’s dolphin diving industry may be impacting the animals themselves has become a matter of concern.

The Great Walks. More than a dozen famed hiking trails on the North and South islands take walkers through some of New Zealand’s most tremendous scenery. The Milford Track, for one, leads trekkers deep into the wilds of Fiordland. Due to intense pressure, applications and permits and required for some of the Great Walks.

Kiwi Bird. The five species of New Zealand’s most famous wild creature, in the genus Apteryx, are all endangered. Stewart Island, a wet wilderness off the southern tip of the South Island, offers the best kiwi viewing opportunities.