Fiordland biologist Ken Tustin has taken down his last remaining set of cameras near Dusky Sound that were put up with the hope of photographing one of Fiordland's remaining moose. However bringing down the cameras is not the end of Mr Tustin's life-long passion for the Fiordland wilderness.

Mr Tustin has been strategically placing motion-triggered cameras in Fiordland since 1994 with the hope of capturing an extremely rare moose. 

The species was introduced in Fiordland at the turn of the century but didn't adapt as well to the area as other hunting animals such as red deer. Mr Tustin said his own attempts to sight a moose had been difficult because there were so few of them in such a large area like Fiordland, paired with the fact that they usually spend their time alone.

Mr Tustin said the challenge in trying to see a Fiordland moose "eyeball to eyeball" was that decades could be spent understanding each moose's own annual circuit before getting the chance to be strategically placed across a moose's path.

Such is the case with Mr Tustin's latest efforts to visually spot one of Fiordland's remaining mooses. Mr Tustin's research had mapped that a specific moose annually passed through the Herrick Creek area near Dusky Sound's Wet Jacket Arm for one week for sometime between July and August. 

However, over the last couple of years there were no signs the moose had made its expected pass through the area, which had given Mr Tustin reason to believe the animal had died. 

He went to the area on Thursday (November 16) to collect the remaining dozen cameras, review the footage — over the years he has also gleaned detailed information about the life cycles of deer from photographs taken — and give the cameras a refurbish.

That's not to say Mr Tustin hasn't encountered evidence he said was scientifically strong enough to show that species hadn't died out in the park. Two hair samples were genetically confirmed to come from a moose in the early 2000s, and Mr Tustin said he was able to identify moose browsing patterns on trees. With no other animals in the area as tall as a moose, their eating patterns easily stood out. 
While the dream of seeing this particular moose is gone, Mr Tustin said he wasn't dwelling on it. He and his wife, Marg — who have spent decades doing field research together in Fiordland — still had plenty of other passion projects to carry out in the park, including seeing a moose in the flesh. 

Their passion was part of a larger "adventure with a purpose" that kept bringing them back into the national park.

"That's it. The end of an era," Mr Tustin said as he took down the last camera near Herrick Creek. 

"Well, the pause of an era."