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Published: September 2nd 2015
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This week I realised I needed to perfect the art of penguin handling...
Monday I had a fantastic day in general, which involved more time contemplating life and being thankful my normal day job is not a wall scrubber or a window cleaner. I cleaned all day, prepared food and liquidised fish for the Penguins,and did a lot of laundry. I was still, of course happy to help and these jobs need to be done and make you appreciate them being done when you are working directly with the Penguins.
On Tuesday Lou and I had a day off and left for Robben Island, an island off the coast of Cape Town that used to be a prison for political prisoners, and before that a leper colony. It's most famous prisoner was Nelson Mandela, who was sent there before being set free to become president. We had a very sicky boat tour across but arrived on the Island in the beautiful sunshine. The first part is a bus tour, and then we had a tour inside the high security prison, and we were taken around by an ex-inmate. It was harrowing to hear his stories, of the times he was
tortured whilst he was fighting for human rights. My eyes welled up as he rejoiced in the fact that his grandchildren can now ride on whichever bus they want, and go to whichever school they choose, and that black South Africans can play football all over the world. We saw Nelson Mandelas cell, and afterwards we returned to see some very fat cape seals lazing in the sunshine on the side of the harbour. Lou and I sipped wine and ate calamari and basked in the glorious South African sunshine.
Wednesday to Friday Lou and I were lucky enough to travel to Dassen Island, an uninhabited penguin Island, an hour north of Cape Town. The Island is closed to the public, and is a nature reserve, but Lou, Katta the penguin researcher and I were there to place as many transponders as possible in 3 days. We took a fishing boat over to the island on the most crazy boat ride ever, it was like being on a banana boat for 40 mins. As we jumped over the waves and my stomach was going nuts. However, to watch the wild Penguins and seals swim around you in the water
was an unbelievable experience. We arrived at the island, and we were met by Marleen, who is the islands only inhabitant, apart from 2000 Penguins, thousands of tortoises, a pelican colony, and many many other seabirds. Marleen is employed to keep them all safe and conduct research. There was also another penguin researcher, Leisha, on the island for the week. We unpacked in our little researchers house, which had a few hours of power in the evening, and no running water or hot water. It was in a amazing location, surrounded by wildlife, away from the buzz of Cape Town.
We started transpondering, which I can only describe on Dassen Island as like a giant Easter egg hunt. We wandered around the island, looking in burrows and under bushes, trying to find penguins. When we did, we removed the adults and/or chicks, and did the measurements for research and placed the transponders in them. The island is totally different from Stony Point, with sandy burrows, high stinging nettles, wild lillies growing and hardly any trees. All around you was water and beaches, and every now and again you would see a whale breach out of the water or spout
air out into the sky. I was in my actual element basking in the sunshine, wandering around searching for Penguins. Katta was bitten to death by The adults, but we worked hard and placed nearly 50 transponders on our first day.
Lou had a go placing some of the transponders and doing the measurement, and then she was given the job of being chief penguin holder, mostly of the cute fluffy chicks. They are much less bitey, and sit looking bewildered at being removed from their comfy nests then being suspended in mid air to be weighed, believing they can fly.
At lunchtime and in the evenings, we lay in the beach, soaking up the island life. In the evenings, we sat watching the sun set and the Penguins return from the sea to their nests. How lucky we were to be given this unique experience on penguin paradise. It is so lovely to see the birds in their natural habitat.
We had 3 days of back to back sunshine, and by the end we had tagged nearly 100 Penguins. On Thursday I got pooped on by an overflying gul, which aimed right down my neck, and
I had to wait to finish transpondering the penguin before I could wipe it. Yum. On Friday we stopped off at the islands little museum, which had a photo of the island when there were over 1 million Penguins on it. There is a man, standing on a rock, surrounded by Penguins, and you can't even see the floor. The population on Dassen is now 2000 breeding pairs, and is still crashing. In the 1960's, the first crash of numbers was due to the collection of eggs, then guano fertiliser harvesting, and today, overfishing. Even the comparison of the photos of Penguins from 2005 to now is scary. It made me realise just how important this research is going to be for the future of this species. On the way back home, we took an underweight penguin chick back to SANCCOB to be fed up for a month, and we had him on our boat in a cardboard box, as wild seals cruised the waves next to us. An opportunity few people in the whole world ever get to do.
After returning to Cape Town, on Saturday Lou and I were back at SANCCOB. I worked in Pen 3
with the Penguins who are in final stage of rehab before their release. Working with the Penguins at the centre is utterly fascinating, and plopping them into the pool for their hour long swim still never gets old. These birds are graded weekly for their feather coverage and waterproofing, and are swam 3x daily for an hour. We had lots to do all day:meds, nebulising, tubing, swimming and feeding. Today, I was taught how to hand feed the Penguins, which is harder than it sounds! The Penguins don't normally free feed, so need to be force fed, and each bird has a different number of fish he needs. Some of them are really fat! I learnt how to feed the hungry juveniles first, before moving onto the more wriggly, difficult adults. There is a tipping point when feeding fish where they will just gobble it down by themselves, but let go too early, and they will spit it out all over the floor and you have to start again. You would be amazed how many whole fish a little penguin can fit into his stomach.
As I went to grab an adult to feed, I was so focussed on
getting the right bird, that I failed to notice the group of angry adults to its left. As I bent down, one of them lunged at my face and bit me on the schnoz! It went right in the inside of my nostril. My eyes watered and my nose bled, but I was grateful it wasn't my eye. Lesson learnt. Don't mess with a hungry African penguin.
Sunday Matt arrived at 9am, but sadly our booked skydive was cancelled due to the weather being too windy. Instead we decided to climb Table Mountain, and what a stunning way to view the city. We walked up the most direct but steepest route, and the views were breathtaking. On the way up, a man was sitting on a rock and shrieked when he saw my face.
"Oh my goodness, what happened to your face?" He asked.
Not sure many people gave the answer I did, of being pecked on the nose by a penguin!
We hiked all the way to the top, and looked out across the mountains, bays, islands and city from the sky. We took a lot of obligatory touristy photos, before heading down the steep
route, whilst the cloud closed over the mountain and the sun began to set.
My arms are covered in penguin bites and scars, and my nose is very bruised and unsightly. However, slowly but surely, Lou and I are turning into useful volunteers who can really make a difference in saving this lovable, ridiculous, beautiful species from extinction.
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