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It may come as something of a shock to those of us who’ve visited the
penguin colonies just outside Cape Town to learn that these endearing
birds face a daily battle for survival. With their numbers in precipitous
decline, photojournalist Cheryl-Samantha Owen explains what is going
wrong, who is working to put it right, and what we can do to help.
TEXT & PHOTOGRAPHS BY CHERYL-SAMANTHA OWEN
SO LONG,
ᮣ
and thanks for
taking all the fish…
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Scientists worldwide have linked fluc-
tuations in the numbers of fish in the
sea around seabird colonies to their suc-
cess in producing and rearing future gen-
erations. Unfortunately for African pen-
guins, these endemic birds share our
appetite for sardines and anchovies, and
compete directly with both South
Africa’s and Namibia’s commercial fish-
eries. Throughout the 1950s sardines
were fished off South Africa’s west coast
at an increasing and unsustainable rate
until the annual catch peaked at around
400000 tonnes and the stocks collapsed.
By the 1990s the fish had made a come-
back, a result linked to conservative
management practices. Then in 2001 the
sardines disappeared completely, surfac-
ing to the south and east, and leaving
the seabird colonies along the west coast
hungry again.
The oceanography of the west coast’s
Benguela Current is highly complex, and
scientists have put forward two main fac-
tors that could be responsible for the fish’s
eastward shift. First, intensely localised
fishing pressure along the west coast could
have depleted this part of the population,
causing another sardine crash. Second (or
in combination), an increase in sea surface
temperatures in other parts of the ocean is
thought to have changed the distribution
of small pelagic fish. It looks as though the
humble anchovy and sardine have not
escaped the effects of our soaring carbon
emissions.
Seabirds along the west coast rely on
the greater Benguela Current for the rich
banquet of life that it provides, but
scientists have observed that the current
is changing. Its edges are warming and its
route has moved further offshore, which
means that the penguins have to travel
further to reach their prey. An African
penguin’s fishing expedition is limited to
about 20 kilometres from its colony dur-
ing breeding season and when the fish
aren’t there, its chicks starve.
South Africa’s northernmost colonies
have suffered the worst. As the sardines
relocated, the populations of African
penguins at Lambert’s Bay, Malgas and
Marcus islands packed up too. ‘Breeding
adults are site faithful, so they will try to
return to breed at a site even if feeding
conditions get quite poor,’ states Sherley.
It is a sad ending: failing to find enough
food, the birds cannot survive through
the moulting season.
L
ife at sea is not as easy as it once
was either. Today, some parts of the
ocean are afloat with more plastic
than plankton and more globules of oil
than octopus. Heading across the bay
from Cape Town’s bustling waterfront
with our five squawking boxes in tow,
I watched as plastic bags disguised as
jellyfish drifted past the boat and a
rainbow-coloured sheen crept across
the surface. No wonder the penguins
were hesitant about returning to life in
the wild.
Few people living in South Africa in
2000 will forget the wreck of the Treasure,
which affected 19 000 African penguins
when it lost more than 1 000 tonnes of
fuel oil near Robben Island. But oil pollu-
tion is not confined to large spills. Passing
ships that illegally dump contaminated
bilge and ballast water ensure that
SANCCOB has a never-ending stream of
oiled seabirds to care for.
The honking duet of the penguin
pair’s tone-deaf donkey brays reminds
me of the title first given to these Dr
Seuss-like creatures: jackass penguins.
But, as they leap into the sea, it is their
scientific name that springs to mind –
Spheniscus demersus or ‘plunging wedge’.
An unlikely candidate for ‘canary in the
coalmine’ status they may seem, but
these seabirds are indeed critical indic-
ators of ocean health. If we don’t protect
the African penguin before its flightless
plummet catches up with that other
poster bird of extinction, then we risk
losing far more than a comical, endear-
ing endemic bird.
T
wo African penguins teetered on
the edge of their cargo box. Faced
with the blue yonder, they seemed
doubtful about returning to their
natural element. I had already
plunged off the ship and was waiting in
Table Bay’s murky, ice-cold waters to freeze-
frame their freedom jump. A few seconds
later, with some cajoling by a volunteer
from the Southern African Foundation
for the Conservation of Coastal Birds
(SANCCOB), they were submerged, and
two fat black-and-white and cerise-painted
torpedoes streaked through the water.
They were the first two of seven African
penguins and one Cape gannet that were
released back into the ocean near South
Africa’s Robben Island (an appropriate
place for such an occasion) that afternoon.
Some had been rescued as chicks from near
starvation in wild penguin colonies in the
Cape; others were found washed up, weak
and exhausted. Many were suffocating
under a thick wrapping of black oil. The
history of how and why the seabirds
arrived here deserves to be told, as it is
indicative of the global environmental
changes that are taking place around us.
Unique to southern Africa, the popula-
tion of African penguins has plummeted
by more than 95 per cent since the turn of
the 20th century. If African penguins could
tap out a tune, I fear it would be a blues
refrain, lamenting their struggle to find
enough fish to feed themselves and their
offspring, and the tidal wave of pollution
they have to ride every day. Perhaps a few
would even bray about the days when egg
collectors invaded their nests and guano
diggers scraped clean the white gold
(guano) that coated their breeding hab-
itats, removing vital layers of burrowing
material. Though these practices were
banned in 1967 and 1991 respectively,
they had already delivered the first big
blow to the penguin population.
In 1910 there were more than 1.5 (pos-
sibly three) million African penguins.
Today fewer than 26 000 pairs waddle stiff-
legged along beaches in Namibia and
South Africa, and their place on the IUCN
Endangered list means that your last
chance to see wild penguins in Africa may
arrive within the next 50 years.
S
wallowed up to the armpit by thick
coastal scrub, Cuan McGeorge gently
rummages in the undergrowth for a
penguin chick that he’s had his eye on. As
the warden of the Stony Point Nature
Reserve, about an hour outside Cape
Town, McGeorge monitors the condition
of chicks in the penguin colony and
knows exactly which ones are growing fat
and fluffy and those that are not. The
ones in poor condition are quite often
abandoned chicks, which are sent to
SANCCOB to be hand-reared.
McGeorge explains, ‘Late breeders often
start to moult before their chicks can fend
for themselves, and since a moulting pen-
guin cannot swim the youngsters would
starve to death without help. It isn’t easy
deciding whether to remove a chick from
the colony – meddling with nature can
have repercussions we don’t understand.’
With the weak chick safely tucked under his
arm, he talks to onlooking tourists about
the perils seabirds face, and how we have
already interfered with nature. ‘In the race
to save a species,’ he says, ‘this life counts.’
Why the breeding and moulting sea-
sons are not perfectly synchronised, scien-
tists cannot explain, but Stony Point is
the only colony with a population that
has increased substantially (from about
110 to 950 breeding pairs) since 2001.
‘It’s complicated,’ says Richard Sherley,
a biologist at the University of Cape Town
who studies penguins on Robben Island,
‘but the species’ free fall is the result of a
range of pressures, there isn’t one simple
explanation.’ The end of African penguins
is tangible. The last breeding pair disap-
peared from Lambert’s Bay in 2006, and
the colonies at other locations are hang-
ing on by their webbed toes: the Boulders
Beach colony has dropped from 1 054 to
444, Robben Island’s from 8 000 to 1 800
and Dassen Island’s from 25000 to 4 000,
and all within the past 10 years. The dan-
gers to them – overfishing, climate change
and pollution – are not as clearly defined.
Help to save our seabirds
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the species’ free fall is the
result of a range of pres-
sures, there isn’t one simple
explanation
SOUTH
AFRICA
NAMIBIA
BREEDING COLONIES OF AFRICAN PENGUINS
MOZAMBIQUE
Cape Town
Cape TownLüderitz
Walvis Bay
Port Elizabeth
Extant colony
Extinct colony
De HoopDyer Is.
Dyer Is.
Geyser Is.
Stony
Point
Boulders Beach
Seal Is.
Robben Is.
Dassen Is.
Marcus Is.
Seal, Stag & Bird Is.
Jahleel, St Croix & Brenton Is.
Malgas Is.
Jutten & Vondeling Is.
Lambert’s Bay
Ichaboe Is.
Halifax & Penguin Is.
Plumpudding & Sinclair Is.
Mercury Is.
Oyster Cliffs
Neglectus Is.
Possession Is.
Pomona Is.
Sylvia Hill
Hollamsbird Is.
N
!"
ABOVE After fishing expeditions African penguins
return to the rocky shore, though fierce Atlantic
waves sometimes force them to dive back in again.
ᮣ
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58 A F R I C A G EO G R A P H I C • D EC E M B E R 20 1 2
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