Save the World, Save the Penguins

I fell in love with penguins years ago and that love has only grown over the years.  I first met a penguin named Mitty on a layover to Tanzania while in Dubai where there is a penguin habitat ( http://skidubaipenguins.com/) in the mall.  It’s in Ski Dubai which is a ski slope in the mall, this is an  impressive feat but I was mostly interested in the penguins.

While only into the 1st year of my volunteer once a year commitment, I started to think about how to get penguins into my volunteering plans.  After returning to Dallas from Tanzania I met with a group of previous volunteers who worked with GlobalVolunteers and several mentioned EarthWatch volunteer opportunities which was my first introduction to EarthWatch.

EarthWatch volunteer projects are more focused around conservation and provide value through data collection for the purposes of scientific analysis and evaluation, also known as citizen science. Citizen science is a way for those of us without degrees in research to contribute to scientific findings and research.  This is an amazing way for people to become directly involved with conservation and scientific research without formal training in those areas, all training is generally provided within the scope of a volunteer project.

A quick search of the EarthWatch site and I found two penguin research opportunities one in Argentina (http://earthwatch.org/Expeditions/Trailing-Penguins-in-Patagonia) and one in Cape Town (http://earthwatch.org/Expeditions/South-African-Penguins) on Robben Island. The proximity to Cape Town won me over and I started to look into the volunteering opportunities on Robben Island.

The research has been ongoing for over a decade on the island and is focused on chick survival rates and overall population growth for the colony.  The island previously covered in penguins with estimates from the early 1900s up to 1.5 million penguins, the population has been in significant decline in the past decades, with the population now counted in the thousands.

While it’s nearly impossible not to see penguins somewhere on the island if you drive or walk around, especially in the morning and evening, there are not nearly as many as there once was.  Those who have worked no the project for years can describe the decline based on areas where penguins used to gather in large numbers.  A specific point is a place once called “Penguin Tree” which was a large cachet of penguin chicks where there would be dozens at any time there.  This tree no longer has dozens of chicks but is still remembered as a landmark by those who have been on the project for several years.

The Robben Island EarthWatch project is a partnership with the Animal Demography Unit (http://www.adu.uct.ac.za/) from the University of Cape Town.  There has been research published based on the data collected from the EarthWatch project regarding chick survival rates and the impact of outside factors such as the fishing industry.  There is a link to the research in the list at the end of this post.  In summary the finding that restricting the fishing industry contributed positively to chick survival rates, it did not increase the overall colony population.  This would indicate that the fishing areas are only one aspect to consider when working to increase the colony population and saving the South African penguin from extinction.

This post is the beginning and introduction to my participation in the EarthWatch project on Robben Island.  I’ll share insights into the scientific measurements about chicks (P0 to P4 Scale) and other interesting challenges and insights from the trip.  Since the trip I was on was the 3rd Team in 2018 in EarthWatch I’ll tag these posts as EWT32018 and related posts should show here https://travellearnsavetheworld.com/tag/ewt32018/ .

Additional Resources:

Research paper regarding the results of a no-fishing zones implemented around Robben Island based on data gathered from this project: http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/11/7/20150237

Smithsonian article about the Robben Island research: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/make-way-for-the-african-penguins-62475743/?no-ist=

SANCOBB’s website, this is a partner organization that helps save seabirds around Cape Town with veterinarian and rehabilitation facilitates with the goal of releasing injured seabirds (Penguins, Seagulls, Gannets, etc…) back into the wild: https://sanccob.co.za/

Research paper about survival rates of hand rear South African penguin chicks (Paper co-authored by the team lead I had while on Robben Island, Nola Parsons): http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0110794