New centre ready to help save penguins

JUST SOME MEDICINE ... Samrec environmental education manager Eddy Molekoa shows Samrec Sea School pupils Andrea Brown (left) and Erin Smith how to feed a stricken penguin. Picture: MIKE HOLMES

New centre ready to help save penguins

2009/09/02
Guy Rogers ENVIRONMENT & TOURISM EDITOR rogersg@avusa.co.za

PORT Elizabeth’s long- awaited marine seabird rehabilitation centre has been launched – just in time, it is hoped, to save the African penguin.

The new SA Marine Rehabilitation and Education Centre (Samrec) was funded by an R8,1-million grant from Lotto. Delays with activating the grant and finalising the environmental assessment and land lease had been frustrating, Samrec co-founder Libby Sharwood said at the launch yesterday. “But today we’re over the moon. It’s so exciting to be standing here today knowing we are in a position to start accepting and rehabilitating stranded marine birds of all kinds.”

Distributed around the southern African coast from Namibia to Algoa Bay’s Bird Island, the critically endangered African penguin population was two million in the early 1800s, but settlers began targeting them for their guano for fertiliser, leaving them without the material they used to nest in and shelter from the elements. Numbers began to slide.

By the turn of the century there were 200000 and today there are about 90000, with St Croix in Algoa Bay the biggest breeding ground with 20000 birds (down from 60000 in 2004).

Situated within the Cape Recife Nature Reserve near the entrance to Pine Lodge, the new centre is thatched and airy, apparently simple but clearly state-of-the-art. Designed to “mirror the flowing lines of the surrounding dunes”, it includes specifications compiled by seabird expert Dr Norbert Klages.

Klages, who is a Samrec trustee, said yesterday:

“Our work will now include rescue missions in which we patrol the islands on a regular basis in conjunction with SANParks and rescue chicks or blues (teenage penguins) which are clearly too weak to survive without aid. We then bring them back to the centre, feed them up and release them.”

Samrec’s first patient, dubbed Hope, is typical of what the centre can expect for their core work. The juvenile African penguin was badly oiled, apparently from a slick in the Port Elizabeth harbour, said Samrec animal manager Jared Harding.

He was found on the North End dolosse and brought to Samrec by conservation NGO Ocean Messengers.

After being tubed with activated charcoal to treat ingested oil, he was drip-fed with an antibiotic and vitamins, blood was taken for research purposes, he was washed and then tucked up with a hot water bottle. When a penguin is oiled, the gunge on the feathers destroys their water-proofing, insulation and buoyancy.

The washing is done by volunteers and after repeated washing over the past few days, Hope was in fine shape yesterday. He did several rounds in the porta-pool for delighted staff and members of the media. Harding said more washing would clean his feathers completely and he would then be released.

Sharwood said once the centre was fully operational, it would be able to handle as many as 2000 birds at a time – in the event of a serious oil spill. “It has been designed to allow the public to view the rehabilitation process without being overly intrusive.

“We want it to be an interactive experience for visitors.”

The centre will also have a “finishing pool” which will feature simulated wave action, seating for visitors and a sunken chamber so the penguins can be watched underwater. A tea room is being built overlooking the pool as part of a drive to make the centre “one hundred per cent tourist friendly”, Sharwood said.

Source:
http://www.weekendpost.co.za/article.aspx?id=465553