Penguin biologist Paul Leonard is in South Africa researching African penguins in the wild on Dassen Island, once home to 600,000 penguins. The following is a photo update from the field, where there are only about 8,000 birds today. 

This island is amazing in every sense. The last few days have been educational and rewarding. The team heads out to the colony everyday collecting as much data as we can. Here's what we see…

African penguin burrows




Learn about the time Paul spent nursing abandoned chicks to health at a local rescue facility here.

Follow the adventures of Paul's co-worker, Jo! Aquarium educator Jo Blasi is still on the mainland in South Africa learn about African penguins and raising abandoned chicks at SANCCOB through their chick bolstering project! Read about her experience on the Explorers Blog.

Dassen Island is rich in history and natural wonder. In the early 1900's Dassen, like many other southern African islands, was exploited for its resources. Various species of migratory birds have called them home. As a result, the islands had built up a vast layer of guano (bird droppings). Back then the seabird guano, or "white gold" was revered as a powerful fertilizer for crops. Many islands were strip-mined and countless breeding sites destroyed. What made Dassen unique was that on top of having large guano accumulations, it also had a huge population of African penguins. Penguin guano was not considered to be as good as the other seabirds guano, but the penguins produced another valuable product…Eggs.


Dassen in the 1900s
 
Penguin eggs were considered to be a delicacy and were in high demand. On Dassen, a retaining wall was built all around the island in order to keep the penguins from nesting in its interior. This made the nests easily accessible to the egg collectors. Roughly 600,000 eggs were harvested each year for many decades. People thought that penguins were like chickens and that they would supply endless numbers of eggs. That was not the case since it takes several years for a young penguin to become reproductively mature. The number of African penguins on the island began to drop. In the late 1960's, the egg collection was eventually banned thanks to local protests and campaigns.



Dassen today

Today, Dassen Island is still home to African penguins. However, the population is in trouble. Over the last 10 years there has been an estimated 20,000 penguins living here. In recent years that number has dropped to about 8,000 to 9,000 birds. I'm here to assist the island's stewards in assessing the health of this colony. We are conducting nest surveys, studying breeding conditions and attaching GPS data loggers to several individuals. The hope is that all of this data will help paint a picture of what the African penguin is coping with and what we can do to change it.

Penguin biologist Paul Leonard is in South Africa researching African penguins in the wild. The following is a report from the field. You can learn about the time he spent nursing abandoned chicks to health at a local rescue facility here.



The Storm Petrel is a 6-person inflatable skiff, or "ducky boat." There is nothing cute and cuddly about this little craft. It has two monster outboard engines with a welded steel frame to protect them. The seats have handlebars for people to grip. Apparently, the local coast guard station asked to test-drive this little lady because they were in need of a new boat. They put her through every maneuver they could think of and could not roll her. I looked at this boat and knew that I was about to have one crazy ride.

It was about 7 a.m. We quickly loaded up our gear and drove to Yzerfontein's main harbor. The Storm Petrel was launched and we began our trek to Dassen Island. The seas had calmed down from about 12 feet to 8 to 9 feet. However, they were expected to increase in height and get nasty as the day went on. We had a very small window of time to make it to Dassen. As we made our way past the jetty and breakwater, I began to feel the excitement build. You could just barely recognize Dassen's icon lighthouse on the horizon. Between it and us was this massive, undulating sea. The best way to describe the feeling I had at that moment is for you to imagine yourself being on a rollercoaster. Remember what it's like to head up that first major climb? You're sitting there, fretting over your original decision to get on the ride. You know that in just a few moments that you're going to drop and there's no stopping it. Yeah, that's where I was. I looked ahead and said, "This is going to be awesome!"

And it was!

The skipper did a great job of navigating up and down the ocean swells. About 15 minutes into our crossing, he slowed down and began pointing to the left side of the boat. A humpback whale and its calf were surfacing roughly 100 yards away. They didn't stick around for long. Once they were gone, we continued on our crossing. The trip to Dassen took approximately 30 minutes.

Dassen's main harbor lies on the north side of the island. It is a small, protected cove with a small jetty. There are very few buildings left on the island. The majority of them are concentrated near the main dock. As we climbed on to the jetty, what's the first thing to catch my eye — the penguins!

Today was my last day at SANCCOB. It was truly an inspiring experience! With the help of volunteers from all over the world, this small team of dedicated individuals does it’s best to save one the world’s most famous animals. Here’s how I can sum up my time with them.






 


Next is Dassen Island!

Dassen is a African penguin colony on a flat, sandy island located 5 ½ miles of the coast and is 34 miles north of Cape Town. Dassen was 2^nd largest African penguin colony with roughly 20,000 penguins call it home. However, that has changed in recent years. “Dassen” means “rabbit” in Afrikaans and the people populated it with bunnies so that stranded sailors had food. In the 1900s it was home to more than 1 million African penguins.

It was popular at the time for people to travel to Dassen to harvest penguin eggs. About an estimated 600,000 eggs were harvested each year. Egg harvesting was eventually banned in 1967 largely due to the help of SANCCOB.


Today the island is also home to 10 types of seabirds that have conservation management plans. Over the next 2 weeks I hope to offer my skills and assist wildlife agents in their search for answers to help save Dassen’s African penguins.

After all his daily chores of taking care of abandoned chicks, Paul answered your questions about African penguins! He joined us from the SANCCOB bird rescue facility in Cape Town, South Africa.


Here's the video from that chat.





Do you still have questions?

There are also a couple ways you can ask questions.

• Comment using Facebook at the bottom of this post
• Tweet us at the Aquarium (@neaq) on Twitter
• Or comment using Blogger at the bottom of this post

Thanks for watching!

See what you missed! Our penguin expert Paul Leonard gave a live webcast from South Africa on November 17. He told us a bit about the rescue and rehabilitation programs at SANCCOB, a shore bird rescue and rehabilitation center in Cape Town, and what it takes to save an endangered species.



While volunteering at SANCCOB, his days have been filled feeding and caring for abandoned African penguin chicks through the Chick Bolstering Project. But he plugged in to give us a live update about this special rescue facility and these amazing birds.

This is a post from Paul Leonard from the Aquarium's penguin care team. He traveled to South Africa in the Fall of 2011 to volunteer his time and expertise helping to raise abandoned African penguin chicks at SANCCOB. Click here to learn more about this important sea bird rehabilitation institution.

African Penguin Chicks!

As I mentioned previously, I am fortunate to be heading to the Southern African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds, or SANCCOB for short, in Cape Town, South Africa. This is all thanks to the New England Aquarium and the John H. Cunningham Award. The Cunningham Award gives tenured Aquarium employees the opportunity to explore a project or topic that will enhance their professional development. Each year proposals are submitted and are thoroughly reviewed. Past winners have worked with sea dragons in Australia, went SCUBA diving with whale sharks in Honduras, and have travelled to the Bering Sea to study Northern fur seals.

This year’s frontrunners were Jo Blasi and myself. Our proposals were similar but had very different goals. Jo goals were to come South Africa and learn more about wild African penguins. Mine was to offer my years of penguin experience to African penguin rehabbers and researchers.

Paul inside the New England Aquarium's Penguin exhibit

Hello again! My name is Paul Leonard and I’m a penguin biologist here at the New England Aquarium. I’m going to spend the next few weeks telling you a story about an animal that we all find intriguing and entertaining, the African penguin.