Dr. Jessica Kemper is an expert and advocate for the endangered African penguin.  Formerly the head of Section for Namibia's Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources (MFMR) and responsible for the conservation management and rescue of the country's seabirds, Jessica now heads the African Penguin Conservation Project. She continues to research Namibia's dwindling penguin population to find ways to improve their conservation status and runs the Seabird Rehabilitation Center in Lüderitz. Population numbers for African penguins have decreased to just 55,000 today from an approximate 1.5 million figure in 1910.

In this series of posts about an uncooperative African penguin, she retells one particular experience while conducting field research of wild penguins. If you're behind, catch up with Part 1 and Part 2.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009: We arrive at the colony just before sunrise, fully expecting our penguin to be there. Alas, no sign of her. Her chicks have teamed up with the neighbor’s chicks and all four are guarded by one adult penguin. Oh well, it’s only day two, we’ll try again tomorrow morning.

Halifax Island welcome committee: African Penguins tend to be a curious lot. Photo: Jessica Kemper | Namibia Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources

Thursday, February 26, 2009: We arrive at Guano Bay at 6:30 am, but discover that the wind is already too strong to paddle to the island. The sea is whipped into foamy curls all over the bay and we don’t think it is worth the risk of getting blown straight to Brazil. Besides, we’ve got Plan B, the use of the Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources’ research vessel, the !Anichab later that day to do a routine bird census on Halifax Island. Of course the odds of seeing our penguin in the middle of the day are not that great—the best chances are around dawn and dusk when penguins arrive back from sea to feed their chicks. And, as expected, our penguin is not around; at least “our” chicks look well-fed. But what if the wind stays strong and we can’t paddle across again the next morning? Staying overnight at the island is not really an option; there is no shelter on the island and it is covered in bird ticks that cause us to break out in massive, itchy welts. We are not really too keen on that prospect.

Friday, February 27, 2009: Back at Guano Bay at 6:30am. Wind conditions are marginal and we risk the paddle. Katta misjudges a wave and gets bucked off her paddle-ski. Our equipment is packed in waterproof backpacks, so no harm done. On the island we don’t bother to change into our dry clothes but head straight for colony 2. Surely, she has to be back. She isn’t. We stand and wait. Freezing in our wet wetsuits. Scanning the beach. Scanning the colony again from all angles. Then the wind picks up and we have to head back. This time I get dumped in the surf, but that’s not unusual. We drive back with the car heater on full blast. And now we are getting worried.

En route to Halifax: Paddling to “the office” – Katta on the left, Jessica on the right. Photo: Jessica Kemper | Namibia Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources

The wind remains strong throughout the day, but we give it another try in the late afternoon. We drive out to Guano Bay, armed with paddle-skis, wetsuits and my telescope. Perhaps, if we are lucky, we might get a glimpse of her from the shore. We take turns scanning the colony and the landing beach until it is too dark to see anything. Still no sign of our penguin. Neither of us sleeps well that night.

Keep reading with Part 4 of this series, as the quest to find the missing penguin—and GPS logger—continues.

Can't wait, need more penguins right now? Visit the Aquarium! It's the summer of Penguinology right now. So not only will you be able to observe more than 80 penguins, you'll be able to learn the most wild and surprising facts about these beloved birds. 

Dr. Jessica Kemper is an expert and advocate for the endangered African penguin.  Formerly the head of Section for Namibia's Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources (MFMR) and responsible for the conservation management and rescue of the country's seabirds, Jessica now heads the African Penguin Conservation Project. She continues to research Namibia's dwindling penguin population to find ways to improve their conservation status and runs the Seabird Rehabilitation Center in Lüderitz. Population numbers for African penguins have decreased to just 55,000 today from an approximate 1.5 million figure in 1910.

In this series of posts about an uncooperative African penguin, she retells one particular experience while conducting field research of wild penguins. Read Part 1 for an overview of the research project.

Monday, February 23, 2009: It is 7:00 am and Katta and I just paddled to Halifax Island from Guano Bay on our paddle-skis, a 10 minute trip. The weather is still calm, but the south wind, for which this region is world-famous, is about to come up, making the paddle back to the mainland difficult, if not plain dangerous. We are scanning Penguin Colony 2 for a potential candidate to carry our GPS logger and settle for a penguin at the northern edge of the colony—easily accessible, in good condition, two healthy downy chicks. I leopard-crawl into the colony, trying not to upset the general peace, and slowly grab our penguin. An easy catch.

Halifax Island: Halifax Island in southern Namibia, home to about 6,000 African penguins. Photo: Jessica Kemper | Namibia Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources

After retreating some 20 m from the colony, with my victim held securely under my arm, we quickly weigh and measure the bird, a female. While I gently but firmly hold the bird across my lap, her eyes covered, her heart racing, but not struggling to get away, Katta expertly fixes the small device to the lower back of the penguin by weaving strips of Tesa® tape into the feathers and wrapping the loose ends over the logger. The beauty of this method is that the logger can be taken off again without any damage to the feathers; that’s important because feather damage would compromise the bird’s waterproofing and therefore its survival, clearly not what we intend. The seawater will eventually take its toll on the effectiveness of the tape and after a week or so the tape will start to come apart. But that’s not a problem for us, because we will collect our logger again long before this becomes an issue.

Five minutes later the logger is securely affixed and I release our penguin next to her nest. Usually a penguin quickly settles back at the nest with the chicks, breathes a sigh of relief and carries on contemplating life, but this time our bird just takes off, dashing through the colony, panic-stricken, away from me, away from her chicks. From a distance we watch the nest for a while, hoping our penguin would return, but she is nowhere to be seen. With the south wind picking up we decide to call it a morning and paddle back to land and a hot cup of tea. I am left with a niggling feeling that we have a particularly uncooperative bird on our hands. Catching her again to take the logger off might be tricky now that she knows what to expect.

Keep reading with Part 3 of this series, where the researchers return to the island for their first attempt to retrieve the GPS logger. Things don't go entirely as planned!

Can't wait, need more penguins right now? Visit the Aquarium! It's the summer of Penguinology right now. So not only will you be able to observe more than 80 penguins, you'll be able to learn the most wild and surprising facts about these beloved birds. 

Dr. Jessica Kemper is an expert and advocate for the endangered African penguin.  Formerly the head of Section for Namibia's Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources (MFMR) and responsible for the conservation management and rescue of the country's seabirds, Jessica now heads the African Penguin Conservation Project. She continues to research Namibia's dwindling penguin population to find ways to improve their conservation status and runs the Seabird Rehabilitation Center in Lüderitz. Population numbers for African penguins have decreased to just 55,000 today from an approximate 1.5 million figure in 1910.

In her following guest posts, she will share a bit about working with wild penguins.

My name is Jessica and I am a penguin biologist. I live in the pretty little harbor town of Lüderitz on the southern coast of Namibia. Most of my fieldwork takes place on Halifax Island, home nearly 6,000 African penguins and about 10 km west of town as the crow flies.

For the last eight years my colleague Dr. Katrin Ludynia, aka Katta, from the University of Cape Town in South Africa has teamed up with me for a project that involves deploying GPS data loggers on unsuspecting breeding African penguins. These loggers regularly record over time the position of a penguin as well as other information such as time, dive depth and water temperature. This in turn provides important insights on penguin foraging areas, habitats, ranges and behavior which are vital for guiding conservation management of this endangered species.

Logger arriving and greeting partner: Home after a foraging trip, a penguin  bearing one of our GPS loggers arrives back in its nest. Photo: Jessica Kemper | Namibia Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources

The general idea is to equip a penguin with such a device for about two days to obtain precise details of one foraging trip. The device is small enough not to be a burden to the penguin, but it also means that it is limited in terms of how much data can be stored; its battery life span is about three days. The device has to be retrieved in order to download the data and great care is therefore needed to choose a penguin that is likely to return to the colony after a foraging trip. Katta and I have done this many, many times and by now are pretty good at choosing the right penguin to carry our precious piece of equipment.

How to select the perfect candidate…the trick is to find an accessible (but not isolated) nest with a relaxed-looking penguin caring for one or two well-fed, medium- to large-sized downy chicks. At this stage of chick development, African penguins are strongly bonded with their offspring and the chicks are still small enough to be looked after by one parent (while the other one is away foraging, usually for about a day). Choosing smaller chicks is unwise, as the disturbance created by catching the parent may cause nest abandonment at that stage. Small chicks are also at greater risk of being viciously attacked by upset penguins nesting next door or by marauding kelp gulls while the parent is being equipped. Choosing chicks close to fledging age may also be problematic; at that stage parental commitment may be abating as the chicks are subtly encouraged to start fending for themselves.

Keep reading with Part 2 of this series. Everything starts out according to plan, but the researchers quickly realize they are working with an unusual penguin!

Can't wait, need more penguins right now? Visit the Aquarium! It's the summer of Penguinology right now. So not only will you be able to observe more than 80 penguins, you'll be able to learn the most wild and surprising facts about these beloved birds. 

When people find out that I work at the Aquarium, there is no shortage of questions and interesting small talk. I often get asked: “Is it true that a child stole a penguin and brought it home in his backpack?”

Don’t be alarmed. All of our penguins are present and accounted for and this story is a common urban legend that has been circulating for years.

All penguins present and accounted for!

While the details vary from telling to telling; the main gist of the story is that a child wearing a backpack gets separated from their family or school group. Once reunited the child wants to go home. At home the child goes and takes a bath. After hearing lots of splashing in the tub, the parents check in and are surprised to find a penguin in the tub with the child. The penguin is immediately returned to the Aquarium and the embarrassed parents reprimand their child.

As crazy as this story sounds many people are fooled into thinking that it’s true. Here are a few key reasons why this could not really happen at our Aquarium:

• First: the design of our exhibit makes it pretty difficult for a person to get in and out unnoticed. All penguin personnel wear wetsuits in the exhibit every day to feed and take care of our penguins and a soaking wet child would be quite noticeable. 

As you can see, the volunteers are wading around the exhibit in a wetsuit, while visitors look on from above.

• Second: penguins are quite vocal when being picked up and transported. It is doubtful that a penguin in a backpack would go quietly.  

• And most importantly is the fact that our penguins like most wild animals do not like to be handled or picked up. Although relatively small, our penguins are very strong, and would put up a fight. As staff, we are trained to handle them safely. But even with our skills the penguins will occasionally bite us. It seems pretty unlikely that a child would be able to capture a penguin and force it into a backpack and come out unscathed.  

Educator Jo Blasi wears a glove and forearm protectors while volunteering with  a penguin rescue program in South Africa.

Since so many people asked about this myth in 2006 we held a press conference, to assure the public that none of our penguins were penguin-napped.

Learn more about the penguins at the Aquarium:

• Check out our Penguinology program happening this summer!
• Learn how these animals are hand fed in the exhibit
• When the penguins are transported, it's not in backpacks

Better yet, come visit!

Often while in the penguin exhibit we hear visitors ask if we have macaroni penguins. At first this may sound quite weird. Is there even a species of penguin called the macaroni and if there is, why would they be named after a type of pasta?

Macaroni penguin

Well, there is in fact a species of penguin called the macaroni penguin (Eudyptes chrysolophus). They are one of the 7 penguin species in the crested penguin family. All seven species have characteristic yellow crest feathers on their heads. Southern rockhoppers (Eudyptes chrysocome) are members of the crested penguin family, which are often confused for macaronis at the Aquarium. One distinct difference between macaroni penguins and rockhoppers is how their crest feathers are “styled”.  Rockhoppers have crest feathers that start over their eyes like eyebrows and then branch off the sides of their heads while the more golden or orange crests of a macaroni penguin start at a point above their beaks and flair out past the eyes. Macaroni penguins also have larger, blunter beaks; stand over 2 feet tall and can weigh up to 14 pounds.

Southern rockhopper penguin

Both rockhopper and macaroni penguins have very large distributions ranges in the sub-Antarctic region and overlap in many locations like the Falkland Islands and other sub-Antarctic Islands like Kerguelen Island, Prince Edward and Marion Island. They also share many distinct behaviors. Both types of penguins are surface nester, meaning they build nests on open surfaces by collecting rocks, twigs and whatever else they can find. They also lay dimorphic eggs which mean the two eggs a female will lay will be noticeably different sizes

Ecstatic display by one of our rockhopper penguins

To impress a mate both types of penguins will perform ecstatic displays consisting of a bow forward, extension the head and neck straight up followed by loud vocalizations and shaking their heads back and forth displaying their beautiful crest feathers.



Now the burning question: how did the macaroni penguins get such a silly name?

Macaronism was a style of dress popular in 18th century Europe, consisting of elaborate outfits, oftentimes including hats with large ornate feathers on them. People who adopted this style were called macaronis. In the early 19th century, English sailors on the Falkland Islands saw macaroni penguins with their elaborate crest feathers and named them macaronis.

The line “He put a feather in his cap and called it macaroni” from the song Yankee Doodle also refers to that fancy fashion style.