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.

On October 5, 2011, a Greek-owned container ship, MV-Rena, ran aground on Astrolabe Reef in the Bay of Plenty off the east coast of the North Island of New Zealand. The ship was carrying 1,300 containers of cargo (some containing hazardous materials) as well as an estimated 600,000 gallons of heavy fuel. At present over 100,000 gallons have spilled from the crippled ship onto New Zealand beaches while salvage crews are racing to get the remaining fuel and cargo off the ship before the weather changes and the ship breaks up.


MV Rena
Credit: Bay of Plenty Regional Council

The Bay of Plenty, named by explorer James Cook in 1769, is as its name suggests: an area of abundant natural resources and species. The area is home to many species of seabirds including little blue penguins and the endangered New Zealand dotterel as well as seals, whales, dolphins and many coastal fish species.


Little blue penguin
Credit: Blair Harkness

New Zealand dotterel
Credit: Chris Gin, via Wikimedia Commons

So far over 100,000 gallons of fuel has hit the local beaches and is now cleaned up due to the hard work of volunteers. Over 1,200 birds have been found dead and another 200 are being treated at a rehabilitation facility set up by Massey University.


Beach cleanup
Credit: New Zealand Defense Force

The big fear now is that if all the fuel is not pumped off the ship before it breaks up on the reef there will be more environmental damage.If you would like to view up to the minute reports about the spill and the salvage process check out the Maritime New Zealand web site. WWF-New Zealand is also involved in the spill recovery and fundraising efforts.

The penguin team is hoping for positive salvage efforts and the avoidance of more environmental damage from the Rena. Fingers crossed.

— Heather

To a human the six fiberglass islands in the penguin exhibit don’t look very comfortable, but to a penguin they are heaven. But you still may wonder, “Where and how do the penguins go to sleep at night?”


Penguin islands

The penguins stay on exhibit overnight and sleep right on the islands. They can even sleep while floating in the water. During a visit to the Aquarium you might catch a glimpse of the penguins taking naps during the day. They can sleep either lying down or standing up on the rocks and sometimes when they are standing up they will tuck the beak under the wings.



Asleep laying down


Asleep standing up


That’s not a headless penguin; he just has his head tucked behind his wing.

When it’s time for the lights to go off we even simulate sunrise and sunset. The exhibit lights are on a timer so they turn on and off at designated times of the day based on local sunrise and sunset times. This is called a photoperiod. The penguin exhibit day lengths vary depending on the season (longer days in the summer and shorter days in the winter). This helps the penguins maintain a healthy life cycle that will cue them into their breeding and molting seasons. {link to breeding and molting blogs}



Pleasant dreams!

- Andrea

This guest post comes to you from Sam Herman of the Aquarium's Visitor Experience department. You may know him from the Exhibit Galleries Blog, where he's posted about fish-eating jellies and airborne right whale skeletons. Sam has also had the opportunity for the past year to cross-train in the penguin department, giving educational presentations from within the exhibit.

If you’re a regular blog reader, you probably already know how we tell our penguins apart in the exhibit – their color bracelets! As Andrea has discussed in this previous post on the Penguin Blog, African penguins can be identified by their unique, fingerprint-like spots on the chest and belly. However, that’s pretty difficult to see when they’re swimming around (and a lot harder to memorize!) so instead we put bracelets on the penguins’ wings to make it easier. We also use the bracelets to identify gender, left wing bracelet means it’s a male and right wing bracelet means it’s a female.


A male and female penguins in the exhibit, note the bracelets on their arms.

As you can imagine there are a lot of different color patterns to remember! Sometimes, it becomes just a tad bit harder because we’ll change a bird’s bracelet. This may not seem like a great idea since everyone has already memorized the name/color combination, but it’s actually a very important change! African penguins are an endangered species and one way that the New England Aquarium is helping to protect them is by participating in a breeding program called the Species Survival Plan. When the color is changed it is usually done to indicate that we have a new, successful SSP breeding pair on exhibit!


Ichaboe (left) and Spheniscus (right)

After the past breeding season, we had an actual color change happen. We’re glad to report that Spheniscus (female) and Ichaboe (male) have had their second successful breeding season as an SSP approved pair and Spheniscus officially changed her colors. In the past she was purple and white on her right wing, she now has black and orange bracelet to match Ichaboe’s color pattern. She was chosen to change because there is already a male with purple and white bracelet: both she and her brother Demersus had the same color pattern because their names, when combined together, create the scientific name of the African penguin – Spheniscus demersus.


Spheniscus wearing her special new wing bracelet

So next time you’re at the Aquarium, see if you can see two African penguins with orange and black bracelets. While you’re at it, keep an eye out for all eight juveniles hatched during the 2011 breeding season.

See you in the galleries!

- 
Sam