African Penguins ride first class back to Bird Island
By Jake Keeton

1. News

On this past Thursday 21 April our White Shark Cage Diving tour got off to an exciting start. We arrived to see a magnificent sunrise reflecting off the mirrorlike water between the boats. Please see our next post to find out what we saw during this cruise. In addition to our usual tour itinerary, we had an extra mission for the day. Two of Sanccob PE Saves Sea Birds team members were joining us to release 9 rehabilitated African Penguins and collect another 3 from Birds Island. The 9 birds had been removed from the island and taken to SANCCOB’s facility at Cape Recife. Some needed to be patched up from seal bites and others simply needed some fattening up. It often happens that young birds do not manage to find enough fish during their first few months of fending for themselves.

Transferring people or birds on and off of Bird Island can be tricky on the best if days. One has to navigate through a surf zone choosing one of two rocky channels for entry and exit. The landing zone itself is shallow and ‘surgey’. On this day the channels were flat calm which made for an easy entrance, the tide however was not in our favour and we arrived to find very little water in the landing zone. Determined to get the penguins home we resorted to plan B. Instead of pulling our boat into the shallow landing zone we decided to pass the boxes containing the birds from the front of our boat (which has the shallowest draft) to the rangers standing on the end of the landing zone wall. With the help of one of our guests, SANCCOB and the SANPARKS Rangers, all the boxes of birds were safely transferred in a matter of minutes.

With the rehabilitated birds safely on the island and the 3 new birds on board we headed to black rocks to continue with our tour.

I must commend SANCCOB’s team members for the amazing job that they did on the day. They were prepared to tend to the penguins needs during the full day on board our boat. Topping them up with much needed fluids at key intervals. Over the years we have witnessed first-hand the amazing work done by SANCCOB’s passionate volunteers, and the results thereof. We look forward to assisting SANCCOB for many years to come.