International effort to aid penguins

FEED THE BIRDS: A group of lesser oiled penguins enjoy their new outside pen, where they have access to a pool and shelter and are fed pieces of fish, after the MS Oliva ran aground, broke apart and spilt oil at Nightingale Island in the remote Tristan da Cunha chain. The penguins had to be moved to make space for the next batch of oiled penguins inside a rehabilitation shed. An oiled penguin can survive for only a few days.Picture: KATRINE HERIAN

FEED THE BIRDS: A group of lesser oiled penguins enjoy their new outside pen, where they have access to a pool and shelter and are fed pieces of fish, after the MS Oliva ran aground, broke apart and spilt oil at Nightingale Island in the remote Tristan da Cunha chain. The penguins had to be moved to make space for the next batch of oiled penguins inside a rehabilitation shed. An oiled penguin can survive for only a few days.Picture: KATRINE HERIAN

Published Mar 28, 2011

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A rescue team is expected to leave Cape Town on Monday to join an international operation to clean up thousands of oiled penguins in the remote Southern Ocean.

The team, from Sanccob (the Southern African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds), is expected to arrive on the tug Singapore at the Tristan da Cunha island chain this weekend.

Nearly two weeks ago the 75 000-ton MS Oliva, carrying soya beans and about 1 400 tons of fuel oil, ran aground then broke apart, leading to a major oil spill around Nightingale Island, midway between South Africa and South America.

The island is part of the chain and is one of the most remote habitated island groups in the world. About 20 000 birds, the majority of them Northern Rockhopper penguins, were estimated to have been oiled in the spill.

Katrine Herian, of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds on Tristan, said the team would bring essential materials for the cleaning operation. These would include frozen fish by the ton, medicines, radiant heaters and portable swimming pools and pens, as well as rodent traps and poison bait.

Herian said all equipment would be new, to avoid the risk of transporting avian diseases to the islands.

She said the treatment of oiled pengiuns would continue on Tristan with 1 400 being fed while heavy seas hampered the transport of birds from nearby Nightingale, Middle and Inaccessible Islands.

Teams on the island planned to move 1 130 lesser-oiled penguins from the recovery shed to an outside pen where they would have access to a pool and shelter. The cleanest penguins were moved on Sunday from the outside pen to the local swimming pool where they would have more access to a pool.

The penguins had to be moved to make space for the next batch of oiled penguins inside the shed.

“There are 22 weaker penguins in the sick bay area of the rehab shed.”

On Sunday the crew from the MV Oliva helped to clear out two unused containers to use as a dedicated sick bay area to free up space in the main rehab shed.

Herian said the priority was to get to all the rookeries on Nightingale and Inaccessible that had been impossible to visit because of bad weather.

“Seven out of the nine rookeries on Inaccessible Island are yet to be visited.

“This will be done as a matter of priority as soon as weather permits.”

She said the penguins were known to breed in large numbers on the shoreline of the outer islands where landing conditions were difficult.

“Such beaches are only accessible to small inflatable boats and will require all the well-known boating skills of the Tristan Islanders to land upon.”

A report on the official Tristan da Cunha website on Sunday said two Sub-Antarctic Fur Seals had been found dead in a polluted tidal pool.

Other seals were spotted heavily covered in oil and two dead birds, Inaccessible Rails, were found near the shore of that island.

The website said it would take the Sanccob team between four and six days to get there as the Tristan da Cunha islands were the most isolated in the world.

Sanccob’s Venessa Strauss said a few days ago that the island’s Northern Rockhopper Penguins represented 70 percent of the species’ global population and was at risk of being oiled.

An oiled penguin can survive for only a few days.

A separate rescue team on board the Smit Amandla from Cape Town arrived at the island last week and began cleaning oiled penguins. - Cape Times

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