Cape Town – You smell the birds before you see them – and then you hear them. There are 17 000 squawking Cape gannets jam-packed on to CapeNature’s three-hectare Bird Island Nature Reserve at Lamberts Bay, preening, feeding chicks or just chilling in the April sunshine.
On Friday, the Bird Island population was swelled by a contingent of dignitaries, officials and CapeNature staff for the opening of the island’s R6.5 million new and upgraded tourist facilities.
There has been a bird hide on the island for many years, where tourists can get up close to watch the gannets through one-way glass, and now there is an exhibition centre – dubbed the “Bone Room” – with skeletal displays of seals, dolphins and a Cuvier’s beaked whale, and an upgraded visitor’s centre with a penguin pool and “touch pools” where you can peer at recreated rock pools and feel a starfish or poke your finger into an anemone.
There is also a recreated bunk room, dark and rather primitive, complete with graffiti, to show how guano collectors lived on the island in the old days.
Bird Island has not been a true island for over 50 years, as it is joined to the mainland by a causeway and visitors simply walk across.
CapeNature chief executive Razeena Omar said at the opening that Bird Island had attracted 31 000 visitors over the last three years. The new features are hoped to boost tourism in the small town.
Visitors would be forgiven for thinking Cape gannets are a thriving species, but scientists tell you otherwise. Bird Island is just one of six islands worldwide that are home to Cape gannets: three in South Africa and three in Namibia. In Namibia, the population plummeted by between 85 to 98 percent in 50 years at all three breeding colonies because of a decline in fish stocks in Namibia. Gannets’ main food source are sardines and anchovies.
Rob Crawford, marine bird specialist and ornithologist at the Department of Environmental Affairs, said Bird Island was a crucial link to the breeding islands of Namibia about 600km to the north.
In the late 1960s Namibia had had 80 percent of the world’s Cape gannet population.
Now the bulk of the population was in South Africa, with 70 percent of gannets on Bird Island in Lamberts Bay and Bird Island in Algoa Bay.
Other threats to the birds include oil spills, avian cholera and predation by seals. In 2005 seal attacks on Bird Island led to gannets deserting the colony entirely. The seals had moved on to the island at night to feed on the birds, killing and eating huge numbers. Now Cape Nature staff manage the seals and keep them off the island.
Economic Opportunities MEC Alan Winde urged West Coast communities to find the uniqueness of an area and then market that as a brand.
He suggested they drop West Coast in their tourism marketing and instead call it Weskus.
“There are lots of west coasts in the world, in Australia in America, but there is only one Weskus. And there is Weskus kreef, Weskus snoek, Weskus wine,” Winde said.
Winde said statistics had shown that during the World Cup, when fans had a day off from sport, most of them had gone up the West Coast.
Cape Times