Earthwatch 2004 Project: South African Penguins
Diary of Team 2
Day 1: April 19
Met the scientists over lunch at the Clock Tower at V & A Waterfront. It was a good time to meet the Robben Island staff and the Cape Town staff.. We discussed aspects of the project, but generally was a time a getting to know each other.
Provisions were loaded on to the staff ferry, which departed just after 4pm. The ferry mainly carries tourists to visit the Robben Island Museum which is a visit to a part of the past apartheid era as the island served as a prison for political prisoners, including Nelson Mandela. The late afternoon ferry served to take mostly the Earthwatch team and a few children who attend school on the mainland. We arrived at our house – No 12 - which is very comfortable around 5 PM. We unpacked and ate a meal prepared by all.
Our team is small, with Newi (PI), Mark (volunteer from England) and Alda (volunteer from the USA). Sandra (an MSC student from Netherlands) will stay working with us for the two weeks, and will stay throughout the following teams as she is doing additional study on the penguins.
Day 2: April 20
We walked the penguin colony with Mario, the South African government's environmental officer for Robben Island. He and Newi provided Mark and Alda with an introduction to the nests being studied. It was a lovely sunny day, with Table Mountain clear all day and the sea a gorgeous deep blue. The previous team had placed dye marks on approximately 100 birds. We got an good overview of the variety of nesting sites the penguins utilize, ranging from an old refrigerator near the shore to deserted storage sheds to holes dug in the dirt and covered with vegetation or burrows under bushes. We logged whether the adult nesting was banded or dyed and the number of eggs or chicks, including their stage of development, in the nests.
Late afternoon we followed a specified route around the island to complete a census on the herbivores on the island. They include some beautiful elands, bonteboks, springboks, steenboks and fallow deer. It was a great way to get oriented on the island and to also enjoy a beautiful sunset.
Day 3: April 21
It rained a lot through the night and was still raining in the morning when we started for Mario's office to determine what we would be able to complete with the rainy conditions. It was decided the rain provided the perfect opportunity to hop onto one of the tour groups that visit the island. That provided some insight into the significance of this island to South African history as well as its significance as a penguin rookery.
After the 45 minute tour the sun decided to come out and Mario, Newi and Mark completed a round visiting the nests. During the round, the project vehicle decided to have a flat tire. Since there was no spare, the vehicle stayed in place until the late afternoon when Mark and Alda conveniently used its location to provide a blind for completing a late afternoon recording of banded penguins arriving back from the sea.
Day 4: April 22
A slightly late start today, as we had forgotten we had to walk to Mario's office due to the dead Bakkie! Newi headed off to try to get help with the vehicle, while Alda & Mario did the alternate-day nest checking. Mark took advantage of the excellent weather to do some clothes-washing. After lunch, we eventually managed to get some help to change the wheel, but this proved fruitless – the nuts were so tight we snapped the wheel brace in half.
Still, all was not lost – we discovered some bicycles in the shed, and pedalled off briskly to do a road-crossing count in two teams, registering not only the number of penguins returning from sea at a couple of important intersections, but also counting the vehicles (and other animals) passing; this is part of a long-term study on the effects of road traffic on penguin behaviour; the eventual aim is to reduce the number of penguin road deaths (currently running about 4 a week) to an acceptable level.
Once we got comfortable, sitting in the shelter of a bush a little distance from the crossing point, the penguins ignored us totally – wandering about, seemingly unconcerned. Rather than crossing immediately, the penguins would mill about in the road; occasionally, one would realise he had forgotten something, and stroll back the way he had come. Several took short naps in the road, only scattering when a vehicle came trundling through.
All in all, it was a very pleasant way to end the working day, and we pedalled home tired but satisfied.
After dinner, we had a team meeting to determine the plan for tomorrow – do a census of the different wading bird populations on island at high tide, and find another 20 nests to increase our overall sample size (this is mostly to make up for wastage from nest desertions). After a crash course in local ornithology, we called it a night.
Day 5: April 23
We got a bit earlier start as we still were walking down to Mario's office and arrived there at 9. We told Mario about our plan for the day and he agreed. Mark and Mario went to one area of the penguin rookery to look for new nests, armed with more tags and Newi and Alda headed off to another are. A couple hours later all four rendezvoused to compare notes and found that a total of 24 new nests had been identified. Newi and Alda still had one tag left so found one more nest on the way back to Mario's office that had a banded bird.
Mario provided more information about the scheme of the band numbers and it was fascinating to note that birds that had been recovered from oil spills as long ago as 10 years were alive and well as a result of efforts of volunteers who helped clean birds and save them to still be breeding more birds a decade later.
We went back to the house for lunch and to rest up a bit before our afternoon jaunt to circle the island and complete a wading bird population census. And what a gorgeous day we had to do it. There was not a cloud in the sky, including over Table Mt. Newi, Mark, Sandra and Alda headed out around 3:15 PM for the nearest spot on the shore from the house and then the women went one way and the men another to start the adventure. It was great for both teams to enjoy the many birds sighted along the route during the next 3 hrs. We finally met up at the halfway point (a discussion point that was confirmed by bipartisan measurement using the map when we returned). Fortunately, we were able to hitch a ride back with someone who happened to be driving the perimeter road. That gave time for the group to pick up the tire for our dead Bakkie at the harbour, although not enough daylight to actually change the tire. Oh well….a task for tomorrow.
Day 6: April 24
This was a day off for the volunteers, so Alda and Mark both took advantage of the staff ferry transportation to head to the big city. Newi and Sandra stayed on the island to work on Sandra's project and they also took advantage of the day to fill the bakkies sick tire with air and it miraculously stayed inflated.
The waterfront provided a good look at some of the history of Cape Town as much of the old area has been revitalized and is now a tourist attraction. The big city was also fine for some good eating and we brought back some groceries to augment the supply on the island.
Day 7: April 25
This morning we all slept in. Sandra visited her nests during the day with Newi helping her and Mark taking some pictures. Alda headed to Mario's office to do some internet work and then traipsed around the perimeter of the island and explored some of the old WWII gun sites. It was a gorgeous day that ended with a gorgeous sunset. We all walked to the northern side of the island to get the best view. After returning, Newi treated us to a traditional braai (BBQ) of several types of meat and several types of vegetables grilled over a wood fire.
Day 8: April 26
Jenny Underhill, an honors student at U of Cape Town arrived off the early ferry to complete data collecting for her honors project, the long term study on the effect of vehicle traffic on penguin behaviour that the team worked on last Thursday. Jenny will collect data for the next couple days and the EW teams will supplement her study when possible.
Today was a nest-checking day. We decided to break into 3 teams this morning in order to be really efficient. Mark took one area, Newi another and Mario and Alda took the third. We completed the work at different times and some of us moved into the next task of identifying activities of other banded birds that are not on monitored nests.
In the afternoon the team completed retrapping at two designated locations.
Prof Les Underhill arrived in the PM to check on our activities and to interact with the EW team. He stayed the evening so with Jenny, we were six people for dinner. Prof Underhill answered all of Mark and Alda's questions on the various studies previously completed and currently underway on Robben Island. It was very enlightening and gave us both much insight into how the data is being utilized. Another benefit was the increased respect for the African penguin and its ability to overcome the traumatic events they have endured at the hands of man-made situations, i.e. oil spills. A side benefit to Prof Underhill's visit was enjoying the carrot cake his wife baked for us several hours earlier.
Day 9: April 27
Today was beach clean-up day. A designated stretch of beach is cleaned every couple weeks to clear a path free of fishing line and plastic whatevers for the penguins as they transit from water to land. We loaded several bags with trash, but that is a miniscule portion of the garbage that is strewn along every single stretch of beach that surrounds this island. The amount of garbage that covers both beach and inland spaces on this island is staggering. One sees penguins nesting in old refrigerators, alongside plastic bags or transiting from the sea to nest sites through broken glass, rusted cables and plastic bottles.
We completed a moult census along the beach of adult and juvenile penguins. The juveniles in particular are so comical to look at in their various stages of moult. Good thing they don't look in mirrors or surely they'd get a complex.
Jenny continued with her vehicle traffic/penguin behaviour data gathering in the morning and we all got together for lunch.
Today is the 10th anniversary of “Freedom Day” in S. Africa. Some of the team are headed in the Cape Town with anticipation of activities at the waterfront to celebrate the occasion. Alda decided to stay on the island and after dropping Mark, Sandra and Newi at the harbour, she headed for one of the designated retrapping locations. Three hours later, 85 more banded birds were identified. Tomorrow is expected to be another gorgeous day.
Day 10: April 28
The morning was glorious and warm. We checked the nests during the morning and completed some rechecking as we made our way through the different areas.The afternoon we added another hour's worth of statistics to Jenny's vehicle crossing study at all four locations before heading off in the Bakkie to do the rabbit census. We stopped at one point to check on a fallow deer buck that was seen struggling to get up earlier in the day. He still was unable to do so and we will pass the information on to Mario tomorrow.
Day 11: April 29
Dr Rob Crawford arrived on the early ferry and came to the team house where we spent an hour discussing the project before proceeding to Mario's office. It was a day of checking out all kinds of birds besides penguins. Rob was checking on the nesting status of the Hartlaub gulls, the Swift Terns and the Bank Cormorant. Cats have apparently had an effect on the nesting of the ground nesting birds. We saw several nests that indicated the adult birds were killed as well as the eggs destroyed. We also looked for tags on each of the bird species mentioned to pass information back to individuals who are running studies on them.
It was another hot day, so after spending several hours in the open with the gulls and terns we stopped for lunch before going to the pier that is currently home to the Bank Cormorants. The cormorants have been displaced from their previous nesting site near the pier, where some major construction is underway. There are limited areas that are suitable for them on the island.
The afternoon was a freebie for the volunteers, so Mark and Alda each headed off to visit places they hadn't had a chance to see yet or at least to get pictures. One can never get enough pictures of penguins so each added to the many already taken.
Day 12: April 30
This is the last day and also a day to check nests. We divided the areas into four sections so Mario, Mark, Newi and Alda each took an area. Needless to say the checking went quite quickly, which gave Mark and Alda the opportunity to go back to the house to finish their packing and to do the last clean-ups in the house. The 1PM ferry will be the one to take them back to the non-penguin world.
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