Earthwatch 2004 Project: South African Penguins
Diary of Team 3
Day 1: May 17
Team member Paul van Orden's lost backpack from the previous Friday night's flight from the United States on KLM arrived one hour before meeting the Earthwatch Team at the Nelson Mandela Gateway to Robben Island. He made it on time with his belongings, hopefully saving the team potentially lost time dealing with the airline and purchasing replacement items.
At the Nelson Mandela Gateway to Robben Island the Earthwatch staff met with the two volunteers participating in Team III (2004) for introductions and basic background on the upcoming two weeks. Present at the meeting were volunteers Kate Atwell from the Bristol Zoo in the UK and Paul van Orden from the Portland Oregon in the US. The experienced team members present included Leshia Upfold of Marine and Costal Management of Cape Town; Mario Leshoro the Environmental Conservation Officer for Robben Island; Sue Kuyper with the University of Cape Town; Les Underhill Professor at the University of Capetown; and Marienne de Villiers of Post Doctoral at University of Cape Town. After the short introductions the conversation opened up to a more general biological and environmental topics.
It was quite obvious that the group of assembled people at the table, including the volunteers, had a great deal of professional experience to bring to the Earthwatch effort. The project looked to be a wonderful opportunity for Paul and Kate to learn a great deal about all the work that the others assembled at the table had been engaged in for many years on both Robben Island and in the surrounding ecosystems near Cape Town.
Jane Underhill arrived with the provisions for the team and soon the Kate, Paul, and Leshia were off on the Makana catamaran for Robben Island. Paul and Kate learned that it was a nice benefit to be heading out on one of the newer catamaran style tourist boats then on one of the older boats, such as the Dias. The catamarans take 25 minutes to get to the island, the Dias can take a full hour. The trip to island was slightly foreboding as the visibility from the fog was no more then15 or 20 meters.
The group received a brief review of the layout of the island and settled in at the Marine and Costal Management home base on the island. Already at the house were Univ. of CapeTown Doctoral student Newi Makhado and an additional volunteer Ariane Jeussen.
Day 2: May 18
The group met first thing in the morning with Mario Leshoro. Mario has a great deal of knowledge about Robben Island as he is generally working on the island almost everyday of the year. Mario, Kate, Leshia, and Paul were off for the first visit to the area on the island that the African Penguins have been banded in. The effort to check the marked nests started in the area around the “Kramat”. The Kramat is a shrine or mosque that has been erected to pay respect to one of the early political prisoners on the island who was an Imam. His actual grave site was quite close to the actual location of the kramat. Kate and Paul had the opportunity right from the beginnings of their first day to band penguins. Kate had experience with African Penguins back at the Bristol Zoo, but this was Paul's first opportunity to deal with the ornery little chaps that these gents can be.
The afternoon was spent doing re-traps; reading numbers of bands of nesting birds to assess how rehabilitated birds are doing after release.
Later in the day a game census was undertaken. As the sun set, we drove around the island, counting the number of springbok, steenbok, bontebok, fallow deer, eland, ostrich and rabbits we saw on the way round. We were lucky enough to see specimens of all the species, except the ostrich. We also counted a number of cats on the route.
Day 3: May 19
The morning was spent finishing the checking of the Earthwatch project nests on the Perimeter Road area. We found one penguin that had been badly injured by a seal bite. It was left in the shade ready for transportation to SANCCOB later. Unfortunately, it was dead on our return. Four juvenile Cape cormorants and a juvenile penguin arrived from SANCCOB and were released. The cormorants were released on the jetty by the Bank Cormorant nesting colony, so we took the opportunity to count the nests there. Around 70 nests were found, all containing eggs.
In the afternoon the three of us split and were each stationed at a different point the penguins use as a regular road crossing. We were counting how many penguins went to sea and returned every five minutes. We also counted the number of vehicles and pedestrians using the roads.
Day 4: May 20
Today we started by doing a clean-up of one of the island's beaches, primarily used for entry to the sea by the penguins. Five bags of rubbish and a tyre were removed today! On the way along the beach we found two seal bite victims. One was so badly injured it was left to fend for itself. The other was captured and sent to SANCCOB. Another injured penguin was seen but we were unable to catch it. Four more penguins were found dead from seal attacks on the beach.
At this point the group split. Paul met Les Underhill to do the wader count. Leshia and Kate counted all the moulting birds on the beach and joined Newi, Ariane, Mario and Janet in the annual penguin census. They then spent the late afternoon driving around counting the rabbits on the island and Kate got to see the Ostriches for the first time! Two pairs were seen near the airfield.
Day 5: May 21
Today we spent the whole day checking the Earthwatch nests. We were able to tag many with red tags, meaning these are confirmed metal banded, unbanded, rubber banded or a mixture of metal and rubber banded pairs. We were able to get some re-traps on the way round too! Kate spent some time in the evening entering data onto the nest cards back at the house.
Day 6 and 7: May 22 and 23
Days off for Paul and Kate, who returned to the mainland. Kate caught the train over to Simonstown with Newi and a friend to visit the Boulders beach penguin colony. Another hot day and a true taste of Africa as we travelled third class on the train and were entertained by an Afrikaans preacher for much of the journey!!
Day 8: May 24
Another day of checking Earthwatch nests. This time we went a bit quicker and were finished soon after lunch. Outside Mario's office, we bumped into Janet, a UCT student studying the Hartlaubs gull colony. She had seen a mole snake over at the colony, so we drove over to see if we could spot it. Unfortunately it was long gone, but we were able to get a close look at some gull chicks and see some Swift terns too.
After visiting the harbour shop we went over to the main penguin highway which they use to go to the sea and back inland. Here a fence and gate system had been set up over the weekend, which allowed us to catch penguins as they returned from sea. We set up some fish line to use to spring the gates and trap the penguins in the tunnel. Ten penguins were then boxed up and caught one by one to have their stomach contents forcibly removed! A tube was inserted down the penguins throat and into the stomach. We then poured sea water into a funnel to fill their stomachs. Leshia then held the bird upside-down and massaged the throat to encourage the bird to deposit their hard-earned meal into a bucket! Unfortunately, a few of the penguins appeared to have no food in their stomachs, so three more had to be caught.
Day 9: May 25
Michelle, from Bayworld in Port Elizabeth, joined Leshia, Mario, Kate, and Paul for more Penguin census work. With the five of us working on the census, we were able to very rapidly run through a number of the lettered areas. The Census work continued until a late lunch, at which time Michelle was for the mainland. Finally we saw a mole snake basking in the sun in the quarry!!
After lunch Paul focused on catching up on putting the bird retrap data into the computer. Team three was rapidly catching up with the numbers of retraps collected by the two earlier Earthwatch teams. It was clear that the team assembled would be able to use its experience to collect a fair amount of valuable data for the ongoing research projects associated with the Earthwatch efforts on Robben Island.
Leisha and Kate took the time to go out into the field to work on finishing up the Game census work. Again the ostriches proved elusive and were only seen at times outside the census work. The group return to the house and Newi and Ariane worked to get a good fire going for a nice little Braai.
Day 10: May 26
The entire day today was focused on the efforts revolving around the earlier mentioned penguin road crossing data collection. Paul took the opportunity while sitting for many hours watching the birds cross the road to collect audio samples of the birds braying.
The middle of the day was spent on a very informative prison tour that Mario was kind enough to arrange. It seems important that any future Earth watch volunteers being able to take the tour while they are on Robben Island in order to get the maximum educational experience out of the special opportunity to stay on Robben Island.
Day 11: May 27
Paul and Kate had insisted on doing the final day of checking on the Earthwatch nests on their own. Paul's familiarity with GPS use aided in the ability of the two to complete the task on their own. Aside from few minor interruptions to help one of the UCT students who is from the Netherlands deal with very tiny chicks who had their burrow nest collapse, the task was completed in a very respectable amount of time. Working cooperatively Kate and Paul missed only one or two nests, a smaller number then the dates working with Mario and Leshia. The effort may be an indicator that with advanced Earthwatch volunteers a single day or maybe two of instruction could lead to the volunteers following a set GPS guided map of nest observation sites. It seems that this could also be an opportunity for the South African research team to improve their utilization of GPS equipment and to cooperate with Remote Sensing/ Global Information Systems professors and students to streamline and improve the data collection. One can see the implication of collection the data and either directly downloading the data from a GPS unit each day, or simply using the data to create accurate overlays on an aerial map of the island.
Unfortunately on checking the collapsed burrow at the end of the day, the two chicks were found to be alone and cold, so were brought back to the house. The smaller of the two died during the evening, but the larger one was looked after by Kate, who has handreared many penguins back at Bristol Zoo.
Day 12: May 28
An early start today as nest card data still had to be entered into the computer. Leshia rose at 6am to start the task, whilst Ariane started on the house clean-up. Kate finished off the data input whilst Leshia did some cleaning. We said goodbye to Newi, who was on an early boat to the mainland. On the way back to the house last night, the tyre blew on the Bakkie, so Leshia had to arrange alternative transport for us all down to the harbour this morning.
So we're catching the 9.45am boat to the mainland. Kate is heading on to SANCCOB and taking several abandoned penguin chicks with her, Paul is spending a couple more weeks travelling around South Africa and Ariane and Leshia are heading on to Dassen island for the next penguin census! Newi is heading home to Venda for a well earned break with his family.
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