Earthwatch Institute	Robben Island Museum	Marine & Coastal Management (DEAT)	University of Bristol

Earthwatch Project: South African Penguins

Diary of Team Five

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2005 Teams: 1; 3; 4; 5
2004 Teams: 1; 2; 3; 4; 6; 7
2003 Teams: 1; 2; 3; 4
2002 Teams: 1; 2; 6
2001 Teams: 1; 2; 3; 4; 5; 6

Team 5: Bev, Ellen and Clarice Helping with diet sampling Diet sampling Bev enjoying holding a penguin Bev chatting to Mike Paterson (MCM) Ellen struggling to hold a penguin

Thursday, 31 May 2001:

Team Five volunteers Ellen Christenson, Bev Honchorek, and Clarice Lam met our PI Leshia Upfold amongst others (Les, Mario, Bruce) at the City Lodge at 1700 hours. We had the pleasure of meeting four volunteers from Team Four who decided to crash our little dinner party at Morton's, a Cajun and Creole restaurant on the V&A Waterfront. We enjoyed a wonderful meal and conversation before returning to the hotel for a much needed rest (at least by Clarice who apparently took the really long way to get here-over 30 hours!!!)

Friday 1 June, 2001:

After settling in at the house on Robben Island, Mario and Leshia took us out for a tour. Now for the exciting part-don't be jealous all you other teams that didn't get to see it-we saw four eland, two different sitings of peacocks, and chukar partridges. After the first day out on the field, we found and recorded 144 penguins within a couple hours...pretty good for novices. We'll pretend Leshia didn't find most of them. Although it was forecasted to be stormy and cloudy for the duration of our stay, we had extremely nice weather today with lots of sun.

Saturday 2 June, 2001:

After breakfast we headed out to the Robben Island Museum to pick up Mario. We spent the morning checking the GPS nests, at which time we proved that the human works a lot faster than the GPS machine. We stumbled upon something not so happy this morning, a dead penguin which had been killed by a fishing line. Once again they had predicted rain and once again they were wrong as we had a beautiful morning. After the nests were all checked we returned home for lunch with the exception of Clarice, who got lost on her way home. Luckily for her she had the cell phone and was able to contact Leshia. After lunch, the winds and rains picked up and we stayed at home for the duration of the day.

Sunday 3 June, 2001:

We arose to gale force winds as expected with an added bonus of sporadic rains. We spent the morning reading huddled around our easy bake oven heater. Once again we had lunch. The weather cleared up and we went out to record tag numbers. Apparently even though we had split into two teams, we discovered that all of us had pulled some crazy acrobatic moves trying to get numbers today. And the highlight of the day was that Bev and Leshia found A14058!!! One number away from Peter!!! Our quest is to find him yet. I guess we appear to be more scary looking than the previous groups because the ostrich that we encountered today ran in the opposite direction as soon as they saw us. Around four PM, we decided to return home; we did however manage to find 148 penguins. We had sloppy Joe's and green beans and listened to the winds of gale force descent. The weather is supposed to clear by tomorrow. We shall hope...

Monday 4 June 2001:

After breakfast, we continued our quest for Peter. We did not find him. We broke up into two groups again. We met our original PI today, Shaun Davis, at the Robben Island Museum. Bev and Ellen saw a penguin with one of the new plastic bands...the last number is already starting to wear off. It started to rain lightly and we all returned home for lunch. After lunch, Clarice and Leshia saved a penguin from a fishing line and sent him off to SANCCOB. We are improving on our total ring numbers as we ended up with 264. Clarice is retiring early because she is getting sick. I guess there is no one else to type, so we will go now.

Tuesday 5 June, 2001:

It was a beautiful day as we set out to meet Mario, Les Underhill, and Steven Piper. Les and Steven were on the island to photograph penguins. Ellen went with Leshia to check her nests and found two birds whose bands had come loose, so Ellen got to hold some birds while Leshia fixed the bands. Bev, on the other hand who was so anxious to catch one, did not. After lunch, Clarice who was nearly in her death bed from the dreadful influenza plus tropical skin disease all over her body, decided to stay home. So Leshia, Ellen, and Bev set out to collect more tags. Not a very productive day....Oh yeah, Leshia did our laundry as we watched the soapies.

Wednesday 6 June, 2001:

Our day off. We took the early ferry into Cape Town where Bruce Dyer met us and took us to SANCCOB. We were pleased to see that there were not so many penguins there. Leshia went off with her parents while Bruce had the honour of dropping us off downtown. We returned to the island on the last ferry. Clarice made guacamole even though she is still not well. Tomorrow she will see the doctor about her tropical skin disease-dermatitis.

Thursday 7 June, 2001:

We went down to the docks early to pick up Bruce and Mike coming off the ferry. Clarice and Leshia checked the GPS nests while Ellen and Bev did the usual gathering of the tag numbers. After lunch, Mike and Bruce set up a trap in the field and caught 10 chicks. Then afterwards they made them vomit into ziploc bags. During our penguin heist, we sat in the bushes for hours before finally catching them in between the set up gates. Bev entered and the penguins attacked both legs. Bev was screaming and yelling all over the place. She began to resemble one of the penguins. However, she finally managed to grab a penguin. We all took turns "doing their diets" (making them throw up). And in return Bev and Ellen got pooped on. We came home and Bruce and Mike cooked a braai for us. Good night.

Friday 8 June, 2001:

We started out with clear blue skies an all dressed in our lucky clothing in hopes of attracting Peter. We did the usual counting of the nests; and Ellen and Bev rescued a penguin whose band was caught on a branch. His P1 chick was caught under branch. Pam, an island resident, helped out as well as she sat on the beach the whole day collecting numbers. In the afternoon Clarice and Bev each caught a bird. One had a turned band and the other had a SANCCOB band that needed to be removed. We were very experienced from the day before when we held the great penguin ambush. Leshia and Ellen saw a peacock family. The tally per day is continuing to go up as we have reached 1273tags.

Saturday 9 June, 2001:

On the way to the field, we decided to stop and check the penguin boardwalk area because it hadn't been checked for a while. Unfortunately, we found very few birds in residence. Leshia found one tagged dead penguin in the morning and Ellen found another in the afternoon. There was a confrontation on the beach because some political ex-convicts thought it might be a really smart idea to have a braai on the penguin beach. So Leshia went down to sort things out. She got stuck there for a while so we went out on our own in the afternoon to North Perimeter Rd. where we had seen so many tagged penguins the day before. Bev turned another band today. Our total count is up to 1488.

Sunday 10 June, 2001:

It rained all this morning so we stayed in with the exception of Clarice who went down to check her e-mails. By the afternoon the weather cleared and we continued with our usual checking of the rings until the late afternoon when we had the great privilege of checking the cormorant nests. We slipped and slid up and down the odoriferous pier covered with cormorant guano. While Pam was doing the beach count she saw a huge branch wedged under the wing of a penguin. Bev and Leshia went off to try to rescue the penguin but he ran away into the water before they were able to catch him. As it was getting late, we opted to wait until the morning to locate him. We had the night off and Leshia cooked us a wonderful meal-chicken a la mayonnaise avec un petit peu de chutney, her mother's recipe of butternut fritters, and pomme de terre e petit pois. Our count now is officially up to 1800.

Monday 11 June, 2001:

This morning at 5:07 we all were awakened by the foghorn from the lighthouse which just so happens to be situated directly behind the house. We started out early this morning because Leshia and Mario had to go back to Cape Town for a meeting and we wanted to rescue the penguin in distress before they left. Leshia's sharp eye spotted the bird within seconds, off the shore in a bush, and grabbed him. After catching him and taking a few photos, the tree was removed from his ring and he was placed in a box to be shipped off to SANCCOB. We then found the double-banded penguin and removed one of the bands. Clarice gets to take the band home as a souvenir. Then the three earthwatchers set off to again count rings. Clarice and Ellen found ring number A14054. We still haven't given up on finding Peter. Bev turned four rings today all by herself. We went to the pub again for the last time but made sure to get home in time to watch Ally McBeal and the Celine Dion missing children commercial. We have 2032 ring numbers.

Tuesday 12 June 2001:

The weather is making it most unpleasant for us to be outdoors and we are packing up for our departure later.

All the best to Team 6.