OREGON ZOO   .    PORTLAND, OREGON   .   WWW.OREGONZOO.ORG

A large iron-ore carrier, Treasure, sank off the west coast of Cape Town in the early hours of Friday morning, June 23. This is a major spill with major repercussions on the wildlife in the area. Already the spill has affected approximately
10,000 birds on Robben Island, which is the 3rd largest penguin colony. This spill has the capability of wiping out the entire Robben Island colony of approximately 150,000 birds.

SANCCOB (South African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds) has already rescued approximately 2000 birds since the disaster struck. One of the first priorities at present is to relocate clean penguins (less than 30% of the Robben Island population) to another colony about 800kms away. In conjunction with that, volunteers are working around the clock to identify and capture oiled birds and to relocate them to SANCCOB or to one of the 3 satellite stations which have been set up on the mainland. Chicks are also being brought in for hand-rearing as the spill has coincided with the breeding season and with approximately 6,000 chicks on the island, they are now in danger of starving.

Go to the SANCCOB website for details on the efforts to save these birds.

Donations for the rescue effort can be sent to:
Detroit Zoological Society
Penguin TAG Chair, Tom Schneider
P.O. Box 39
Royal Oak, Michigan 48068
(248) 398-0903 X3128
Another way anyone can help is by Adopting A Penguin. The application form for this is contained in the ADU website. Click on "What is new".
World Wildlife Fund has information on how you can help the penguins with donations and purchases.
They've also setup a fascinating webpage that gives updated GPS data showing the progress of translocated penguins as they swim home

UPDATE

Wednesday, 28 June 2000
The late afternoon flight around Table Bay yesterday revealed that the oil was perilously close to the most important breeding colony of African Penguins at Dassen Island, about 40 km north of Robben Island. The latest news is that Dassen Island is now surrounded by oil, so it is expected that many birds are being oiled there as well.

As of today, 8500 oiled penguins have been collected for cleaning by the SANCCOB Cleaning Centre: 6500 are already at the centre. A satellite centre has been established. It is expected that at least the same number will become oiled and collected over the next few days, and quite possibly many more. This will make it the largest single cleaning operation for the species to date, hugely stressing SANCCOB's capacity. A rough estimate is that as much as 20% of the species' global adult population is likely to be oiled.

Unoiled penguins are being fenced in on Robben and Dassen Islands to stop them going to sea and becoming oiled. Large chicks are being taken into captivity for hand-rearing. 40 are already at SANCCOB, and 1000 more will arrive later today.

140 unoiled penguins from Robben Island were successfully transported to the Eastern Cape by road last night for release in the unoiled waters of Algoa Bay, in the expectation that the 10-14 days it will take them to swim home will be enough time to clean up the oil. To our knowledge, this is the very first time that such a translocation exercise has been tried for any seabird.

Friday evening, 30 June 2000

There are now 16 000 (sixteen thousand) oiled penguins distributed across SANCCOB's main rescue station and the satellite stations, mostly still from Robben Island. 1100 (one thousand one hundred) chicks are on the mainland, being cared for to fledging. These chicks are not oiled.

Mario Leshoro, environmental officer at the Robben Island Museum, reported that another 1656 oiled penguins were removed from the island by 4 p.m. today. Nikhil Bramdaw, Robben Island Museum, reported seeing substantial numbers of clean penguins late this afternoon emerging from the thick dense scrub in which they nest on the island; we speculate that these are birds which have taken an extra long turn at the nest, and are now abandoning their clutches in despair of their partner returning to relieve them. Evacuation of this colony will continue tomorrow, and must surely be close to completion.

The weather changed quite dramatically today. The calm seas of the past week were replaced by swells up to 4 m. This hampered and finally put a stop to efforts to remove the remaining oil in the Treasure, and access to Dassen Island. The change in wind direction to about 30 knots from the north has pushed the oil south of Dassen Island; however the wind is changing to the northwest, so it is pushing oil onshore. However, there is not a lot of oil about, and rather little is coming up from the wreck. The strong winds have the positive effect of breaking up the oil; the risk is that they may damage the ship so that it leaks more oil.

On Dassen Island, at least 10 000 (ten thousand) clean penguins are confined to barracks; some will not have fed for five days, but this is not a serious problem. Tomorrow, Saturday, is the day on which the decision will be taken either to release them and let them go to sea, or to transport them to Port Elizabeth. The decision will be made on the basis of a helicopter inspection of the shoreline and surrounding ocean. There are also an estimated 1000 (one thousand) oiled birds on Dassen Island that need to brought to the mainland.

The bird with the SAP-sponsored satellite tag left Port Elizabeth today. We hope to get the first position fixes of this bird on Monday. The web page on which this movements will be shown is up and running and is easily located at the ADU website.

Weather permitting, a party of banders is going out to Dassen Island tomorrow. Regardless of which decision is taken, this will provide a control group of unoiled birds against which to compare the oiled birds.

Saturday evening, 1 July 2000

A group of 12 ringers went out to Dassen Island today to band unoiled penguins there. We did a total of about 800 birds. We worked inside the fences that have been erected to prevent the penguins going out to sea and getting oiled.

We retrapped a whole bunch of Apollo Sea survivors (which have succeeded in avoiding the oil this time round). Most moving was to retrap 20,006. This was one of 450 "orphan" chicks that the late Andre Gildenhuys raised to fledging on the island. Anton Wolfaardt, warden on Dassen, tells me that this bird has been breeding for several years, and that several other orphans are now part of the breeding population on the island.

While we were there, the Court helicopter which had taken Kas Hamman, Zane Erasmus and Tony Williams, all of the Western Cape Nature Conservation Board, to inspect the oil around the island landed. Their decision to evacuate Dassen Island of penguins was a clear-cut one: oil still bubbling up from the wreck, no wind today so the ocean current drifts the oil north in the direction of the island, the next forecast wind to be a southeaster, which will move the oil onto the feeding areas, etc, etc. The evacuation will start tomorrow, Sunday. The enormity of the task defies description, but there is a plan in place, and provided every component works, the birds will start leaving for the Eastern Cape by late morning. The number of birds to be moved might be as large as 40 000 (forty thousand). This might be largest evacuation of animals since the flooding of the Kariba Dam on the Zambezi River.

While we were ringing, teams of volunteers were making up penguin boxes in preparation for the evacuation, while others were collecting oiled penguins off the shoreline of the island. I didn't write down the number of oiled birds collected today; it was about 500 by lunch time.

The second SAP penguin will have its satellite tag fitted at Yzerfontein sometime tomorrow during a media briefing. We hope to start getting position fixes on the first penguin from Monday. Meanwhile, find your way to the SAP map on the website. Rene Navarro at the ADU will update the map each time we get new position fixes from France.

Rob Crawford was on Robben Island today. He tells me that there a still both oiled and clean birds there. Clean birds were sent to MCM's research aquarium in Sea Point and will leave for Port Elizabeth either tonight or tomorrow. Oiled birds, as usual, went to SANCCOB. The operation there will continue tomorrow --- but the main fixture will be at Dassen Island.

Monday, 3 July 2000

Evacuation of penguins from Dassen Island:

The evacuation of some 15 000 penguins from Dassen Island, which started yesterday (Sunday, 2 June 2000), has continued today in good weather conditions. The Cape Nature Conservation Board is responsible for the logistics of this massive operation which includes the evacuation, packing, loading, transporting and unloading of penguins in Port Elizabeth.

Earlier today, the second of two truck-loads of birds (some 2 500 altogether) arrived safely in Port Elizabeth. Amongst them was a penguin from Dassen Island fitted with the 2nd of three SAP Africa-sponsored satellite transmitters. It was released into the sea at Port Elizabeth at 19:40 this morning. (To follow the progress of the penguins as they swim
back to the Cape Peninsula, visit the Avian Demography Unit's website at http://www.uct.ac.za/depts/stats/adu/ ).

Four truck-loads of penguins with some 3 300 penguins are presently on their way to Port Elizabeth.

Cleaning of penguins at SANCCOB:

SANCCOB has presently 14 500 at their Salt River operation, where the SA Navy assisted with helpers today, and 4 000 at their Milnerton operation. At Salt River, only 30 birds died, which makes for an excellent survival
rate.

SANCCOB has made an urgent appeal for committed volunteers over the age of 16 - people who are willing to work 5-hour shifts for a few days. Volunteers must please phone one of the following telephone numbers: 021- 480.7726/29/30/49 between 8:00 and 19:00.

Green Trust initiative:
A team of seabird rescue experts will be brought in from Australia to assist local scientists with the rescue operation. Ned Bank, through The Green Trust, is funding the costs of bringing the Australians to South Africa.

MEDIA RELEASE
EMBARGO: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
DATE: 3 July, 2000
MILES OF OIL SPREADING, AFFECTING THOUSANDS OF SEA BIRDS

The oil spill from the sunken iron-ore carrier Treasure, which sank on Friday, June 23 off the coast of Cape Town, now covers a combined area of about 51 square kilometers (about 15 square nautical miles) in Table Bay.

IFAW, the International Fund for Animal Welfare, accompanied Dr Tosh Moller, a marine biologist, in a flight over the stricken area on Monday, July 3, 2000. Patches of thick, black, oil could be seen from the air stretching along the
west coast from just north of Dassen Island to Hout Bay, a distance as the crow flies of about 80-90 kilometers.

Dr Moller said that at least 500 tons of bunker oil had escaped from the ship since it sunk. He estimates that the total sea area affected at one stage or another by the oil since the spill occurred, including sheen where the oil is very finely spread, at a thickness of 0.001mm has been as much as 1 000 square kilometers.

Dr Moller emphasized, however, that oil sheen would not affect sea life adversely. Rather, it is the areas of where the oil is heavy about 15 square miles to about 18 square miles that would impact on sea life, particularly the vulnerable African penguin and Cape cormorant species. The viscosity of newly emerging black oil is 1mm to 5mm thick, thinning out to 0.1mm as it spreads over the ocean s surface.

It is these black patches of oil spread intermittently that are devastating for sea life. Thousands of sea birds have now been affected by the spill; the most devastating to ever hit Cape Town.

So far 44 per cent of the African Penguin species has been affected by the spill.

First to be affected by the spill was Robben Island where former South African State President Nelson Mandela spent over 20-years in prison which has an adult African Penguin population of 14 000.

Rescue of the oiled birds on the island began last week, and by today most of the Penguins had been taken off and were being held for de-oiling at a rehabilitation center set up in a warehouse in the Cape Town industrial suburb of Salt River.

Dassen Island came under threat from the drifting spill at the end of the last week and the decision to evacuate as many of the islands un-oiled penguins as possible was taken by the Western Cape Department of Nature Conservation on Saturday.

The evacuation began on Sunday.

The Salt River center has been set up by the South African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds, SANCCOB, and is being managed with the help of a team of international oiled wildlife rehabilitators. These have been brought to Cape Town from the United States, Britain, Europe and Canada by the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) to assist in the de-oiling and rehabilitation of the oiled penguins.

In a further development a 20-kilometer stretch of popular beaches from Table Bay harbor to Sandy Bay in the direction of Cape Point, where the Atlantic Ocean meets the Indian Ocean - are now coated in thick, acrid, oil. Beaches in the opposite direction, to the North and further up the west coast, are less affected, and can be identified by occasional flashes of light-brown-colored surf crashing on the shore. Cape Metropolitan Council has now closed beaches between Sea point and Sandy Bay, which are among the city s most popular. The Council has warned that anyone entering oil-covered beaches could complicate the cleaning up operations.

Robben Island is badly affected, and oil has now washed up on the southern shores of 220-hectare Dassen Island, home to the largest breeding population of African penguins.

A zoologist with Cape Nature Conservation said Cape Town has now been the victim of five out of 50 of the world s biggest oil spills.

Wednesday, 5 July 2000

Evacuation of penguins from Dassen Island:

The evacuation of oiled penguins and chicks from Dassen Island commenced today after a total of 12 435 unoiled penguins had been removed from the Island. By 11:00 today, 435 oiled penguins and 170 chicks were captured. The oiled birds are taken to SANCCOB's Milnerton and Salt River rehabilitation facilities, while the chicks, which need specialized care, are taken to two chick care facilities in Melkbos and Table View.

Progress of penguins tagged with satellite transmitters:

The third (and last) penguin fitted with a SAP Africa-sponsored satellite transmitter, Percy, was released at Port Elizabeth at 8:20 this morning. Pamela, who spent her first day after release on Monday at sea close to Cape Recife, has now turned westwards, towards Cape Town. Peter (released on 30 June 2000) continues to make good progress towards Cape Agulhas; he is now passing the Tsitsikamma Coastal National Park and heading for Natures Valley. To follow the progress of the penguins, visit the Avian Demography Unit's website at http://www.uct.ac.za/depts/stats/adu/

Cleaning of penguins by SANCCOB:

SANCCOB, the organization responsible for the rehabilitation of oiled seabirds, now has some 14 000 penguins (amongst which some 200 oiled chicks) at their Salt River site and 3 500 at their Milnerton site. These two operations are being assisted by the Sea Point Aquarium.

SANCCOB has once again called for help from volunteers willing to work 5-hour shifts at a time and helping with a variety of tasks. Volunteers must please phone one of the following telephone numbers (021) 480 7726 / 29 / 30 / 49 between 8:00 and 19:00.

Thursday, 6 July 2000

Evacuation of penguins from Dassen Island:

When it was announced that only one of the 12,500 un-oiled birds that had been trans-located from Dassen Island to Port Elizabeth, died, Professor Les Underhill of the Avian Demography Unit at the University of Cape Town stated: "On the basis of the known mortality rate, it seems those birds were safer during the translocation operation than when they're in the ocean!" Dr Ian Macdonald, Chief Executive of WWF South Africa, said this was a tremendous tribute to the care and diligence of the Western Cape Nature Conservation Board, their contracted staff and volunteers.

Yesterday, 930 oiled penguins were evacuated from Dassen Island, and so far, 220 heavily-oiled penguins have been removed today. This has been possible with the help of Court Helicopters who fly the penguins from the island to the mainland.

Progress of penguins tagged with satellite transmitters:

Peter, the first penguin to be fitted with a SAP Africa-sponsored transmitter is near Plettenberg Bay - he has covered about 150 km since he was released on 30 June and has completed about 28% of the long swim home.If he maintains his average speed over the past five days, he will get back to Robben Island on 21 July. Pamela (released on 3 July) is now swimming just off Cape St Francis after she had a late start because she lingered to feed before she started the long trek home. The third penguin, Percy, did not stop for feeding after he was released yesterday morning, and is making a beeline for Cape Town. He is at Sea View, just past Cape Recife.

To follow the progress of the penguins, visit the Avian Demography Unit's website

Cleaning of penguins by SANCCOB:

SANCCOB, the organization responsible for the rehabilitation of oiled seabirds, are now treating some 18,500 penguins at Salt River. SANCCOB hopes to be able to start releasing 1800 rehabilitated penguins per day in a weeks time.

Western Cape Minister of the Environment, Mr. Glen Adams, visited Salt River today and volunteered his serves. Actors starring in well-known South African sitcoms, will make an appearance at Salt River on Saturday to help with Project Penguin Rescue.

SANCCOB has once again called for help from volunteers willing to work 5-hour shifts at a time and helping with a variety of tasks. Volunteers must please phone one of the following telephone numbers (021) 480 7726 / 29 / 30 / 49 between 8:00 and 19:00.

Monday, 10 July 2000

WORLD'S BIGGEST SEABIRD RESCUE OPERATION PROGRESSING WELL

"Peter, Pamela & Percy"

Dr Robert Crawford of Marine and Coastal Management announced today that Peter penguin is swimming off Still Bay, which is approximately halfway home. If he's keeping up his average speed, he's expected to be back at Robben Island on 21 July.

Percy (3rd to be released) has almost caught up with Pamela at Knysna. They are now approaching Cape Fur seal and Great White Shark territory and it would serve them well to stay way offshore. (To follow the progress of the three penguins, which are tagged with SAP Africa-sponsored satellite transmitters, visit the Avian Demography Unit's website at http://www.uct.ac.za/)

Peter, Pam and Percy are but three of some 20,000 un-oiled penguins which had been evacuated from Dassen and Robben Islands, transported to Port Elizabeth (some 900 km away) where they were released and are now swimming back to their home islands.

Yesterday, a total of 64 heavily-oiled penguins were removed from Dassen Island and taken to SANCCOB. Today, 20 boxes of penguins left the island for the rehabilitation center. They were transported by helicopter due to rough seas. It is estimated that less than 3,500 chicks remain on Dassen Island.

SANCCOB now takes care of more than 23 000 birds. SANCCOB still needs committed volunteers - not only to help wash and feed the penguins, but also to assist with a variety of other tasks. Volunteers who are willing to work 5-hour shifts at a time, must please phone one of the following telephone numbers (021) 480 7726 / 29 / 30 / 49 between
8:00 and 19:00.

Tuesday, 11 July 2000

Percy Penguin overtakes Pamela

While Peter, at Still Bay, is leading the race home, Percy is now in 2nd position after overtaking Pam. They are both between Knysna and George at present. Peter can be home by Thursday, 20 July, if he
keeps up his speed.

Today, the evacuation of chicks continued and 175 chicks were removed from Robben Island. The Oceanographic Research Institute in Durban will help care for some of the chicks, while Sanccob is now looking after 23 000 birds and 20 000 are swimming homewards from Port Elizabeth. Some of the birds will need time to recover and thus the rescue operation may last for many weeks to come.

Real winter gales and rain are forecast for the rest of this week, so it remains to be seen how the sunken vessel 'Treasure," with most of its oil still on board, will hold up.

Thursday, 13 July 2000

Peter, Percy & Pam
Dr Robert Crawford of Marine and Coastal Management confirms that all three have checked in again. Peter is just west of Cape Agulhas, Percy is just west of Still Bay, and Pamela is just west of Mossel Bay. All are some distance offshore.

Sunken 'Treasure'
It would seem as if the amount of oil spilled from the 'Treasure' has been seriously under-estimated and that there is most likely 100 tonnes still left on the vessel.

Chick collectors
Chick collectors have rescued 68 chicks and 22 oiled penguins on Dassen Island. They are stabilising the penguins on the island and will bring the birds to the mainland tomorrow (Friday). They have also found some dead (oiled) penguins on the island.

Australian experts offer assistance
The first group of four Australian penguin rehabilitation experts will arrive in South Africa on Saturday, 15 July 2000, to assist Sanccob with the Penguin Rescue Operation. Nedbank, SAA and the Mazda Wildlife Fund have joined forces to bring the Australians to South Africa.

Sanccob
Sanccob is rehabilitating 18 500 penguins at their Salt River facility and 3 800 at their Rietvlei facility.