On This Day in 2000: A record breaking rescue of, by the end of August, over 23 000 jackass penguins off the coast of South Africa. A tanker sank off the Cape of Good Hope with about 14 000 tons of oil on board. The rescued penguins were airlifted to two rescue centers where they had to be cleaned and fed. One of the rescuers said that the stench was so bad in the centers; from the guano, the oil, the 10 tons of fish per day to feed the penguins, that she had to breath thru her mouth for the first hour or two. But it was eerily quiet. Normally the penguins, called jackass penguins because they sound like donkeys braying, would have been vocalizing loudly. Their silence was an indication of their stress. "Thousands of South African volunteers and about 100 wildlife experts from across the world worked 16 hour days to complete targets of 500 birds per day." ~ BBC This quote indicates that the volunteers were all South Africans but the wildlife expert interviewed for the story said that volunteers came from around the world; a housewife from NYC, a retiree from Florida... She also said that during those long hours of work they barely stopped to eat. People lost anywhere from 7 to 12 pounds. But without the work of all these dedicated people the jackass penguin, a threatened species, might have become an extinct species.
Posted on: Sun, 07 Jul 2013 16:49:51 +0000
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