Success and long term monitoring

After the penguins had been cleaned they spent at least another week or so regaining their strength and making sure their feathers were properly waterproof.  Each penguin was inspected by a team of vets and blood samples taken before it was approved as being ready to be released.

The release site on the coast at Milverton (opposite Robben Island, just a few miles North of Cape Town) became a regular tourist attraction.  Several times a day in August and September a truck carrying up to 50 boxes of penguins would arrive at the beach and the tourists help would be enlisted in carrying the boxes down onto the beach and then on the count of three gently turning the boxes over so the penguins could waddle out.

The birds at first seemed a bit overwhelmed to see freedom again, but quickly they would form into a group and head back out to sea - within a few hours many were to be seen on the beaches of Robben Island.

All photographs on this page are copyright Les Underhill

Less than 10% of the birds taken into captivity to be cleaned died in the operation.  A 90% survival rate is an astonishingly good record of success (in the previous large spill in South Africa in 1994 only about half the birds survived and in the Exxon Valdez spill in North America fewer than 5% of the oiled sea birds survived).

However, this is by no means the end of the story. The birds which were released were very severely stressed by the whole experience and this may affect their future breeding success.  Also we do not know whether the oil has done any genetic damage so that it is still possible that the offspring of some of the released birds may not themselves be fertile.