NOS Nieuws•gisteren, 20:21
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Elles van Gelder
correspondent Afrika
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Elles van Gelder
correspondent Afrika
To save their penguins, South African authorities are imposing a 10-year fishing ban on parts of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. This is necessary, because the African penguin is in danger of becoming extinct. Conservationists are only concerned that the restrictions do not go far enough.
“You see that penguin there, you can see the bones through the skin,” Caire Lottring points out. She works for Cape Nature, an organization that manages nature parks in the Western Cape province. Her job: caring for the 1,200 penguin breeding pairs at Stony Point, about a two-hour drive from Cape Town.
It is an important task. There are only 8,300 breeding pairs left at various locations in South Africa and neighboring Namibia. The number has plummeted. In the 1950s there were 150,000 and in 2015 it was 15,000. At this rate, conservationists fear the bird could be extinct in the wild by 2035.
NOSHabitat of the African penguin
It’s the result of a combination of factors, experts say. In the past: people dig up penguin eggs and penguin poop, good as fertilizer but also important nesting material for the penguin. Add to that storms, oil spills and natural enemies such as seals. But nowadays the main cause is that there is too little fish.
“They like sardines and anchovies,” says penguin ranger Gavin Pieterson, who patrols with Lottring and is from the nearby fishing community. “But there are fewer and fewer fish in the sea. Perhaps due to climate change and overfishing. Industrial boats come here with large nets, leaving nothing for our penguins. We often find malnourished penguins.”
Penguin keepers are especially concerned at this time of year. The breeding season has started. The parents will soon have to look for fish not only for themselves, but also for their chicks. “And they have to travel longer and longer distances to do this,” says Pieterson. “If they are weakened by hunger, there is a greater risk that they will not return. They die of exhaustion and, weakened, they are easy prey for seals.”
NOSGavin Pieterson working near a penguin colony
Injured penguins, malnourished penguins and eggs or chicks that are abandoned are taken by Pieterson to the Southern African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds bird hospital in Cape Town. There the eggs are hatched and the penguins are patched up again. In the freezer are boxes full of frozen sardines, caught by South African fishermen.
Volunteers thaw the fish in warm tubs of water and take them to the penguins. “We have to intervene. The species is doing so badly that every penguin life counts,” said Katta Ludynia, marine biologist and head of research at the organization. But eventually we release these penguins back into the wild and they should be able to catch enough fish. Otherwise the chance of survival remains low.”
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Penguin colony in South Africa
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Penguin colony in South Africa
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Penguin colony in South Africa
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Penguin colony in South Africa
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Penguin colony in South Africa
And so something has to change there, in the wild. A battle has been going on in South Africa for a long time: who gets the sardine? The penguin or the fisherman? It does not help that the Minister of the Environment, who is responsible for nature, is also the Minister of Fisheries and must therefore also look at the interests of the fishermen who live from the sea.
The split was so great that the government had an international panel of scientists weigh the interests of both parties and help determine whether a fishing ban could really help the penguin. While that investigation was ongoing, the minister temporarily closed areas for fishing. The scientists were also able to rely on research in which South African researchers experimented with fishing bans at a number of breeding sites between 2008 and 2019. The conclusion was that a fishing ban will cause a small growth in the African penguin population.
Since this week, the temporary fishing ban has been converted into a ten-year ban. However, according to bird protectors, there is a problem. The forbidden area is far too small. “At Stony Point, for example, the zone would have to be three times as large to have an impact,” says researcher Ludynia, who and colleagues have also mapped how far the penguins swim to find food. “This isn’t going to help anything.”
Dog and cat food
“The penguin is already 61.6 million years old, but we will manage to kill them off in 500 years,” says Dutch journalist and penguin enthusiast Marcel Haenen, who recently published the book Penguins and the people published. “The South African sardines are packed in cans and are available in the supermarket. The anchovies are partly used in dog and cat food. But the vast majority of the anchovies are processed into fish meal and fish oil and exported. Meanwhile, the penguin dies. from hunger.”
Ludynia and other bird conservationists therefore want to continue discussions with fishermen about larger zones. But Mike Copeland, chairman of the organization that includes the sardine and anchovy fishermen, does not like that, he says on the phone. And so the fight for the fish will continue for a while and conservationists are looking bleak for this bird.
2024-01-21 19:21:51
#Fishermen #African #penguins #fight #sardine
