A flipper-to-mouth existence: lives of penguins and small fishers in jeopardy

African penguins waddle out of the surf at Stony Point Nature Reserve, about 90km from Cape Town, onto a kelp-strewn beach behind Marcelin Barry. “If it wasn’t for our penguins and the environment, I would not be able to put food on the table or have a job. Our future depends on their future,” said Barry, the conservation monitor for WWF South Africa in the Kogelberg coastal community.

African penguins have “10 years left until they are extinct in the wild, based on their current trajectory”, Alistair McInnes, senior conservation programme manager for BirdLife South Africa, warned on Thursday.

The breeding population of Stony Point penguins halved from 2023 to 2024, from about 1,200 breeding pairs to 676. The survival of the penguins and coastal communities are intertwined through traditional fishing and eco-tourism. Both are in jeopardy.

“Our community is dependent on fishing,” said 28-year-old Barry, whose father was a fisher turned conservationist at the former whaling station of Stony Point.

Small-scale fishers depend on linefish for their livelihood and these fish are declining because, like penguins, they feed on the sardines and anchovies being caught on an industrial scale offshore — three to four tonnes a year, officially, said senior marine specialist at WWF SA, Craig Smith.

“The demise of penguins is a warning bell that not all is right in the [South Benguela] ecosystem. The West Coast sardine stock is depleted and anchovies are at the lowest on record,” said Smith.

“There comes a threshold where we are playing Russian Roulette with pelagic fisheries. Look at Namibia. Both sardines and anchovy had been decimated and in 2018 that fishery was closed. It was supposed to bounce back in a few years and seven years later it has not ... and seabird species have tanked drastically.”

Four marine, seabird and conservation specialists on Thursday agreed that the drop in pelagic fish stocks is the major reason the number of critically endangered African penguins is plummeting. Threats such as predators, habitat loss, pollution, disease, climate change and human impact also put them at risk.

They were discussing “Penguins, people and partnerships” on a panel organised by WWF-SA and CapeNature at Stony Point on World Environment Day.

But there is a glimmer of hope for African penguins. A landmark legal settlement reached in March — between the South African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds (Sanccob) and BirdLife SA and two fishing associations — extended and improved the closures of commercial fishing in six penguin breeding colonies.

Penguins can thrive when the foraging is good, as the Robben Island penguins proved in the early 1990s. “When there was significant sardine abundance they had a 500% increase in population ... to the early 2000s over 12 years,” said McInnes.

A shipwreck juts out of the sea near the boardwalk at Stony Point, where local guide Curtley Ambrose takes a penguin tour. Here, endangered Cape cormorants sometimes build nests on top of penguin nests, causing squabbles, he said, pointing out cormorant species.

There comes a threshold where we are playing Russian Roulette with pelagic fisheries

—  WWF- SA senior marine specialist Craig Smith

“We have even seen macaroni, rockhopper and king penguins here,” he said.

Human visitors do not always respect penguin boundaries. “Tourists do weird things like throw their hats or camera covers over the fence to get closer to penguins,” he said, noting that 50 to 100 tourist busses visit in peak season.

WWF-SA conservation monitor Vathiswa Bafo helps collect data on penguins. “I was raised far from the sea in Idutywa [Eastern Cape] but I have fallen in love with it and conservation,” said Bafo, who is studying for a BA in environmental management. “I wanted to be a social worker. Now I’m a social worker for birds.”

Nicky Stander, head of conservation at Sanccob, which has two seabird hospitals, said they are rescuing and rearing abandoned chicks and eggs, doing fracture repairs, blood transfusions and life-saving surgeries for penguins.

But, she said: “Rescuing penguins is not going to save the species. We must make sure they have enough food and be mitigating threats [such as] predation and disease. The complexity of threats is enormous. There is also noise, pollution and ship to ship bunkering.”

“Species like penguins take the pulse of the ecosystem”. – CapeNature CEO Ashley Naidoo

—  PENGUINS REFLECT OCEAN'S HEALTH

Ship-to-ship refuelling makes “an enormous amount of noise underwater”, and increases the risk of oil spills, said Stander. “[This] started in Algoa Bay in 2016 and its closest penguin colony, St Croix, lost 85-90% of population.”

Many penguin pairs are choosing not to breed because they are not in the condition needed to forage far and wide, said Alana Duffell-Canham,  landscape conservation intelligence manager for CapeNature.

She said breeding and moulting were happening later in the year. “Climate change [may] be part of it. The breeding time has shifted consistently later over the last few years, which is unfortunate because then they are also prone to severe storm events.”

Asked if they had sufficient funding for conservation, she replied: “No! We do not have enough money ... we are very dependent on partners.”

Projects in the Kogelberg community demonstrate how successful partnerships are helping to save penguins while supporting the local community. Tourists employ local guides, buy souvenirs and dine at The Edge restaurant run by Mooi Uitsig residents, which has a trust supporting community development projects like the Pikkewyntjies preschool.

Smith said: “Penguins are a charismatic species. People come from all over the world to look at penguins. If we cannot protect this species, how can we protect other species?”.