Marine Evening 8 August 2023
We invite you to join our next Marine Evening, where our newest team member, Dr Liezl Pretorius.
Through the Dyer Island Conservation Trust and African Penguin and Seabird Sanctuary - APSS, you can help by sponsoring an artificial penguin nest.
African Penguins nest by digging burrows. Seabirds naturally create a soft layer of guano (bird poop) on colonies over time, and guano is the perfect material for keeping a nest cool when it is hot, warm when it is cold, and self-draining from the rain. But guano was scraped off the islands and sold as fertiliser.
No guano, no home. Nesting on the hard, rocky surface exposed the penguins to the harsh weather conditions. Predators like Kelp Gulls could not believe their luck when the unprotected surface nests offered them the opportunity to use the penguin eggs and chicks as a fly through take away.
