At 2:14 PM -0400 9/19/06, Caroline Flynn-Bittinger wrote:
>[...] They talked about the two major organization
>involved in the rescue effort, Southern African Foundation for the
>Conservation of Coastal Birds (SANCOB)

We've visited SANCCOB - it's awesome! Aside from the folks who work
there, they have lots of volunteers - who actually pay to be
volunteers - who sign up for a minimum of 6 weeks at a time just to
clean and rehab seabirds. It's messy and smelly work, and penguins
peck! (especially when they're unhappy...)

Lots of the rehab work is de-oiling penguins (even when there are no
major oil spills, ships regularly dump oil when flushing tanks, so
there are always some penguins straying into this.) With the ongoing
Earthwatch projects on Dassen and Robben islands, though, most of the
oiled penguins in that area tend to be found - and taken to SANCCOB -
pretty quickly.

Each penguin is washed by hand - it takes two people about half an
hour to get the oil off and another half an hour to get the detergent
out of their feathers. That's a long time with a ticked-off penguin!

There are a couple of pictures and a link to their site here:
http://pengcognito.com/penguindiary.php
(just search for "SANCCOB")

Plus more pictures here:
http://pengcognito.com/sanccob.php

And the SANCCOB site is here:
http://www.sanccob.co.za/

They are really a great organization!

/jen
--
http://pengcognito.com - weekly penguin cartoon