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Stony Point, Betty’s Bay, that’s where you’ll find the African Penguin. I went there not so long ago to check up on them. Like Panda bears and Zebras, penguins are cute, in a cartoony way. They’re clearly awkward on land, and we have no idea how quick and mobile they are in the water, so we’re stuck with this cartoon of them. Cape Nature has constructed a long walkway along the edges of the colony, and as you and your fellow penguin – tourists enter the domain, you steadily lose the cartoon. For starters, they don’t interact with us: they’re just not interested in us. And then there’s the guano-smell of the colony; a very un-cartoony smell, the smell of something wild and other.
I was there on a sunlit day in November, but there was a cold breeze coming off the vast Atlantic. Stony point is far South and as I strolled past the bleached boulders and the solitary darters, I felt like I might be getting to the edge of the known world. From the information boards I learnt that African Penguin numbers have declined over the last century from 3 million to around 36 000. So here it is again, the depressing story of Nature in the 21st century. They are running out of food, and needless to say, we’re the reason for that. We’re chowing their pilchards and anchovies. These are the hangers – on, the remnants of a crime nobody really noticed.
I knew a linocut was called for, one that depicts the penguin as a defiant and hardy critter. As it turns out, I was finishing my linocut when I heard Lewis Pugh being interviewed on Michelle Constant’s SAFM show. Perhaps Mr Pugh will be the shining knight the African Penguin desperately needs. The first and most important move to save these guys is to establish a no-take fishing zone within a 20km radius of a colony. That seems like a pretty simple thing to do, right? Lewis said he’d written several times to Minister of Environmental affairs Barbara Creecy, but has yet to receive a reply. Ag come on Minister, asseblief tog….
Lewis Pugh’s December 2nd article in the Daily Maverick:
Travels with Pierneef 