World cruise 20 - Margaret

From Margaret
Adelaide, Australia
Victor Harbor
Fairy Penguins of Granite Island

Granite Island is more than a two hour drive from Adelaide just off the coast of Victor Harbor. Once we arrived at Victor Harbor we had about an hour to ramble around before dinner at the Victor Hotel. It was Sunday evening so there wasn't a lot to look at beyond the shore line, Granite Island, and the Australian magpie's walking around the city park.

Dinner, at the Victor Hotel restaurant which was described as a "carvery" was very good and very large – way more than most people could eat. So it was a stuffed bunch of tourists who set out at dusk to walk the causeway to Granite Island. Just as we reached Granite Island the setting sun blazed the sky into a glorious sunset. What a way to begin our evening adventure.

Granite Island is a huge chunk of granite rising out of the ocean. Eons of weathering haven't softened it a lot. To look at it, one would not imagine it to be a preferred home for a colony of Fairy Penguins, but that is what we were here to see.

Fairy Penguins are tiny, maybe 12 inches tall, with shiny, steel-blue feathers on their backs and white ones on the front. They weigh about 1 kilo. They spend the day at sea, traveling as much as a hundred kilometers from shore in search of food or just playing, returning to shore only after dusk where they hide in the rock crevices and tiny tunnels, sometimes going as much as several yards (meters) underground. That this tiny bird can toddle on its feet hundreds of yards up the rocks to the hidey-hole it has chosen is astounding.

The young are raised in these same rocky crevices. Juvenile penguins go to sea entirely on their own with no help from the parents at around 8-9 weeks of age. And like salmon they return to their place of hatching – particularly the males who are the ones who choose and build nesting sites. Females will often go to other colonies to choose a mate – good genetic mixing tactic.

Granite Island is also a home to a Fairy Penguin Sanctuary for injured birds. Birds with relatively minor injuries can be released back into the wild, more serious injuries mean that they will stay in the sanctuary for the rest of their lives. It was these birds that we saw the most.

The wild ones were scarce as they were mostly out at sea stuffing themselves. This is molting season. They have to eat enough to triple their body weight because when they molt their feathers, they hide in the rocks for 3 weeks where they have to live on stored body fat. We did see one wild one come out of the sea and hop toward her/his nest and two others already nestled in their rocky crevice.

The interpreters who guided us around Granite Island told us that a few years ago we would have seen a lot more penguins as there were over 2000 living on the island. Last year there were only 26, and this year there are 40. While they are hoping that this year's increase means that the population is starting to recover, they say there is no guarantee. A nearby island has completely lost its penguin colony. Penguin populations everywhere are crashing, and no one yet knows why. Our interpreter thinks that it has something to do with pollution and food supply. The small fish that the penguins feed on are becoming scarcer, and the sanctuary is seeing more penguins with diseases and damage that can be traced to pollutants coming into the ocean from the nearby rivers.

All in all a very informative and interesting expedition. We did not get back to the ship until 11:45pm -- way past my bedtime :-) .