Algoa Bay Journal: Day 2

On Tuesday, we woke up at 6am and had breakfast at 7. Then, we took the bus to go to the harbor where we met Lorien Pichegru who is a specialist of Penguins. We set off for St Croix Island with Raggy Charters.

Raggy Charters boat cruise

 On the way, we saw a mother and a baby humpback whale, it was so cute. They were jumping around the boat and they came very close to us. It was awesome!

Humpback Whale

 Then, we saw the African Penguins on the island f St Croix. They were so many! 22 000 penguins on a rocky island it’s quite impressive. She explained that the numbers have been decreasing for the last decade due to overfishing.

St Croix

On the way back, we saw a pod of dolphins. They came very close and they kept on jumping around us. It was amazing! There were even some very little ones!

When we came back to the harbor, we had a picnic and then we went to Samrec, a rehabilitation facility for marine birds. There, we met a volunteer who explained us how they helped penguins, cormorants and Cape gannets. He also taught us how important penguins are for the wild life and the biodiversity of Algoa Bay. It was very interesting, particularly the feeding of the birds.

Feeding of the penguins

Then Lorien explained why Algoa Bay was chosen as a Hope Spot: Algoa Bay hosts a unique ecosystem where a large number of marine species can be found. The concept of Hope Spot is to get people to involve in activities around the ocean in order to restore or maintain the ocean’s health. She asked us to: talk about the protection of the ocean as often as possible, to not throw plastics, and to ask our parents to buy fishes according to the SASSI list (http://wwfsassi.co.za/sassi-list/).

Dr Lorien Pichegru

Finally, we went back to the resort to do an experiment on the acidification of the oceans (see next post). We learnt a lot of things. We ended the day by having dinner and having some fun outside by the beach. We went to bed quite early, some of us were exhausted!

By Hugo and Vincent