African Penguins by Paul Mannix

Learn about one of the largest animal rescue operations to ever occur. It saved a total of 40,000 penguins: 20,000 were oiled and the other 20,000 were shipped away.

Dyan deNapoli talks about her experiences during the oil spill which happened on June 23rd, 2000. It happened off the coast of South Africa in between two of the most important African Penguin nesting islands. Towards the beginning of the video, Dyan brings up the german scientist by the name of Silvia Gaus. Silvia said during the Gulf Oil Spill :

Kill don’t clean. The survival rate of oil-soaked birds is under 1 percent. We, therefore, oppose cleaning birds.

I don’t agree with this and neither did Dyan in her presentation. She said:

More than 90% of the oiled penguins were successfully returned to the wild. And we know from follow up studies that they have lived just as long as never oiled penguins and bred nearly as successfully.

Another thing I found interesting in the video was that up to 1000 people a day would show up to volunteer. Ultimately, a total of 12,500 different people volunteered!

I also really liked the quote towards the end of the video by Ryunosuke Satoro:

Individually we are one drop, together we are an ocean.

Together we really can make a huge difference.