October turned out to be a very busy, but exciting month, in the office of the South African Albatross Task Force team! We decided to embark on organising a Save Our Seabirds Festival, aimed at highlighting the need to protect our seabirds and raise awareness around the work the Seabird Division of BirdLife South Africa and the ATF are currently doing.
The week’s activities ranged from education programmes to public lectures, birding outings, boat trips and a gala cocktail evening. For more information on the National education programme and the special birding tours organised to Robben Island, read Lisa Mansfield’s diary entry for this month.
Three cheese-and-wine evenings were highly successful and packed to the brim with members of the public and VIP guests. The topics and speakers were as follows: Peter Steyn: Antarctic Impressions; Prof. Les Underhill: “The secret lives of Langebaan’s waders” and Prof. George Branch: “Seabirds as key contributors to marine ecosystems”. A representative from government gave an opening address and the BirdLife South Africa/Canon Seabird Photographic Competition was opened.
The top ten finalists’ seabird photographs were on display in the Two Oceans Aquarium. Two competition winners were chosen: firstly by popular vote from members of the public and secondly, the main winner, chosen by auction (bringing in the highest bid) on an online shopping and auction site. The top photograph, “Tern in the catch” by Basie van Zyl bought in R1000, while the popular vote was won with a sooty shearwater’s wing skimming the waters edge by Wilfred Chivell. This innovative competition idea managed to bring in over R3000 alone!
A birding trip out to Rietvlei to view estuarine and coastal birds was a great day spent outdoors and we managed to count 51 species of birds within a couple of hours. A bank cormorant even decided to catch a ride on one man’s bag! Next door to Rietvlei, there is a rehabilitation centre, SANCCOB (The South African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Seabirds). We were taken on a very informative tour, by the in-house vet (Tertius Gous) to see what work they do with injured and oiled seabirds.
The highlight of the evenings’ events was the Gala Cocktail evening held at the Irvin and Johnson Predator exhibit (shark tank) in the Two Oceans Aquarium. The evening was jam-packed full of fun activities such as fun raffles and a presentation on seabird conservation and the Seabird Division’s efforts to address the issues. During the evening a prestigious owl award was presented to Barrie Rose (ex Irvin and Johnson Ltd – fishing company) for his outstanding contribution and help towards seabird conservation over several decades, the Atlas of Seabirds at Sea and the Marine Important Bird Areas Programmes were launch (South African Plastics Federation has sponsored R100000 towards this project).
To end the festival off on a high note, we said to farewell to ten lucky people, who went on a two-night pelagic trip. They set sail on the Maharani, a sailing yacht which has completed 3 Cape to Rio races. The team was lucky enough to see 32 different species of seabirds, including seven types of albatross.
All in all, Save Our Seabirds Festival was a resounding success on all fronts, with several hundreds people attending the events and hundreds more viewing the photographic competition results online. We also raised over R80000!