“Lights, camera, action” - that has been the highlight of my month as I was interviewed about the work of the Albatross Task Force and BirdLife in South Africa. I found out that being on television is no easy business. First you have to deal with the intensely bright lights, as bright as the midday summer Limpopo sun. Then you have this group of people who are intensely focused on you all the time and if you are self-conscious like me, it can be one of the most uncomfortable moments of your life.
Actually being on TV is like being on a blind date, you get scared and excited at the same time. And if that was not enough I had to try my level best to speak and explain our scientific work in my home language, Sepedi. This is easy when you speak about the weather and not so easy when you are speaking about the conservation of penguins and albatrosses!
To reach the youth and a broad group of people, they required that the television show had a mix of English and one of South Africa’s indigenous languages. The aim of the show is to showcase various careers within South Africa and tell young people of the skills required for various jobs.
The rest of filming went particularly well considering that it was organised at short notice and some of the sites we filmed at were confirmed last minute (due to the need for permits). The site I loved the most was the African Penguin colony at Stony Point (along the Cape Town coast, South Africa). The colony has around 5000 African Penguins. Seeing them waddle about on the beach was a great sight.
I just hope that in 50 years time I can still be able to see them waddling around in their natural environment. The other thing I loved about this site was the drive to Stony Point. It is a beautiful scenic drive along the coast (about 1.5 hours from Cape Town), with beautiful scenery of the ocean and some beautiful beach properties. At Stony Point the film crew filmed us performing penguin moult counts, with Mario Leshoro (expert on monitoring seabirds) explaining how and why they are done.
Below: African penguins at SToney Point, Cape Town
The next site we filmed at was the Ocean View Association for Persons with Disabilities (OVAPD), a local group who help build bird-scaring lines (BSLs). These are then sold to the fishing companies in South Africa to prevent seabirds becoming entangled in fishing gear. This is a wonderful community-based organisation, where I assist the team in building bird-scaring lines.
This was a great opportunity to inform the nation of South Africa about the work that the Seabird Division of BirdLife South Africa and the Albatross Task Force perform on a typical day. Hopefully this one small step for the ‘albatross’ will lead to giant leaps for ‘bird-kind’.
Below: Building bird-scaring (tori) lines at the Ocean View Association