As part of South Africa’s National Marine week BirdLife South Africa’s Seabird Division (of which I am a part) organises the initiative known as the Save our Seabirds (SOS) Festival. This annual festival aims to educate people about the threats that seabirds face. The focus of the festival is however not only on seabirds but also to highlight and address relevant issues that affect the entire marine environment.

Organising this festival is obviously a bunch of extra work on top of our commitments to the Albatross Task Force work that we do. However it does provide us with a great platform to inform, educate and create awareness in ways and on a scale that is difficult to accomplish any other way. Some of the exciting events and competitions that are part of this festival include a high quality international photographic competition with the top 50 images then being displayed during the festival at a local museum as well as three evening lectures presented by some of the leading experts in marine biology and marine conservation. This year we are particularly fortunate to have the creative director of the BBC’s Natural History Unit and mastermind behind the most recent documentary series ‘Africa’, Mike Gunton taking us for a behind the scenes look at what goes into the making of these amazing films.

Moving back to our beloved seabirds it is the plight of the African Penguin that is a big focus of this year’s festival. A recently started MSc project that involves the tracking of these birds outside of the breeding season is the basis for the ‘Tracking the Penguins’ initiative. By visiting the following webpage http://www.sosfestival.co.za/penguin-tracking/ one can see where the penguins are moving. This is vitally important research that we hope will form an integral part of a multi-pronged conservation plan that will hopefully prevent this wonderful bird from going the way of the Dodo and Great Auk amongst others.

With that information overload for you I return (rather reluctantly) to the chaos of the office and the organisational obstacles to be conquered!

Below: Screengrab of the penguin tracks on the SOS Festival website