Thursday, May 24, 2007

More Penguins at Sealife Aquarium

On Monday we visited the Sealife Aquarium in Cape Town. Here we had another opportunity to see penguins, but this time very close up. As well as African Penguins, Sealife also has Rockhopper penguins; those with the yellow spikey 'hair' and plain white fronts. Their environment replicates the seashore with waves onto a little beach, rocks and burrows like those we saw on Boulders. We arrived just before feeding time and one Rockhopper was obviously on look out.

They were handfed by a member of staff who gave us a very interesting commentary. Each penguin's name was called out with the type of fish being fed.


A member of the public, this time a young girl, recorded the information, so that they were able to keep a check on each penguins' food intake.

Some pengiuns took their fish into the water to eat and other went into burrows to share with their nesting mate.


The aquarium focusses on two oceans; the cold, stormy waters of the Southern Atlantic and the warm tropical seas of the Indian Ocean. The contrasts between the two were shown in the sange and type of fish and other sea creatures living in both. This huge turtle was a spectacular sight. As was one of two jagged-tooth sharks. There were also smaller sharks, rays and massive ugly fish, as well as a great variety of smaller fish.

This shark had what looked like a young shark resting on its back.

We also watched the seals being fed. They are so intelligent, demonstrating 'enrichment activities', which are taught to enhance their life in captivity and enable staff to handle them for medical examinations etc.

All the animals have been rescued from the some predicament or other and cannot be returned to the wild.


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