The Great Penguin Rescue: 40,000 Penguins, a Devastating Oil Spill, and the Inspiring Story of the World's Largest Animal Rescue
For my environmental book review, I chose to read The Great Penguin Rescue, by Dyan DeNapoli, detailing the relief efforts of the disastrous oil spill that struck off the coast of Cape Town, South Africa, when the iron ore carrier MV Treasure foundered, and threatened the habitat of more than 75,000 African Penguins. With over 1,300 tons of oil having been spilled into the ocean, all the rescuers knew they had to act quickly, resulting in the largest, and most successful wildlife rescue in history.
My initial reaction was a bit strange; I though that the author was packing a lot of information in, namely a lot of acronyms, but it seemed more like she was rattling things off for an essay than anything else. However, at the same time, he would gloss over details that I thought would have been interesting. For instance, she mentioned that there were eight members of the team that flew out of JFK, including herself, and a co worker from Boston’s New England Aquarium…That’s nice and all, but I might have liked to hear a bit more up front about the others involved in the rescue attempt. It is true, she does get to their names eventually in the first chapter, but I just found it annoying how she kept referring to everyone as “Our group” or “My colleagues”. I mention this specifically because at first, this rather put me off the book, as I was expecting the whole thing to be much of the same.
Also, we were being given quite a few acronyms right away, which…Frankly came in such quick succession, I couldn’t really keep them straight. I ended up instead remembering parts of them, and just saying things to myself such as “That’s the research place” or “That’s the conservation group”…Not knowing much about these acronyms, that was just sort of where I had to go.
However, I found myself more interested in the book when she became less emotionally analytical about things, and began telling stories about how she came to have an interest in penguins – some of which were actually quite funny. From there, she became more analytical again, but this time without the unnecessary flourishes. She went on to tell a lot more about penguin physiology - bone structure (their bones are solid, unlike most birds), molting patterns (they loose all their feathers at once!) and special physical adaptations, such as the salt glands above their eyes. Using these, penguins can actually lower the salt content in their body, making seawater something they can drink. Somehow I found the base facts of the animals more interesting than her somewhat-overly-decorated language used describe how bad the oil spill was.
Whereas with the chapters regarding the situation itself, she had a tendency to use a lot of simile, in the more basic, bare-bones fact chapters, she couldn't do that...Which I think is part of the reason I preferred those. For instance, when she was talking about the destruction of the penguin's habitats due to guano harvesting done in the 1840's, I found it really rather interesting to receive new information on the subject, as opposed to the slightly more fluffed up kinds of information in other chapters.
I also quite enjoyed the recounting of events from before the author actually arrived on scene; She thoroughly described the events leading to the oil spill, and the sinking of the MV Treasure, on June 23, 2000, leaking 1300 tons of fuel. She made it very clear that this was a particularly disastrous event, not only due to the oil itself, but because of where the ship sank, how the currents carried the oil, and the time of year.
The Treasure went down smack dab between two of the main breeding islands for the African Penguins – Robben Island, and Dassen Island. It was also at the height of the best breeding season scientists had seen in some time for the African Penguin, which was a threatened species when the incident occurred, and had previously experienced several decades of decreasing population numbers.
Unfortunately, this also meant that when the rescue teams moved in to try and help the oiled penguins, they had to do the thing that would be best for the continuation of the species, which meant saving the adults already at breeding age, who when rehabilitated, could go on to produce between one and four eggs per year…In doing so, it meant leaving the chicks behind, because even under ideal circumstances in a normal life cycle, only fifteen percent of those among them to make it past fledgling stage would actually live long enough to breed. After the adults were rescued, then they could return for the surviving chicks.
Another measure they took was preemptively collecting penguins that had not been affected by the oil spill, and moving them some 500 miles away, so that they would have to swim back through clean water, and hopefully, by the time they returned to their habitats, the oil would have been taken care of.
Now, this could be considered cynical of me, but I personally preferred the parts of the book the author was not there for – to me, they seemed overly flowery, and descriptive where they didn’t need to be. When she was talking from a purely academic point of view, she had a much stronger presence to her words, which made it sound like she knew what she was saying, as opposed to simply being someone who was upset by the oil spill.
I think my book of choice demonstrated the use of the Engineering Paradigm, since the rescue workers used a number of varying techniques to help prevent the spill from spreading as much as they could. Between oil skimmers, and various barricades set up at Dassen Island to try and keep the oil from reaching the nesting grounds, to actually relocating some 55,000 birds to a point far enough away that they would have time to clean their habitat before they could get back to it, I think this quite qualifies.
Additionally, I think this plays well into the Complexity Paradigm, since it demonstrates the interactions between society, in this case, shipping and transport vessels, and nature being the penguins and their natural habitats, in a really rather profound way. It shows how humanity may need to make changes, in order to prevent future disasters such as this, and it also makes preparations for the future, in the event that something of this scale could happen again.
With knowledge of this event in mind, for the future rescuers would have a better idea of ways to handle such vast numbers, and not only that, but now there are people who actually have experience dealing with such vast groups of wildlife in a disaster situation – something that these rescuers were without the benefit of.
Also, the use of a degreasing product created by a teenager named Louis Kock, which was made from sunflower oil and ethyl alcohol, earned quite a lot of note. It was safe, efficient, and inexpensive. It worked so well, that the new degreaser became the standard product to use on the penguins in the rescue attempt, helping to save the lives of 19,000 penguins. This product has now had a field test, and proved it’s usefulness, so that in the future, it might be prepared in advance, and be used more quickly.
Overall, I liked this book, but parts of it I did find overly embellished, or a bit dry. I found the story interesting, and actually learned quite a few things I hadn’t known before. I think I would recommend this book to someone who is especially interested in conservation efforts, but perhaps not someone who only had mild interest. While sections of it were witty, others felt slightly repetitive, and occasionally had me wondering if I hadn’t already read a section. On a scale of 1-10 with regards to environmentally based books, I would give it a solid 7.
