A two-hour boat ride across windswept Algoa Bay from Port Elizabeth lies Bird Island, the site of the largest breeding colony of gannets in the world.
Bird Island is managed by SA National Parks, which also looks after three smaller adjacent islands — Stag, Seal and Black Rocks. They estimate there are 169 000 gannets on the island.
Covering about 19 hectares in total, the four islands are also home to the highly endangered roseate tern; the eastern-most breeding group of endemic African penguins; and a colony of Cape fur seals.
With the islands now set to be proclaimed a marine protected area (MPA) and included in the greater Addo Elephant National Park, their future protection and conservation appears to be assured, although this has not always been the case.
Through the centuries following the first recorded European sighting of the Bird Island group in 1488 by Portuguese explorer Bartholomeu Dias, there have been times when exploitation has taken its wildlife to the brink of extinction.
Shipwrecked sailors, egg collectors, seal hunters, guano diggers, abalone poachers and fishermen, among others, have all taken a heavy toll on the islands’ birds, penguins, seals and marine life.
According to old records, in one month alone, over 13 000 gannet eggs were collected and sold in Port Elizabeth. Penguins and their eggs also found their way onto sailors’ menus.
Most of the damage, however, was caused by the collectors of guano. The accumulated droppings of tens of thousands of seabirds was so valued as a fertiliser it was once referred to as ”white gold”. According to some reports, the scraping and collection of guano on Bird Island persisted right up until the early 1990s. At one point, the guano collectors introduced rabbits to the island to assure themselves of fresh meat, but the creatures reproduced quickly and soon stripped off all the vegetation. After this, they were eradicated.
Nollie Bosman, a SANParks ranger and the man in charge on the island, says the greatest threat facing the island now is abalone poachers, who sneak in their boats at night around the islands.
”At the beginning of this year, huge quantities of abalone were taken away by poachers,” he said.
He described the poaching as a ”huge threat” to the future of conservation on the islands and their surrounding reefs.
How the cash-strapped conservation authorities in the Eastern Cape are going to deal with the poachers -‒ who at the moment appear to operate with impunity ‒- is not immediately clear.
Bosman said another major danger was posed by passing ships illegally flushing their bilges in the bay, releasing quantities of fuel oil. This problem, he said, was likely to worsen once the new deep-water port of Coega was completed.
”There remains also the threat of a major oil spill, which is something we have no control over,” he said.
In the past, many ships have wrecked themselves on the island’s rocky shores and reefs.
One of the better known was the British East Indiaman, the Doddington, which was wrecked off Bird Island in 1755.
According to reports, there were 37 survivors, who kept themselves alive for seven months on gannet and penguin eggs before finally building a makeshift boat to take them to the mainland.
Meanwhile, the graceful gannets continue to flock and fly above Bird Island in their thousands. Bosman says of the estimated 169 000 birds, about 145 000 are breeding pairs.
Their Afrikaans name, ”Malgas”, literally ”mad geese”, best describes their behaviour as they call raucously, pointing their heads to the sky before soaring aloft and then plunging, from as high as 30 metres, into the sea to catch fish.
They are skilled divers, with the ability to fold their wings right back seconds before hitting the water. – Sapa