Fears of bird flu have kept them under strict confinement in Bergen aquarium for months. But the second shot of a vaccine will see them return to their normal lives.
Gentoo penguin males sift through pebbles looking for the smoothest one to present to their chosen mate.Image: picture-alliance/empics/J. Barlow
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Staff at Norway's Bergen Aquarium this week began vaccinating a group of Gentoo penguins that has been living under quarantine for months.
Cases of a highly infectious bird flu strain, H5N8, were detected in the country in December.
The type had not been registered in Norway before, but scientists say it has a 90% mortality for birds.
Though devastating for birds, transmission to humans is rare, but not impossible.
"Because of this, the Food Health Authority enacted a curfew: all birds in captivity must be kept under a roof," aquarium director Aslak Sverdrup told AFP on Thursday.
So far, none of the birds at the Bergen Aquarium caught the flu.
A colony of emperor penguines in AntarcticaImage: E. Hummel/blickwinkel/picture alliance
Which penguines will get vaccinated first?
Twelve penguins have to be vaccinated. The birds in the highest risk group, the oldest, received their first doses on Wednesday.
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Thursday was the youngest's turn.
The zoo posted a video of a few of the penguines getting vaccinated on their Instagram feed.
Among the freshly immunized is "Erna," named after Norway's Prime Minister Erna Solberg.
As a young woman, she once had a summer job at the aquarium, a tourist attraction in the western city where she was born.
"The fact that the penguins are being vaccinated now is pure coincidence, totally independent of the coronavirus," said Sverdrup. "But it shows that vaccines are important, even more so today," he said.
February was the hottest month ever recorded in Antarctica. Climate change is having a severe impact on the remote region and the population of chinstrap penguins is heavily declining, as scientists recently found out.
Image: Reuters/U. Marcelino
On an Antarctic mission
A team of scientists from two US universities set sail on an Antarctic expedition at the start of this year. During several weeks at sea, they studied the impact of climate change on the remote region. More specifically, they wanted to assess how many chinstrap penguins are left in Western Antarctica compared to the last survey of their population in the 1970s.
Image: Reuters/U. Marcelino
Tame and curious
Chinstrap penguins inhabit the islands and shores of the Southern Pacific and Antarctic Oceans. They are named after the narrow black band on the underside of their heads. Even before the scientists can hear the birds' loud, harsh calls, a pungent smell of penguin excrement indicates that a colony is nearby. Penguins have not learned to fear humans, so they mostly ignore their visitors.
Image: Reuters/U. Marcelino
Shocking results
The scientists used manual and drone surveying techniques to count the chinstrap penguins. Their findings revealed that some colonies had experienced a drop of up to more than 70%. "The declines that we've seen are definitely dramatic," Steve Forrest, a conservation biologist who was part of the expedition, told Reuters.
Image: Reuters/U. Marcelino
Food chain is declining
Chinstrap penguins feed on small fish, like krill, shrimp and squid. They can swim up to 80 kilometers (50 miles) offshore each day to obtain their food. Their tightly packed feathers work like a waterproof coat and enable them to swim in freezing waters. But climate change is decreasing the abundance of krill, which is making it harder for the birds to survive.
Image: Reuters/U. Marcelino
Reproduction challenges
Chinstraps choose to nest in particularly inaccessible and remote places. When they procreate, they build circular nests from stones and lay two eggs. Both male and female work in shifts of around 6 days each to incubate the eggs. But as global warming is causing ice sheets to melt and is driving food abundance down, reproduction is becoming less successful.
Image: Reuters/U. Marcelino
Broader implications of a changing environment
There are an estimated eight million chinstrap penguins globally, which is why there hasn't been much concern about them thus far. But in the past 50 years, their population on the Antarctic Peninsula has declined by more than half. Chinstraps aren't in imminent danger of extinction, but the decline of their populations is a stark warning about broad environmental changes taking place.
Image: Reuters/U. Marcelino
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How do you vaccinate a penguin?
First of all, workers completely drained the penguin pond at the aquarium.
The birds would be difficult to get a hold of if they could go swimming after being confined for so long, Natalie Stenfeldt told local newspaper Bergen Tidende.
"Hockey," who weighs about eight kilos, gave Stenfeldt a lot resistance.
Struggling against her, he gets in a couple of good blows with his left wing, before she gets control.
Only then could veterinarian Hanne Marie Thomsen from the Animal Clinic in Bergen put in the vaccine.
"He's a big boy. It is quite difficult to keep him in place," said Stenfeldt.
A pair of Megellanic penguins during the start of breeding seasonImage: Daniel Feldman/AP Photo/picture alliance
What happens next to the penguins?
All penguins must be vaccinated with two doses before the Aquarium can take down the tarp that has been covering their enclosure.
But a few days after they get their second shot, the penguins can start meeting zoo visitors again.
Second doses are scheduled for April.
"It is a bit the same for the penguins as it is for us humans with the coronavirus vaccine. When they get the second dose, they too can start returning to everyday life," said aquarium director Sverdrup.
