Penguins For U.S. Zoo

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29994, 1 December 1962, Page 10

Penguins For U.S. Zoo

An Adelie penguin colony may be successfully established in the Portland Zoo, Oregon, as the result of a penguin-catching campaign in the Antarctic by the zoo’s director, Mr J. L. Marks.

While hosing down the penguins in Christchurch yesterday, Mr Marks said that the Adelies he was taking back were mated birds which might reproduce and so become the first ever to breed in captivity. The penguins—2o Emperors and 20 Adelies —arrived in large, open crates in the elevator well of an unheated United States Air Force Globemaster, which landed at Christchurch airport about 4 a.m. yesterday. After being caged, the birds were left in the open for several hours before being returned to the same Globemaster, which left in the afternoon for Portland.

The penguins were an attraction at the airport yesterday and many visitors equipped with still and movie cameras went to watch them. When the Globemaster arrived at the airport, Mr Marks sprayed the penguins with a “fog machine.” which produces a fine mist under pressure. The birds breathe the mist, which contains Amphotericin B, an antibiotic, which goes straight to the birds’ air sacs, where it attacks lung fungus. Before they left, the penguins were sprayed again. The consignment, which also includes about 60 magpies, hedgehogs, opossums, and a rook, collected from all parts of Canterbury, is due to arrive at Portland about 1 p.m. on Saturday. (The plane crosses the dateline and so gains a day.) In addition to the . enguins, there were 11 passengers from the Antarctic in the Globemaster, which has completed its support mission in the Antarctic. Spending 12 hours aboard an unheated aircraft was no joke, said one passenger. “Believe me, boy, that flight was pure hell.” he said.

The 20 Emperor penguins were caught last week-end at Coulman Island, about 350 miles north of McMurdo station, said Mr Marks. A DC3 was unable to land on the nearby sea ice and a helicopter was used to ferry the catch back to the DC3, which had landed about 20 miles away. Mr Marks was assisted by Mr L. Richards, a newspaper reporter from Oregon. It took about seven hours to catch and load the penguins. Two flights were made to the DC3, which then returned to McMurdo station. On Wednesday, the search was on again, this time for Adelies. It was carried out about 50 miles from McMurdo station at Cape Crozier, where there is an estimated halfmillion birds. The Adelies were selected for Mr Marks by Mr R. Wood, of the Johns Hopkins University, Maryland. Mr Wood, who has spent some time at

the Cape Crozier rookery, was able to select mated birds, which were ferried back to McMurdo by helicopter in cne flight Mr Marks went to the Antarctic on two previous penguin-hunting expeditions in 1957 and 1958. In the first expedition he took 60 birds back to his zoo. In 1958 he took 78. Some were shared with other zoos and these quickly died of aspergillosis, a lung fungus which has caused the failure of every attempt to establish penguins from the Antarctic in the last 200 years. Use of the spray containing Amphotericin B at Portland Zoo, which lost half of its first colony of penguins, was so successful that no penguin has died from the fungus in three years. This fact and the introduction of the new birds gives Mr Marks hope that the zoo will be successful in establishing a healthy colony.