African Penguins in Cape Town A New Chapter in My Life

In this video I've travelled to Cape Town mainly to see this animal here, the African penguin. I'm going to be spending some time filming them in the wild as well as visiting SANKOB which is an amazing animal rescue and rehabilitation organisation which is working to protect this critically endangered species. I'll also be exploring other parts of Cape Town as well and taking you with me every step of the way so I hope you enjoy this adventure. On our first morning we headed straight out to find the penguins. At first it just looks like a normal beach but then you actually have to crawl through this tiny gap in the rocks to get there. Okay we just got here and we didn't realise we literally had to like go through the water and the boulders to find the penguins. We did see one on a rock up ahead but the water is absolutely freezing and I had jeans on so I've just rolled them up but they're probably gonna be wet. Tomorrow when we come back we'll be better equipped for this adventure I think. We found the first penguins. These are African penguins, a species that live here along the southern coast of Africa. It's quite surreal seeing penguins in a place like this though. Obviously you expect them to be in ice and snow not with warm sand and crashing waves and bright sunshine but that's exactly what the penguins here are built for. And the cold ocean currents here help to keep the water cool as well which is where they do most of their hunting. Later that afternoon we headed to the main penguin colony and straight away it felt so different here. So you can't actually walk on the beach here because the whole area is protected. This is where the penguins come to mate and lay their eggs so everything here is designed to keep them safe and undisturbed. As amazing as it was to watch all the behaviour here at the colony we really love being down and eye level with them on the beach so much so that we came back for the next two mornings just to film them all over again. There is the occasional bit of drama with squabbles breaking out here and there, usually everyone's getting too close but it's all very quick. It's a lot of noise but not much out and then just as suddenly it's over. A few minutes later they're back in the water completely calm and drifting along like nothing ever happened. The main reason why we chose to come to Cape Town is because I needed somewhere that was really easy for wildlife that wasn't going to be anything too strenuous or challenging. I've been quite quiet for the past few months because I've been keeping a little secret. We have a little baby on the way so this is baby's first adventure with the penguins. Obviously this has been quite an easy accessible way to see animals. You can come to the beach and they're right there so it's not been too strenuous. I did actually have to have a couple of days in bed because I wasn't feeling too well. So some honesty here is that the last two days have been a complete write-off. I caught some sort of bug or something and then with being pregnant it's just hit me so much harder than it obviously hit like Ali or anything. So I was actually in hospital this morning. The medics came yesterday and then today went to hospital because I still wasn't doing very well. But they checked the baby and she was moving around, wriggling, dancing. She's fine, she doesn't care that I'm ill. They just gave me an IV with fluids and they said they couldn't really give me any medication because it's not pregnancy safe. And that did make me feel a lot better. So just back at the Airbnb, resting up now. We're back out again today in sunshine which feels lovely. But yeah things are going to be looking a little different around here from now on. When you're here seeing so many penguins along the beach you don't really think of them as endangered because it feels so full of life. But actually African penguins have declined by around 80% in the last few decades. So I wanted to learn more about what's being done to protect them. So I planned a visit to Sankob. Today I'm at Sankob which is the amazing rescue and rehabilitation organisation working to save the penguins here in South Africa. I have exclusive behind-the-scenes access today so I'm going to be able to show you all the incredible conservation work they're doing and learn more about what we can all do to help save this incredible species. Let's go. At the start of the day everyone was busy preparing food and medicine for the resident penguins. These are the ones that can't be released back into the wild so instead are cared for full-time by the team. African penguins face a range of threats both natural and human driven. In the wild they have natural predators like great white sharks but today one of their biggest challenges is a decline in their food. Sardines and anchovies, their favourite food source, are becoming less and less available largely due to fishing. And on top of that they're impacted by pollution like oil spills and noise pollution along the coast. The African penguin was reclassified by the IUCN as critically endangered in 2024. That means that the African penguin is one step away from being functionally extinct in the wild and that was based on a population modelling study that showed at the current rate of decline the African penguin will be functionally extinct by 2035. So that gives us nine years to reverse this decline or at least stabilise wild penguin populations. One of the ways they're working to change that is through their chick rearing unit by rescuing abandoned eggs and then raising the chicks by hand before releasing them back into the wild. And so far they've successfully raised nearly 8 000 chicks. If you want to help Sankob you can visit our social media pages and look for news and competitions and ways to contribute or donate. If you are local in South Africa in Cape Town or PE you can come and volunteer at our centres, you can lend a hand with some of the hard work to start with and you can learn about rehabilitation and conservation of African penguins and other seabirds. Unfortunately I don't have a huge amount more to show you because I was still recovering from being ill and my time in hospital but we did make it up Table Mountain which was such a lovely way to end the trip. We're back down the mountain now only spent like an hour up there but I think unless you do the hike I think that's where you really see stuff like the animals and stuff but it was still beautiful views at the top and we had such a clear day which I think we probably took for granted because in the cable car on the way down he was like only 30 percent of days are like this Some people try so many times to come up and get the view but it's just obstructed by clouds so definitely feeling lucky to have such a nice sunny day up there. I wanted to film a proper ending because this vlog didn't quite go to plan. I had so many other places I wanted to go and visit and share with you during my time in Cape Town but I literally had two good days there before I got sick and after that was pretty much a write-off like even the day I went to Sankob I was having to sit down every 20 minutes and I just felt horrendous so I thought it'd be good just to have a sit down chat and just talk in general all things pregnancy in this industry and my personal experience of first trimester traveling when pregnant. Me and my husband obviously had a lot of conversations before we decided to have kids about how it was going to impact me and my work and it's already had a huge impact and she's not even here yet. Most of my trips this year have had to be cancelled because they're in places that aren't safe to travel due to pregnancy like because they have viruses like malaria or zika virus or they're just too remote like the nearest hospital is 10 hours away so if something were to happen I wouldn't be able to get the medical care I needed and even just in general like everything is so much harder. I had a really really challenging first trimester I had to go on medication because I was just so sick and this trip felt like it was doable because for a start Ali was able to come with me it was only a week there was good access to healthcare if needed the penguins were obviously very easily accessible so it felt like I could still get back out there and do what I love without obviously putting myself or my baby at any risk in doing so. In terms of the journey itself it was still I think 11 or 12 hours overnight flight each way so it wasn't like a short journey but I got some compression socks because I read that that was a good thing to do and I had alarms set on my phone so every half an hour obviously when the seat belt signs were switched off I got up and walked up and down just to prevent any risk of blood clot which increases when you're pregnant and I had electrolytes with me that I was constantly sipping as well but it definitely just felt harder even just managing the airport and the queues so things are going to look a little different here for a while I do have some plans for some more like local shoots over the coming months I'm going to be filming at a swannery in the UK and then I'm also going to Berlin to try and film the raccoons there at the end of May but I'm just kind of re-evaluating what my life and what my work will look like and trying to balance still being able to get out and do what I love but also equally knowing that especially once she's here I probably won't be wanting to leave her for extended periods of time at least not in the first year or so so things will be a little different and I'm learning to navigate that and also wanting to speak openly about that because there are still so few women in this industry and even fewer that have kids and families because it's a harder industry to be in as a mother so I'm just hoping to share that with you all and navigate that journey as I learn and learn how to balance that and hopefully be able to provide some insight to others who are following a similar journey or a similar path as well so yeah thank you all for watching I hope you enjoyed this video and I'll be back again with more wildlife content soon