‘Peter the Penguin’ Survives S. Africa Oil Spill, Swims Home

Scientists want to study him, journalists want to photograph him, and millions of South Africans just want reassurance that their beloved Peter is OK after he survived an oil spill and swam 470 miles back to his home.

The only problem is no one knows exactly where the celebrity penguin is.

Driving rain and howling wind prevented people from taking the boat trip to Peter’s home to greet the 18-inch-tall hero on his return Tuesday to Robben Island.

Scientists, who glued a tracking device to his back, know he’s there somewhere. But even when boats begin running again, the search for Peter will be a difficult one: The device tracks him only to within about 500 feet, and the island, four miles off Cape Town, is covered with thick brush under which the penguins nest in burrows.

“It will take a couple of days of astute detective work to track him down,” said Les Underhill of the University of Cape Town’s avian demography unit, which has been tracking the birds.

Peter was among 20,000 penguins trucked to the town of Port Elizabeth and released to make the long swim home, giving authorities time to clean up an oil spill from a tanker that sank June 23.

About 23,000 other penguins, which had been coated by oil, are being cared for by volunteers and the South African National Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds in rehabilitation centers in Cape Town.

But authorities were not able to capture all the penguins soiled or threatened by the spill, and there has been no estimate as to how many birds were killed.

The local media, meanwhile, have turned Peter, along with two other tracked penguins, Percy and Pamela, into celebrities, and thousands have followed their progress via the Internet (https://www.uct.ac.za/depts/stats/adu).

Percy, who lives on Dassen Island about 40 miles northwest of Cape Town and was released July 5, was expected home within a day or two. Pamela, who was released July 3, was taking her time getting back, swimming only about 25 miles a day.

African penguins, which are listed as vulnerable to extinction, are found only off the coast of southern Africa.