Penguins Need Knitters' Help
The world's knitters have risen to the occasion following an appeal to get knitting, after penguins caught in the October oil slick suddenly needed a new way to keep warm.
When a cargo ship ran aground off the coast of Tauranga on October 5th and 350 tons of oil leaked into the ocean, over a thousand sea-birds including many of New Zealand's famous blue-penguin population were killed by the spill that quickly became New Zealand's worst maritime environmental disaster.
More still were put in danger by exposure to the oil. A penguin's feathers are denser than those of other birds and a Velcro-like covering of these feathers normally creates a waterproofing effect which serves as a natural wetsuit. But the effect is ruined by oil, which means that water and cold can penetrate to the skin. Further damage can be caused when the birds ingest oil while preening.
However, a NZ yarn-store came up with a novel solution. Skeinz of Napier, New Zealand posted a request for woollen jumpers to keep the birds warm and prevent them from preening until they could be cleaned. Their website also included instructions and patterns. The request went global, the world's knitters responded en masse, and jumpers were soon flooding in from all over the world.
Staff at the Skeinz store were surprised at receiving a “deluge” of over fifteen hundred jumpers from knitters in places as far away as Mongolia, the UK, and Sweden. 'It's really precious and overwhelming,” a spokesperson commented on the store blog.
The penguins have since been treated and released back into the wild, so the jumpers are now being sold by Skeinz on cuddly toy penguins instead. All proceeds will go to the Penguin Rescue Fund.
With Strangles Awareness Week just around the corner (5-11 May), vets are being encouraged to share a survey about the disease with their horse-owning clients.
