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HONG KONG: Except for the absence of staggering crowds, life, for penguins in Hong Kong’s Ocean Park, has been much the same during the coronavirus pandemic, but their caretakers have worked long shifts to keep the monochrome company healthy.
Piles of fresh snow have been placed as about 100 penguins gather enthusiastically for the mid-morning feeding session.
Usually this spectacular daily ritual at the South Pole would be a big draw. But the park is still closed due to the pandemic.
“If the guests are here, they would certainly be more interactive with the guests through the window, but without guests, we can do … more enrichment sessions with the penguins,” explained Frank Chau, the park’s chief marine mammal supervisor. .
“They can still have fun,” he told Agence France-Presse. Since the pandemic began, Chau and his colleagues have divided into two teams that work three-day shifts to care for penguins.
Both teams have been strictly separated from each other, a measure to ensure that if one team was quarantined due to a positive test result, the other group could continue to provide specialized care.
“The workforce for each team is less … Now we only have three to four people each day to care for all the penguins and make sure that each penguin continues to live happy and healthy both mentally and physically,” said Chau.
On a typical day, Chau begins with cleaning and disinfecting before turning on the snow machines that help recreate Antarctic conditions in hot, humid Hong Kong.
Then he prepares the food and performs health checks like weighing the birds and trimming their claws.
To keep penguins entertained, the team builds toys, including floating ice tables and a perforated box filled with fish and krill to encourage underwater feeding.
Last month, a zoo in Singapore used the pandemic shutdown to give its company of African penguins the park run in a video that quickly went viral.
But Chau said the penguins in Ocean Park could not get out of their icy enclosure. AFP
