Shedd Aquarium (CHICAGO) —  A team from the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago has traveled more than 8,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean on a mission to help save abandoned baby penguins on South Africa’s coast.

Hundreds of endangered African penguin chicks are abandoned by their parents every year in South Africa, according to a news release this week from the Shedd Aquarium.

“The strandings are due to the species’ feather-changing process known as ‘moulting,'” the aquarium said. “When moulting, the adult penguins are unable to go into the cold ocean to hunt for fish, so chicks that hatch late in the year are often left behind and face the risk of starvation.”

Many abandoned baby penguins have been affected by “illness, oil spills, or injuries as a result of human activity,” the aquarium added.

 Because the African penguin species is endangered, saving the baby penguins to help retain the species’ population is “critical,” the Shedd Aquarium said.

“Without organizations dedicated to assisting these animals,” the aquarium added, “the population would continue to decline at a rapid and detrimental rate.”

Throughout this month and January of next year, the Shedd Aquarium said it will be working with the South African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds (SANCCOB) to rescue, rehabilitate and eventually release the abandoned chicks.

 So far, nearly 500 abandoned African penguin chicks have been admitted to SANCCOB this year, according to the Shedd Aquarium.

The Shedd Aquarium team in SANCCOB’s facility in Cape Town, South Africa, went live on Facebook this past Monday, Dec. 5, to show how they are caring for the penguin chicks that have been rescued so far.

The Shedd Aquarium said in a news release that rescued chicks “are first evaluated by experts and then placed in SANCCOB’s Chick Rearing Unit where they are kept in temperature controlled habitats and fed multiple times each day to ensure they are receiving proper nutrition.”

 The babies then “continue to go through regular checkups with experts until they reach fledging age, which is approximately three months old,” the aquarium added.

At that point, if the chicks are “deemed healthy enough, they are released back to the wild into an established penguin colony with a micro-chip to allow for continued health monitoring,” Shedd said.

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