14 DAY TRIAL // Those who have knitting all figured out can now use their skills around needles and yarn to help penguins affected by oil spills, leaks from fishing boats and other similar incidents. Provided that they have some time to spare and are willing to get involved in rehabilitating such birds, that is.
Thus, the Penguin Foundation on Phillip Island in Australia says that it is in dire need of professional knitters who are ready and willing to dedicate some of their time to making jumpers for penguins.
Lyn Blom, who now works as a receptionist at the Penguin Foundation, explains that, when exposed to oil spills, fuel leaks and the like, penguins lose their ability to keep warm.
This is because said substances cause them to lose their so-called waterproofness. Otherwise put, ocean water makes it all the way to the penguins' skin, and the result is that the birds can no longer keep warm. This, in turn, can lead to hypothermia and other health problems.
“If somebody puts oil into the sea, a little penguin swimming along pops up to the surface and finds out he’s come up in a circle of yucky stuff,” Lyn Blom said in a recent interview, as cited by The Guardian.
“The first thing he wants to do is get to shore because he loses all his waterproofness,” the Penguin Foundation conservationist went on to explain.
Lyn Blom and her colleagues say that the jumpers they want people to knit for the penguins under their care are intended to help keep the birds warm and cosy until their body shakes off the oil and they regain their ability to swim around in the ocean without freezing.
What's more, the jumpers help make sure that, during the rehabilitation program, the penguins do not try and remove the oil or the fuel themselves by using their beaks to clean their bodies.
The Penguin Foundation's so-called penguin jumper program debuted back in 2001, in the aftermath of an oil spill in local water that left as many as 438 such birds in dire need of help.
Lyn Blom says that, since the program began until present day, the Foundation has helped rehabilitate some 20 penguins on a yearly basis.
Interestingly enough, the organization says that it sends the jumpers that it has no need for to other similar groups, which means that even more birds benefit from this initiative.
Those who feel like supporting this program and knitting one or two – maybe even more – jumpers for penguins need only have a look at the knitting patterns the organization has made available and get to work.