Local diving club, Time2Dive, has been swimming with our penguins to give their enclosure a good clean ahead of Summer!

So, how do you keep a penguin enclosure clean? Not easily! Our state-of-the-art penguin enclosure, Penguin Coast, has a very sophisticated pump house which filters out penguin poop, maintains the correct ph levels for saltwater and injects ozone to provide the optimum underwater environment for our Humboldt and Macaroni Penguins. But even with this in place the underwater viewing windows still need a good clean along with the bottom of pool where bright sunlight often causes algae to bloom. This is where our local dive team Time2Dive, including Folly Farm’s very own engineer and maintenance support technician, Wayne Sunter, help out.

Whilst they’re used to diving off the coast of Pembrokeshire and encountering native wildlife, Time2Dive don’t come face to face penguins unless they come diving at Folly Farm and they’re never short of volunteers for the job! Armed with a brush and a window-cleaning squeegee, they set about scrubbing the enclosure until it gleams so our visitors can get the best view of our penguins swimming underwater.

[Pullout] “We’re so grateful to Time2Dive for volunteering to help clean Penguin Coast. Our dedicated keepers try their best from their boat to clean as much as they can but in the summer months with bright sunlight creating more algae blooms we need to do an underwater deep clean that can only be achieved by working with specially trained divers. It’s a tough job but Time2Dive seem more than happy to help out. I mean where else in Pembrokeshire could they dive with penguins? – Tim Morphew, zoo curator. [/Pullout]