How London’s penguins got political
It’s 11.15 on a Thursday morning and I have made a new friend. She stares at me through a pane of glass, following my steps as I cross the room, never taking her beady eyes off me. “You’re friendly!” I inform her. She gives me a look of expectant curiosity, as if to say: “Of course I am. Are you?”
Her name is Gilbert, and she has recently found herself at the centre of a political row she has no control over. She is also a penguin.
Gilbert and 14 fellow Gentoo penguins are housed at the Sea Life London Aquarium located on – or rather, underneath – the banks of the Thames, in the shadow of Parliament. They are tucked away in the basement of County Hall, a sprawling edifice built in 1922 which runs for 300m along the South Bank and also hosts Shrek’s Adventure London and the Paddington Bear Experience. Millions of visitors to the London Eye will have walked past without ever realising their proximity to animals from the coldest shores of the Southern Hemisphere. Even tourists with tickets to the Sea Life Aquarium itself are often surprised when tanks of tropical fish give way to the penguin exhibit, sandwiched between rockpools where nervous children can stroke a starfish and a hall full of iridescent jellyfish.
But their existence hit the news this month. Some 75 MPs have signed cross-party letter to the environment secretary Emma Reynolds condemning the penguins’ “windowless basement enclosure, with no access to natural light or fresh air”, with limited space and a pool depth of “around six to seven feet, which is far shallower than the environments Gentoo penguins experience in the wild”. Spearheaded by David Taylor (Labour MP for Hemel Hempstead) and Danny Chambers (Lib Dem MP for Winchester), the letter calls for an independent assessment of the penguins’ welfare. A public petition goes even further, demanding that Merlin Entertainments, which operates Sea Life, immediately ends its penguin breeding programme, stops the penguin exhibition and guarantees the “safe and permanent retirement” of Gilbert and her peers to another environment. It has over 40,000 signatures.
“I believe how we treat animals is a reflection on who we are as a society,” Taylor tells me when I ask what prompted his intervention. “When something appears to fall short, we can’t turn a blind eye.” He adds that he has raised the issue in parliament (as has Chambers), noting: “Labour has a proud history on animal welfare. It was a Labour government that banned fox hunting, and we continue to lead the way on issues like the Fur Free Britain Bill and stronger wildlife protections. I’m proud to carry that tradition forward.” Taylor first became aware of the issue thanks to the reporting of Steph Spyro in the Daily Express. Over the past few years, public awareness of the Sea Life Gentoos has been growing. A protest in October saw 300 people, including the naturalist and TV presenter Chris Packham and the green energy industrialist Dale Vince, turn up outside the aquarium’s doors to draw attention to the penguins’ plight.
Merlin, which owns the other entertainment attractions housed as County Hall as well as a host of theme parks including Legoland and Alton Towers, took over the aquarium in 2008. The first penguins arrived in 2011 from Edinburgh Zoo. Of the current cohort, some will remember life in the fresh air – indeed, two are over 30 years old. Others, like Gilbert, have never known daylight.
The company insists the penguins are happy in their home. “Penguin Point, located on the ground floor of the aquarium, was carefully designed to reflect important elements of the penguins’ natural environment as closely as possible to ensure good health, including climate-controlled temperature and filtered fresh air,” said a spokesperson in response to the MPs’ letter. It claims the enclosure “meets the high standards set by the Standards of Modern Zoo Practice”. A host of zoologists and animal rights campaigners disagree.
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I have no expertise on penguin welfare, but Sea Life is so close to Westminster it seems lazy not to see for myself. So it is that I find myself at the doors as soon as the aquarium opens, navigating past parents with buggies and gaggles of tourists through its eerie underground labyrinth. I remember taking my stepdaughters there as a holiday treat when they were five. They both found the twisting dimly lit corridors and haunting music vaguely terrifying. One of them cried when she saw a turtle.
I hot-foot (or should that be happy-foot?) it ahead of the crowd through the empty exhibits until I find the Antarctic section. It is indeed a small windowless basement, albeit a carefully temperature-controlled one. A colourful sign on the wall entitled “Our Home” informs me “this specifically designed environment has been curated to allow the penguins to behave naturally”, that it “also has enriching features for the birds” and that “the team add fresh snow and ice chips daily”. Gilbert, who spots me as soon as I arrive and immediately waddles up to the glass, does not seem impressed. The only other person there is a woman studiously making notes on her iPhone who I am sure is also a journalist, here for the same reason I am. Together, we watch the penguins shuffle and dive into their tiny pool like little underwater missiles. It’s strangely mesmerising – for us, that is. I cannot speak for the penguins.
There is something uniquely fascinating about penguins, pint-sized humanoid birds decked out in evening dress, so comically clumsy on land and yet balletic in water. Luc Jacquet’s award-winning film March of the Penguins, narrated by Morgan Freeman in the English version, is one of the most successful documentaries ever made. A Gentoo penguin is the protagonist of the latest book by celebrated children’s author Julia Donaldson. The publishing giant Penguin with its world-famous logo was founded in 1935 – a year after the iconic Lubetkin Penguin Pool was completed at London Zoo (ZSL) in Regent’s Park. ZSL’s history website notes that the enclosure “was both technically impressive and visually dramatic, designed to clearly showcase the penguins’ behaviour to visitors”. Its spiral concrete ramps make it an architectural marvel.
Unfortunately, it also made it utterly unsuitable for housing penguins. “Concrete wasn’t the healthiest material for penguins’ feet,” reads the ZSL website’s diplomatic text. This is an understatement: the penguins were scraping their feet so badly they developed a dangerous bacterial infection called bumblefoot. (Apparently Berthold Lubetkin had designed the enclosure for a different type of penguin.) Closed in 2004, no one could decide what to do with the Grade I listed structure – indeed, the architect’s daughter suggested (possibly not entirely seriously) in 2019, “perhaps it’s time to blow it to smithereens”. Happily, the Lubetkin Penguin Pool has found a new destiny as a film set, used most famously in the music video for “As It Was”, which sees the penguins replaced by the equally dapper Harry Styles.
The fate of the Lubetkin Pool reflects a change in public attitudes towards captive animals – and for the most part, zoos have responded. “Structures built in the last century that put visitors first have largely been replaced or adapted to put the animal at the centre of their design,” says Dr Jo Judge, CEO of the British and Irish Association of Zoos. “This animal-centric approach has led to habitats that prioritise the needs of the animals in human-care.”
London Zoo’s penguins are among the beneficiaries of this mindset shift. They have been rehomed to the much more appropriate Penguin Beach, where they enjoy sand beneath their feet and a 1,200 square metre pool which holds 450,000 litres of water. It’s the largest penguin pool in Europe. ZSL’s Humboldt penguins moved into their new spacious home in 2011 – the same year their Gentoo cousins were first introduced to a subterranean micro-pool by Sea Life, less than four miles away on the other side of London.
“Treating animals badly is un-British, and the public expects better,” David Taylor tells me. He has a point. Animal welfare is the most popular charitable cause in the UK. The RSPCA was founded to combat cruelty to animals almost 60 years before the NSPCC sought to do the same for cruelty to children. The 15 Sea Life penguins have featured in almost every national media organisation since the MPs’ letter was published. That’s a lot of coverage per penguin.
Merlin says this is “a complex issue” and insists “we take every decision seriously, always guided by what’s best for the animal”. Back in the Antarctic exhibit, I am not sure Gilbert agrees. When I finally move on to the hall of jellyfish, she follows me as far as the glass will allow.
[Further reading: In Sanna Marin too hot for politics?]
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