A barren beach was just what researchers needed and meant that Pillay and his team, which included MSc student Jemma Lewis and BSc honours student Jayden Collison (co-authors on the paper) could begin to measure just how much increasing human numbers impacted bird numbers on this urban beach. But lockdown offered researchers a unique opportunity to get to work and answer timely and relevant questions. “We used standardised photos of Muizenberg beach between 2019 (pre-COVID-19) and 2020 (during COVID-19 lockdowns) to quantify the relationship between human and bird numbers on the beach,” Associate Professor Pillay said.īecause beaches are one of earth’s most utilised ecosystems for recreation, Pillay said that conducting this type of research would ordinarily have been quite tricky. “We used standardised photos of Muizenberg beach between 2019 (pre-COVID-19) and 2020 (during COVID-19 lockdown) to quantify the relationship between human and bird numbers on the beach.” The paper was published in Scientific Reports, a leading peer-reviewed scientific journal, last month.Īccording to lead author Associate Professor Deena Pillay, the team set off to understand how birds would respond to the sudden changes in the number of beachgoers permitted on the beach during the various stages of lockdown. Authored by a team of researchers in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Cape Town (UCT), the paper revealed that a striking number of birds descended on Muizenberg beach during lockdown Level 5 to enjoy this natural habitat without any human disturbances. As humans were ordered to stay indoors to curtail the spread of COVID-19 during the early days of the pandemic in 2020, it appears that our feathery friends came out in their numbers to get their dose of vitamin sea.Ī research paper titled “ Effects of COVID-19 lockdowns on shorebird assemblages in an urban South African sandy beach ecosystem” has confirmed this.
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