Cardi en route to theatre

Recently, in a first for Aotearoa, Dr Peter Hadden from Auckland’s Eye Institute removed a dense juvenile cataract from one eye of a struggling seven-year-old gentoo penguin named Cardi, who lives at Sea Life Kelly Tarlton’s in Auckland. Gentoos are very social and visual creatures, living up to around 30 years. Cardi’s cataracts meant she was easily startled and had adopted a hunched posture, angling her head to try to see around the cataracts, significantly reducing the quality of her life.

Cardi was transported to the Eye Institute in a refrigerated truck with the vet team, but the procedure was far from easy. Dr Hadden had to use disposable and old phaco equipment to avoid potential human-penguin tissue contamination and he described the cataract as “a rock” which took an hour to remove – over twice the anticipated time. This created potential overheating issues for Cardi as the theatre could only be cooled to 16C.

Cardi in theatre

Then came some unique recovery circumstances, since Cardi needed to be able to swim straight away but penguins are unable to have post-operative steroids. However, Dr Hadden said birds heal faster than humans so he just used the usual post-op topical non-steroidal anti-inflammatories.

You can now see Cardi, the gentoo (or is she now a superior gen-three?), with one dark eye and one white eye, at Kelly Tarlton’s.

For assistance in correctly pronouncing ‘penguin’, please see here.

Grant Watters is an adjunct academic in the School of Optometry and Vision Science and the Department of Ophthalmology at the University of Auckland and the clinical director of Mortimer Hirst Optometrists in Auckland.