Baby Emperor Penguin is Born | SeaWorld San Diego

Here at SeaWorld San Diego we're one of the only facilities in the world that houses emperor penguins and we're pleased to announce the hatching of the first chick here in over 10 years. Emperor penguin eggs take 65 to 72 days to hatch. In this specific case the parents chose not to incubate it so the egg was incubated in our incubators by our aviculturist, our zoo specialist team, for that entire time. Normally the chick would start to break through the shell on its own. It's vocal, you can hear it and the hatching process has begun. For our chick it broke through the initial membrane but was never able to get through the shell. After several days of no progress from this chick we decided we needed to go in and start helping. We were able to successfully hatch the chick and we had one of our first emperor penguin babies in over a decade. You know for the zoo specialists that work here we've seen a lot of penguin babies over the years but an emperor penguin chick is always one of the most exciting things that we get to do. They're so rare outside of the Antarctic. We're the only facility in North America that cares for them. We've been here 24 hours a day for the last month but this is the most exciting thing we'll do all year, potentially all decade.