Never mind that she has to work in a wetsuit and clean up guano daily.

"I can't believe this is actually my job," says 32-year-old biologist Brooke Weinstein, who is in charge of the African penguin colony at the California Academy of Sciences.

Twice a day she gets in the water with the 16 black-and-white penguins to feed them fish, while answering questions from the audience relayed to her through her headset.

Most often, she's asked about ice. People want to know where it is, and she explains that these are warmer-weather penguins that live near the southern tip of Africa.

When she isn't answering questions about how long the penguins can hold their breath (five minutes), or if they can fly (no), she's diving with them to check the water filtration, vacuuming their tank and feeding kelp to the abalone.

She checks their burrows for eggs, raises hatchlings, and monitors their interpersonal relationships. The penguins are social animals that pair with mates, build nests together, and take turns incubating their eggs. Ninety percent of the pairs stay together from one mating season to the next, and one couple has been together 15 years.

Last year, the African penguin was added to the endangered species list, and the California Academy of Sciences is part of a worldwide effort to ensure that the penguins don't disappear.

Risk of extinction

The African penguin population has declined 90 percent in the past century, Weinstein said, as the fishing industry competes for their food, tankers contaminate their environment with trace amounts of oil, and global warming creates oceanic upwells that send their food source farther south as schools of fish seek colder water.

"There's a real risk that they will go extinct in the wild in our lifetime," Weinstein said.

The penguins have bonded with Weinstein, although it took her five years to earn their trust. Now, when she walks in front of their exhibit on the other side of the glass, they swim alongside, following her. Pete, her favorite, presses his chest to the window to get even closer.

"At first, they hazed me," she said.

They didn't like her coming too close to their burrows and let her know by pecking her legs. She spent the first few months nursing bruises and cuts. She had to learn to read their cues - beaks up and circling one another signaled a possible fight. When they brayed at her like donkeys, it meant they were defending their territory. She responded by making herself bigger and standing her ground.

"I couldn't back down. They are 8 to 10 pounds. I just stood there and said, 'OK, you want a piece of me?' "

It worked. Now when she enters their lair and makes her penguin sound, something like a nasal, "maah," they call back to her. The colony jostles to get closer to her so they can eat out of her hand.

Building a love nest

Twice a day, she stuffs vitamins (and an antihistamine for the elder statesman, 29-year-old Pierre) in the gills of fish before feeding the flock. She helps the veterinarian when it's time for their annual physical, and gives them nail and beak trims. She monitors the eggs and helps the chicks adjust to the water when they take their first swim.

When Pierre had trouble molting several years ago, Weinstein helped him wriggle into a custom wet suit. Another job is returning the starfish to the water that Dyer, another penguin, likes to repurpose as nesting material.

"They all have their little idiosyncrasies," she said. "They are like funny little grumpy people."

The latest drama is the newcomer, Sinclair, a female from the Tulsa Zoo in Oklahoma who was recently sequestered with a male penguin in the "love shack" - a separate room with a small pool, disco ball and dog crate/burrow - to encourage bonding.

So far, the matchmaking appears to be working. The couple were reintroduced to the colony and began building a nest.

Experts have recommended that the academy breed three pairs of African penguins in 2012. Although the San Francisco colony has produced 108 chicks since the early 1980s, none has hatched in the Academy of Sciences since the newly renovated exhibit opened a little more than three years ago.

Leaving school behind

Originally, Weinstein had planned to go to veterinary school. She began volunteering with the penguins as a way to boost her vet school application, but found she loved working with the birds so much that she didn't want to leave them. She decided to skip school and go straight to work.

She recently got a smart phone so she can keep an eye on the colony through the webcam app. She blogs about her daily life with the colony on the academy's website and answers more questions there from the public.

This fall, she will travel to South Africa to study the penguins' habitat. And as soon as she can figure out how, she's going to change her ring tone to the braying penguin call.

"I guess you could say I'm addicted to them," she said.

Live penguin cam: With audio at 10:30 a.m. and 3 p.m. during feeding times. Academy of Sciences, 55 Music Course Drive, S.F. (415) 379-8000.

E-mail Meredith May at