Surfbirds News

The Magellanic Penguins have been found dead or barely alive, along beaches all over south-eastern Brazil. The mainly young birds will have come from colonies about 2,500 miles south in Argentina. Penguins regularly move north into the waters off southern Brazil in search of food. While occasional birds are found washed up, the number of birds being found recently have rung alarm bells.

"The penguin population is intimately linked to their supplies of food, so this suggests something is happening to the population of fish they eat," said biologist Marcelo Bertellotti. "It appears the penguins are not finding fish where they normally do, and one reason could be that warming waters and climate change have impacted the fish population."

There have also been suggestions that overfishing could be the cause, or that a recent oil spill off the coast of Uruguay might have damaged fish populations. Perhaps melting ice in Antarctica could have strengthened the northbound Malvinas ocean current this year, bringing younger, more vulnerable penguins north.

Some of the young birds have been found covered in oil, and one weighed less than half of its normal body weight. About half of the rescued birds have not survived being taken to a rehabilitation centre.

source: Birdwatch magazine