As many as 2,000 penguins have washed ashore in jap Uruguay within the final 10 days, authorities mentioned, including that the trigger doesn’t seem like avian influenza.

The Magellanic penguins are largely juveniles which probably died within the Atlantic Ocean and had been carried by currents to Uruguayan shores, in keeping with Carmen Leizagoyen, head of the Environment Ministry’s division of fauna. “This is mortality in the water. Ninety percent are young specimens that arrive without fat reserves and with empty stomachs,” she mentioned. All samples taken have examined damaging for avian influenza, Leizagoyen mentioned.

Magellanic penguins

Magellanic penguins nest in southern Argentina and migrate north in quest of meals and hotter waters. They even reaching the coast of the Brazilian state of Espirito Santo. “It is normal for some of them to die. However, these are very large number,” Leizagoyen mentioned. There had been greater than 500 lifeless penguins alongside 10 kilometers of Atlantic coast, in keeping with Hector Caymaris, director of the protected space, Laguna de Rocha.

NGO SOS Marine

The improve in Magellanic penguin deaths are largely due to overfishing and unlawful fishing, in keeping with environmental activists. “From the 1990s and 2000s we began to see animals with a lack of food. The resource is overexploited,” mentioned Richard Tesore, of the NGO SOS Marine Wildlife Rescue.

A subtropical cyclone within the Atlantic, which hit southeastern Brazil in mid-July, most likely brought on the weakest animals to die from the inclement climate, Tesore mentioned, including that he has just lately additionally discovered lifeless petrels, albatrosses, seagulls, sea turtles and sea lions on the seashores of Maldonado, east of the capital Montevideo.

Published on: Sunday, July 23, 2023, 12:38 AM IST