More than a thousand Magellanic penguins have washed up ashore on Brazilian beaches, which is about 2000 miles away from their home in Patagonia. By the time the penguins reached land, some of them as far away as the equator, they were exhausted and gaunt from having lost nearly 3/4th of their body weight. Many have died.
Brazilan zoos and aquariums are building new quarters for the incoming penguins and lifeguards at the beaches are still learning how to give the penguins emergency first aid. Scientists are trying to track their movements using satellites. Emergency airlifts are in progress and ships are being readied to take the penguins back home.
The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW – www.ifaw.org ) said in a press release that they assisted the Instituto Mamíferos Aquáticos (IMA) and Brazilian officials to save hundreds of the juvenile Magellanic penguins that were stranded on the warm beaches of Salvador, 1,400 kilometers north of Sao Paulo. Close to 400 rescued penguins took to the skies on a C-130 Hercules military aircraft bound for Pelotas, in southern Brazil where they were released back to their ocean home. Photo copyrights - IFAW.
The Magellanic penguins (Spheniscus magellanicus) breed in large colonies in southern Argentina and Chile and migrate north as far as southwest Brazil between March and September. According to experts, a flow of warmer water (1°C higher than normal) caused the juvenile penguins to keep going north, past their usual range, where they are unable to find adequate food.
The Washington Post reports that it is normal for Magellanic penguins, which spend months in the ocean, to leave their colonies in southern Argentina and ride the plankton-rich frigid waters of the Falkland Current, which flows north up the coast of South America from Antarctica, in search of sardines. The eddies from a second current, the Benguela of southwest Africa, travel across the Atlantic toward Brazil. While the penguins would normally turn back when they hit the warmer Benguela waters, the current has been “exceptionally cold” this year. Adding to this, the Falkland Current, fortified by strong winds, has been particularly powerful.
This should be a warning to climate change skeptics about how small changes in temperature can cause havoc in unexpected places. Its not just about rising sea levels and polar bears. This impacts the whole world and every living creature and the entire co-dependent eco-system.