Ocean Sentry
(From post-gazette.com)- Each summer and early fall, some gray-and-white Magellanic penguins drift toward Rio, washed by ocean currents more than 2,000 miles north from their homes in southern Argentina near the bottom of the world. This year is different. Like some maritime dust-bowl migration, more than 1,000 of these penguins have floated ashore in Brazil, some ending up nearly as far north as the equator. This week, Brazilians are planning to load 50 penguins onto a navy ship to begin their journey home.
By the time their webbed feet touch sand, many are gaunt and exhausted, often having lost three-quarters of their body weight. Even more have died.
“This year is completely anomalous,” said Lauro Barcellos, 51, an oceanographer who founded a rehabilitation center for penguins in southern Brazil. “… I’ve worked in this field for 35 years, and I have never seen anything like this.”
Zoos here are building new storage spaces for the penguins. Lifeguards are learning how to give them first aid. Scientists are using satellites to track their movements. Animal lovers, such as Ms. Breves, are taking in survivors to help out the overwhelmed zoos and marine centers.
While some scientists have suggested that climate change may be playing a role in the penguin invasion, as of yet the basic question remains unanswered: What exactly is going on? “Nobody is actually really sure about this,” said Ricardo Burgo Braga, a graduate student in polar biogeography in southern Brazil who has begun studying the phenomenon.
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, Mr. Braga said. Adding to this, the Falkland Current, fortified by strong winds, has been particularly powerful.
(By Joshua Partlow, The Washington Post)
