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  PlanetSave 12 May 06
100 oil-coated penguins turn up dead on Argentina's coast
Written by Shayna Chabner

National Geographic 12 May 06
Oil-Slicked Penguins Wash Ashore Dead in Argentina
John Roach for National Geographic News

Hundreds of dead Magellanic penguins covered in oil have washed ashore in recent days on the coast of Argentina, according to news reports.

Most have been found in the Cabo Virgenes nature reserve, about 1,350 miles (2,200 kilometers) southwest of Buenos Aires near the southernmost tip of Patagonia. Several hundred more of the polluted birds have shown up alive, and rescue workers are scrambling to remove oil from the penguins' feathers.

Though several Argentine oil platforms operate in the area, no leak has been identified as the cause of the event, according to Dee Boersma. Boersma, a conservation biologist at the University of Washington in Seattle, studies Magellanic penguins (photo) in Argentina.

"Where the oil is coming from, we're not entirely sure," she said. "But, of course, oil and penguins don't mix."

Freezing, Starving

Oiled penguins are unable to stay warm in the frigid waters of the southern Atlantic and end up seeking refuge on shore. But penguins are unable to feed on land, "so they slowly starve to death," Boersma said.

The penguins ingest the oil as they preen their feathers, which changes the birds' immune systems, making them more vulnerable to disease. Oil also causes lesions in the penguins' stomachs, making them less effective at digesting food. "So all of it is just bad news for a penguin," Boersma said. Jay Holcomb is the executive director of the International Bird Rescue Research Center in Fairfield, California.

He said the impact of the mystery oil spill "could be huge" depending on how hard it affects the breeding population. "If it impacts the adults and kills them, then it's a stronger impact than if it [just] kills the younger ones," he said.

Holcomb says his colleagues in Santa Cruz province, where the reserve sits on the Straits of Magellan, report 130 live birds in care and more than 300 on the shore, which still need to be captured and cleaned.

The good news, according to Holcomb, is that oiled-penguin rehabilitation has proven to be 95 percent effective. "Penguins have that advantage to them, if you get them in time," he said.

Rescue workers first clean oil off the birds with warm water and mild soap. They then begin to feed them and get them ready for release back into the wild.

But Boersma says that mitigation is expensive and not as effective as prevention. "The public, government, and [nonprofits] need to do all we can to prevent illegal discharge of oil," she said.

Further north, chronically oiled waters send large numbers of slick penguins to the shores of South America's eastern coast every year. In recent weeks hundreds of these birds have shown up on beaches in Uruguay and Brazil, Holcomb said. "This is a problem in itself," he added. The more northerly penguins are migrants that head north as winter takes hold in the Southern Hemisphere.

Boersma says the migrants come into contact with oil that has presumably been illegally discharged from ships.

PlanetSave 12 May 06
100 oil-coated penguins turn up dead on Argentina's coast
Written by Shayna Chabner

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP): About 100 oil-coated Magellanic penguins have turned up dead in recent weeks off the coast of Argentina, most in a nature reserve near the frigid southernmost tip of Patagonia, environmentalists and authorities said Thursday.

The Argentine Coast Guard said it was sending flights in search of oil spills, but reported finding none that could have caused the birds coated in black crude to begin arriving on shores off the Straits of Magellan.

"This is very worrisome. We don't know the source," said Francisco Anglesio, environmental undersecretary for Santa Cruz province where the deaths occurred, speaking with reporters in southern Argentina.

Authorities reported some 70 of the dead penguins were found at the Cabo Virgenes nature reserve on the Straits in the remote province, 2,400 kilometers (1,350 miles) south of Buenos Aires.

But environmentalists said they also found 31 of the wide-ranging migratory penguins dead off the Atlantic coast, some 600 kilometers (375 miles) southeast of Buenos Aires.

Workers have organized a rescue mission, setting up care centers in both locations for some 110 surviving penguins. In Santa Cruz, about half dozen workers with gloves carefully removed oil Thursday from the birds and placed them in pens.

"We are giving them food if they will accept it and hoping they will recover their strength. But we have to wait," said Jorge Serra, one of the rescue workers interviewed on local television.

Carla Poleschi, at the environmental group Fundacion Patagonia Natural in southern Argentina, told The Associated Press the surviving birds will undergo a treatment process that could take up to 40 days. As an organizer of rescue groups in Santa Cruz, she said workers would spend the first week wiping away oil and gingerly feeding the birds through plastic tubes. She added the penguins were being kept in heated pens to recover from hypothermia.

Oil spills are reported by environmentalists to have caused thousands of penguin deaths over the years. But so far, the mystery of the current spill remains unresolved in an area where dozens of oil-drilling platforms and operations are based.

"We have asked businesses that operate in the area to carry out ... tests to determine if it's possible that some of their pipes have a leak," Anglesio said.

Oil can cause respiratory problems and destroy the insulating properties of penguin feathers, leading to the rapid loss of body heat. To stay warm, the birds head toward shore, where they can eventually die from starvation.

"This is a very tragic accident," Poleschi said. "While the number of penguin deaths in the past have been high, reaching 40,000 in 1992, we have not seen an incident of this magnitude in many years."

The last reported oil spill along the Strait occurred last September, killing some 40 penguins. Rescuers are hopeful that because the migration period is now ending--and the majority of the penguins have reached the coast, they will not find any more oil-soaked penguins in coming days.

The penguins migrate thousands of miles (kilometers) each year from Antarctica from September through the end of April, escaping the oncoming southern hemisphere winter.

Some 1.8 million breeding pairs are estimated to nest in rookeries off southernmost South America and the Falkland Islands, a neighboring South Atlantic archipelago. Typically they live in burrows and feed offshore on fish on the Pacific and Atlantic coasts.
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