MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Mystery death of 1.300 penguins in Southern Chile

Argentine and Chilean delegations officially launched this week in Punta Arenas, extreme south of Chile, the Bi-national Patagonia Chamber which brings together fifteen regional chambers from the regions of Aisen and Magallanes and Argentine Patagonia.

Municipal workers from the tiny town of Toltén continued to collect the carcasses of dead penguins, which have washed ashore, throughout the final days of March.

Bernardo Prado, the regional director of the National Fishing Service (SERNAPESCA), told the Patagonia Times he does not think the dead Humbolt and Magellanic penguins were victims of a toxic spill of some kind.

“First off, they don’t show any external signs of any pollutants. Second, there aren’t any signs of pollutants along the shoreline. So we can rule that out,” he said.

One possibility is that the penguins were caught in fishing boat nets – something known to occur in the area with some frequency.

Toltén City Councilor Hernán Machuca, who also presides over the local artisan fishers union, explained that, “It’s not the fishermen’s fault. They set their nets at night, between 8 p.m. and 5 a.m.; obviously by the morning, the penguins are going to be drowned, they’re going to be dead”.

Given the high casualty figures, however, Bernardo Prado isn’t convinced fishing nets alone can explain the deaths. As of Sunday night, some 1,300 dead penguins had been counted – far more than in previous cases.

Prado thinks the deaths may have instead been caused by a combination of factors. The penguins, he explained, may have been entangled in fishing boat nets after travelling from especially far out at sea – making them particularly vulnerable.

Unusually hungry and tired, he theorized, the birds were unable to free themselves from the nets and drowned. Santiago Times