MYSTERIOUS PENGUIN DEATHS INVESTIGATED
By Lee Hazell (FIBS)
Dead and dying penguins have been reported coming ashore on beaches around the Islands during the last week. Conservation Officer, Becky (BI), tells us more:
BI: The first report was actually from Fox Bay and that would have been early last weekend. A couple of people from Port Howard Lodge and also residents of Fox Bay have been out to the colony. I am not sure of the actual camp that they are in but they come up on Anne Brooks Bay which is a mined beach at the point by Fox Bay East. The symptoms are that they come ashore but they don’t look capable of getting up the bank to actually cross the green to the colony. They have problems walking and holding their heads up. There’s a lot of birds literally dying on the beach. So far, they have been on the West. There is the Fox Bay colony and then we had Kevin Shaffer, who is a photographer who had been staying out on New Island with the Chaters. He came in and reported to us that there were a lot of birds on the north end of New Island, which is a really big colony – it has been as large as 8 or 9,000 breeding pairs, as Tony Told me. Possibly thousands of birds have been dying out there and it looks like it could be 100% breeding failure, which is pretty catastrophic.
LH: And you had another phone call this morning from Sea Lion.
BI: I don’t know whether Jenny had actually seen the paper and responded to the article or whether she was calling in on spec. She was saying there was quite a lot of Gentoos out there that also have the same sort of thing. They can’t walk properly, they can’t hold their heads up properly and are really dying in high numbers.
LH: It’s not just penguins, is it?
BI: The Fox Bay site also had reports of common shags in the same situation.
LH: You have had some post-mortems done.
BI: We had a fresh bird sent in from New Island and a fresh bird sent in from Fox Bay by Jackie at Port Howard Lodge. That was within 12 hours so that’s a really good post-mortem. Obviously these things deteriorate with time. Kevin Lawrence carried that out early last week. His findings on first look were simply starvation. There is a chance that when chemical tests are carried out on tissues that it will be related to something else. But at the moment it looks as if the birds simply aren’t getting enough food.
LH: It is bizarre especially for the shags because they can fly and they probably cover a larger area for food so to see them dying off as well …
BI: The Shags are probably feeding more coastally than the penguins. The penguins here have quite a large range for foraging. But all of these animals at this time of year are going to be feeding in the real inshore coastal waters. It looks like there could be some problem developing.
LH: Is there any other probable cause for it apart from starvation. Could it be down to some sort of poison?
BI: I would think poisoning of some description is unlikely. Obviously the vets are going to have a better about this. But having seen some information from a fairly well known vet who was down here for the Rockhopper Crash of 1985, 1986, Dr. Ian Keenan. He sent an e-mail up to the Veterinary Department, forwarded to me. That says that if a disease or poisoning was the cause, then it’s likely to be a secondary cause. If the birds are of low body weight anyway, it’s likely to have been triggered by the fact that they are out of condition and losing weight. So, it’s not going to be ruled out yet. It does look like the starvation is the major problem.
LH: What implications will this have for penguin colonies and penguin population. It should make it drop dramatically.
BI: It’s quite difficult to tell. In the last 5 years, the Gentoo population has gone up by over 70% so we have seen a huge increase in the number of breeding birds. Whether that’s due to very good breeding success in the Falklands or actually immigration from other colonies outside the Islands is quite difficult to tell. Obviously a rise of that number is fairly unsustainable in environmental terms for any population. We wouldn’t expect to see that continuing and expect to see a drop in the next 5 years in those numbers back to a holding level. I don’t think there is any great cause for concern at the moment. Obviously the acid test is when breeding pairs come back again next year and see what the numbers are doing. If it’s a problem with the food the chance is apparent with breeding success numbers all around the Islands. They are not going to rear the amount of chicks that they normally do.
Although the problem doesn’t seem to have spread to the other colonies, in the area, for example, the Rockhoppers, Conservation Officer, Becky Ingham says they haven’t ruled it out. They are still looking for more samples but she stressed that they should be fresher than 24 hours of death and not frozen as this will destroy the tissue before it gets to the vet. Falklands Conservation will continue to work very closely with the veterinary department to investigate what they are describing as the strange deaths.
(100X Transcription Service) BI: The Shags are probably feeding more coastally than the penguins. The penguins here have quite a large range for foraging. But all of these animals at this time of year are going to be feeding in the real inshore coastal waters. It looks like there could be some problem developing.
LH: Is there any other probable cause for it apart from starvation. Could it be down to some sort of poison?
BI: I would think poisoning of some description is unlikely. Obviously the vets are going to have a better about this. But having seen some information from a fairly well known vet who was down here for the Rockhopper Crash of 1985, 1986, Dr. Ian Keenan. He sent an e-mail up to the Veterinary Department, forwarded to me. That says that if a disease or poisoning was the cause, then it’s likely to be a secondary cause. If the birds are of low body weight anyway, it’s likely to have been triggered by the fact that they are out of condition and losing weight. So, it’s not going to be ruled out yet. It does look like the starvation is the major problem.
LH: What implications will this have for penguin colonies and penguin population. It should make it drop dramatically.
BI: It’s quite difficult to tell. In the last 5 years, the Gentoo population has gone up by over 70% so we have seen a huge increase in the number of breeding birds. Whether that’s due to very good breeding success in the Falklands or actually immigration from other colonies outside the Islands is quite difficult to tell. Obviously a rise of that number is fairly unsustainable in environmental terms for any population. We wouldn’t expect to see that continuing and expect to see a drop in the next 5 years in those numbers back to a holding level. I don’t think there is any great cause for concern at the moment. Obviously the acid test is when breeding pairs come back again next year and see what the numbers are doing. If it’s a problem with the food the chance is apparent with breeding success numbers all around the Islands. They are not going to rear the amount of chicks that they normally do.
Although the problem doesn’t seem to have spread to the other colonies, in the area, for example, the Rockhoppers, Conservation Officer, Becky Ingham says they haven’t ruled it out. They are still looking for more samples but she stressed that they should be fresher than 24 hours of death and not frozen as this will destroy the tissue before it gets to the vet. Falklands Conservation will continue to work very closely with the veterinary department to investigate what they are describing as the strange deaths.
(100X Transcription Service)
