About 2,000 dead penguins washed up on the coast of eastern Uruguay in the last 10 days. The country’s authorities find it difficult to name the causes of the mass pestilence, reports France24.
According to the head of the Department of Fauna at the Ministry of the Environment of Uruguay, Carmen Leyzagoen, Magellanic penguins, mostly young, died in the Atlantic Ocean, and the current brought them to the shores of Uruguay.
“They died in the water. 90 percent are young, with no fat stores and empty stomachs,” she said, stressing that all samples taken tested negative for bird flu.
Magellanic penguins breed in southern Argentina. During the southern hemisphere winter, they migrate north in search of food and warmer waters, even reaching the coast of the Brazilian state of Espírito Santo.
“It’s normal for a certain percentage to die, but not these numbers,” Leyzagoyen said, recalling that a similar extinction occurred last year in Brazil for unspecified reasons.
Environmentalists have attributed the rise in Magellanic penguin deaths to overfishing and illegal fishing. They added that a subtropical cyclone in the Atlantic that struck southeast Brazil in mid-July could also have killed the weakest animals from inclement weather.
In addition to penguins, Uruguay recently found dead petrels, albatrosses, gulls, sea turtles, and sea lions on the beaches of Maldonado, a department east of the capital, Montevideo.