Malnourished emperor penguin swam ashore in Australia 2,000 miles from home puzzling rescuers

Melbourne, Australia – An emperor penguin found malnourished far from its Antarctic home on Australia’s southern coast is being cared for by a wildlife specialist, a government department said on Monday.

The old man was found on November 1 at a popular tourist beach in the town of Denmark in temperate southwest Australia – about 2,200 miles north of the icy waters off the Antarctic coast, according to a statement from the Western Australian State Department of Environment, Conservation and Attractions.

The largest penguin species has never been reported in Australia before, University of Western Australia research colleague Belinda Cannell said, although some have arrived in New Zealand, Australia’s neighbor to the south of Denmark. It is believed to be the furthest north – and thus the furthest from their natural habitat – that a wild emperor penguin has ever been seen.

“The farthest north they go from Antarctica is about 50 degrees south [latitude] by my reading and Ocean Beach is 35 degrees south,” Cannell told Australia’s national broadcaster ABC last week. the ruler penguins from Antarctica before.”

Cannell said he did not know why the penguin went to the Australian coast. She advised seabird conservationist Carol Biddulph, who cares for the penguin, to spray her with a cold water mist to help her cope with her unusual weather.

The penguin is 39 inches long and originally weighed 51 pounds. A healthy male emperor penguin can weigh over 100 pounds.

The Department of Biodiversity in Western Australia said its efforts are focused on reviving the animal. Asked whether the penguin could be returned to Antarctica, the department replied that “the options are still being worked out.”

Last week, ABC said the stray animal was first spotted by a local Danish diver, Aaron Fowler, who told the network that he and his friends were confused when they first saw it emerge from the water.

“It got up in the waves and came right at us, an emperor penguin, it was about a meter high, and it wasn’t shy at all,” Fowler told the ABC.

“There are always wild animals in the water, but there have never been penguins,” he said. “He tried to pretend, slide on his stomach, thinking it was ice I think, and he just got face planted in the sand and got up and shook all the sand.”

Emperor penguins are among the species most directly threatened by the temperature of seas and oceans around the world. According to the World Wildlife Foundation, about three-quarters of emperor penguin breeding grounds are threatened by sea change every year. ice cover in the Antarcticwhich are becoming more volatile due to climate change.

Penguins breed and live on sea ice, but Antarctic sea ice is disappearing as our planet warms.

“They appear during the breeding season and there is no ice, so they have no breeding ground,” Dr. Birgitte McDonald, an ecologist at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, which is funded and managed by San Jose State University, he told CBS San Francisco last year.

An analysis by scientists at the University of Cambridge, published last year in Science News magazine, found that “the ice in some areas was melting especially at the beginning of the year,” putting the emperor’s chicks at greater risk.

“Emperor penguins — their survival, their ability to reproduce — is 100% linked to having the right sea ice,” McDonald told CBS San Francisco.