Conservation officials believe mass die-offs are becoming more frequent as climate crisis disrupts food chains
In Northland social media groups, locals discuss the deaths with a growing sense of distress and alarm – are the birds being caught and dumped by fishermen? Is there something in the water? Have they caught some new kind of disease, like avian malaria?
Earlier in the year, he says, scientists from the Ministry of Primary Industries decided to test some of the dead birds in case a new virus or disease was sweeping through the colonies. They looked for infections and toxins. They concluded that the birds were starving to death.“All of the bodies were found to be super underweight. These birds should be around 800 to 1,000 grams, but they were way down around half that weight,” Taylor says.
“This little species [of penguin] can dive down to 20 or 30 metres routinely, but it’s not that good at diving a lot deeper than that,” Taylor says. Hot water temperatures through winter had likely kept the fish out of reach. Ian Armitage, a councillor for Birds New Zealand, which runs beach patrols to monitor dead sea-bird numbers, says the number of penguins found this year has been unusually high, particularly in the far north. Recent storms and high water temperatures mean he expects more mass deaths. “This event is probably not over and will continue through the winter,” Armitage says. “Many more little penguins found.
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