Strong Currents Carry Penguins to the Tropics

It was a strange end to the penguin’s long journey from frigid Patagonia--catching a wave and crash-landing on Brazil’s balmy Ipanema Beach.

Blinking at the palm trees and bikini-clad beach-goers, the penguin gaped, flapped its wings and hopelessly tried to get a webbed foothold in the sand. But as odd as the tropical surroundings must have seemed to the visitor from the southern tip of South America, the beach-goers took it largely in stride.

“I think it’s hungry,” 8-year-old Gabriela Barbosa said. Surfers tried to hold the bird still, and a kindly stranger bought a cold bottle of mineral water to pour over its head.

An unusual number of penguins have been washing up lost and confused on Rio de Janeiro’s beaches this year.

So far, 120 birds have arrived, biologists say, more than double the number that turned up last year.

Denise Monsores, a biologist with the Rio de Janeiro Zoo, says it’s because of unusually strong cold fronts during the winter, which is just coming to an end in Brazil and the rest of the Southern Hemisphere.

The record-low temperatures have resulted in colder and stronger ocean currents, which improve the chances of a penguin surviving the journey thousands of miles toward the equator.

The penguins that wash up are usually young birds separated from their parents while hunting for fish and squid, she said.

Because of its proximity to Antarctic currents that flow past southern Argentina, Rio de Janeiro is a common destination for castaway penguins.

The seabirds may spend weeks at sea before coming to shore, where they are usually picked up by beach patrols and rushed to Rio’s zoo in what has already become an established routine.

“They arrive after receiving a lot of rough treatment in the sea,” Monsores said. “Some of them die after they arrive.”

Luiz Paulo Fedullo, a zoo veterinarian, said only 40 of the 120 penguins recovered this year have survived.

The penguins arrive exhausted and half-starved and must first be isolated in a medical ward because of the diseases and parasites they often carry.

But once nursed back to health, they join the zoo’s penguin display, where they can gulp down sardines next to an ample swimming pool and cool off from the tropical heat in a special air-conditioned pen.

Fedullo says the zoo cannot afford to welcome all the new arrivals and is asking other zoos to help out. Returning them to their home far to the south, however, is not an option.

“What happened to them is a process of natural selection,” Fedullo said.

“Nature decided to bring them here, and my opinion is that we shouldn’t interfere. We should just take care of them.”