Nearly 2,000 penguins have been found dead off the coast of eastern Uruguay in the past 10 days, and the cause, which doesn’t seem like bird flu, remains a mystery, officials said. Carmen Leizagoyen, head of the environment ministry’s fauna department, said Magellanic penguins, mostly young individuals, died in the Atlantic Ocean and were carried by currents to the coast of Uruguay.

“This is death in the water. Young specimens, 90 percent of which come without fat reserves and on an empty stomach,” he said, emphasizing that all the samples taken were negative for bird flu.

Magellanic penguins nest in southern Argentina. In the southern hemisphere winter, they migrate north in search of food and warm water, even reaching the coast of the Brazilian state of Espiritu Santo.

“A certain percentage of death is normal, but these numbers are not,” said Leyzagoen, reminding that a similar death occurred in Brazil last year for unknown reasons.

Hector Kaimaris, manager of the Laguna de Rocha conservation area, told AFP he counted more than 500 dead penguins along six miles (10 kilometers) of the Atlantic coast. Environmentalists attribute the increase in the death toll of Magellanic penguins to excessive and illegal hunting.

“From the 1990s and 2000s, we started seeing animals that didn’t have enough food. Resources are being overexploited,” Richard Tesore of the nonprofit SOS Marine Wildlife Rescue told AFP.

He added that a subtropical cyclone that hit southeast Brazil in the Atlantic in mid-July killed the weakest animals, possibly due to weather. Tesore said he recently found penguins, as well as dead birds, albatrosses, gulls, sea turtles and sea lions, on the beaches of Maldonado east of the capital, Montevideo. Source