A penguin rehabilitation project in Brazil is tracking penguins’ journeys home with the help of an Aberystwyth University academic.
Each year from May onwards, penguins swim from Patagonia in southern Argentina to the south coast of Brazil seeking food and warmer waters.
Some of the animals get lost in search of food and become stranded on the beach. They then get hungry and cold, as they are unable to feed out of the water and unable to waterproof their feathers.
R3 Animal Association, a South American non-governmental organisation, rescues and rehabilitates penguins around the southern Brazilian city of Florianópolis, releasing them back into the wild after their recovery.
Dr Guilherme Bortolotto, an expert in tracking sea animals from Aberystwyth University, has been working with the organisation to tag rehabilitated penguins before they are released, allowing them to be monitored and tracked as they return to their colonies in Patagonia.
A Lecturer in Marine Ecology at Aberystwyth University’s Department of Life Sciences, Dr Bortolotto said:
“It is a privilege to work with the rehabilitation team in Brazil and to play a part in helping to protect these amazing marine animals. The rescue and rehabilitation of stranded penguins is a challenging process – most times it is impossible to know whether the animals successfully return to their normal lives. By attaching a small satellite transmitter to the penguins just before they are released back to the ocean, we can get valuable information about their locations and direction of travel. This allows us to see, for example, if the animals stop to eat at specific places in the sea, and hopefully also if they return all the way back to their home colony in Patagonia.
“Being able to track the rehabilitated penguins is important to understand how successful the rehabilitation organisation’s efforts have been. It also helps them to better manage their resources by telling them which rehabilitation procedures are the most effective.”
Cristiane Kolesnikovas, president of R3 Animal, added:
“Most of the penguins that appear on our beaches are juveniles on their first migration and arrive tired and malnourished by the long distance travelled. Many get lost from the pack. It is also common to see them injured because of the obstacles they encounter on the way, such as interaction with other animals, fishing nets, marine litter and other human actions.”
The Centre for Research, Rehabilitation and Depetrolisation of Marine Animals (CePRAM/R3 Animal) where the penguins are rehabilitated is in the State Park of Rio Vermelho, a conservation unit under the responsibility of the Environmental Institute in partnership with the Environmental Military Police of Brazil. The work is carried out through the Beach Monitoring Project of the Santos Basin (Projeto de Monitoramento de Praias da Bacia de Santos, PMP-BS), which is a federal environmental licensing requirement onPetrobras.
