10-03-2025
Public plea after disturbing discoveries on Aussie beaches: 'Something has changed'
Conservationists are growing increasingly concerned about a troubling trend along the Australian east coast, where an alarmingly high number of dead birds continue to wash ashore.
Experts believe this phenomenon exceeds the usual amount expected from natural causes and are urging the public to photograph any such sightings to help record and study these incidents. This plea follows a recent discovery in Victoria, in which a woman found seven dead little penguins on Warrnambool Beach.
The occurrence is similar to an incident in January, when several deceased little penguins washed ashore in Tasmania. Last year, hundreds of dead shearwaters were found along the coastline between the two states.
The Victorian woman sent footage of the most recent example to researchers at Adrift Lab, who told Yahoo News Australia the cause of these deaths remains largely unexplained.
Marine scientist Jennifer Laver said while some little penguin deaths, especially among chicks struggling with harsh sea conditions, are expected, the recent "pulses" of deaths in specific areas are unusual. She said under normal circumstances, most bird deaths would occur at sea rather than along the coast.
"If it was normal, it would be happening every single year. It would be widespread across the whole of the species breeding range," Laver told Yahoo News Australia. "But that's typically not what we see.
"We see these unusual little pulses, something over here, maybe something over there, but then nothing between over hundreds of thousands of kilometres. What that says to us is that there's something quite unique about that location — something has changed. What I suspect is that there's a localised lack of prey, or perhaps a warming event."
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Laver said recently most of the reported deaths are taking place west of Warrnambool and Phillip Island. Warming sea temperatures and overfishing are huge contributors to the birds' lack of prey, but it's hard to distinguish between the two, she added.
"It's really difficult to tease those things apart unless we're actively monitoring at the time of an event like this," Laver said.
"In a 'normal year', I would be reaching out to some of the citizen scientists on the ground and saying, 'what is the condition of the birds? Are they emaciated? Is there signs of starvation?'
"Because that can also be quite helpful. But with avian flu on the horizon — we don't have avian flu at the moment in Australia — but with it on the horizon, and the community quite anxious about that, we no longer ask folks to touch the birds. So that makes it difficult for me to say what's going on and what condition the animals are in."
Laver emphasised that the "vast majority" of the species "will figure out what it is that they need to do" at sea, and it's incredibly important not to "normalise" little penguin deaths on beaches.
"These are what we call long-lived species," she said. "They rely very, very heavily on high survival rates. And so if we just accept it as a society that birds are just going to catastrophically die in large numbers every single year — those two things don't make sense.
"Some birds will die because they're young and inexperienced. But that should be a relatively small proportion, unless conditions are not favourable. You know that conditions are not favourable when you're seeing large numbers of birds on beaches, because most mortality for sea birds, we're talking like 80-90, even 95 per cent of mortality for sea birds, will take place at sea.
"If you're seeing large numbers on beaches, it basically means that it's quite a significant event."
Laver said Australians "should stand up and take note" and "call for more data on this".
"We should have a look at ocean temperatures. We should have a serious think about what might be driving this, and whether or not other sea birds are also being impacted," she said, calling for the public to report sightings to Adrift Lab.
"At Warrnambool, it's a watch and wait," she said.
"It might just be like this for a couple of days, or it might get worse. I do expect the shearwaters to start washing up in about four weeks. So it's timely that we bring this into the community consciousness again."
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