Magellanic Penguins on the Southern Coast of Chile

When we disembarked the MS Prinsendam in Punta Arenas, Chile the winds were howling at speeds close to 100 km/hour! The ocean was a sea of whitecaps and the seabirds were being blown around at the will of the gusts. This is undoubtedly the windy part of the continent! A new guest lecturer was boarding the Prinsendam for the sector down to Ushuaia, Argentina (in Tierra del Fuego) and on to Antarctica so my friend Trish and I arranged to do an overland jaunt across the Patagonian region of Chile and then up to Iguazu Falls, on the border between Argentina and Brazil.

About an hour’s drive from the town of Punta Arenas, Chile at Otway Sound, is a readily accessible penguin colony which we wanted to visit… so we booked transport and away we went. What a fabulous opportunity!

There are seventeen species of penguin in the world, and they live exclusively in the southern hemisphere. The one species that is a slight exception to this rule is the Galapagos Penguin which nests just north of the equator on one of the islands of the Galapagos Islands archipelago (off the coast of Ecuador). The Emperor Penguin, the species that was made famous by the fabulous film, “The March of the Penguins”, is the species that nests closest to the South Pole (and the Emperor is also the largest and heaviest penguin) while most species breed at more agreeable latitudes.

Through my travels I have had the good fortune to see penguins in other parts of the southern hemisphere including New Zealand, Australia and South Africa, but apart from the Galapagos Penguins (which I saw last year in the Galapagos Islands) these Magellanic Penguins were my first South American tuxedo birds.

A Preaning Penguin

It was such a treat to watch the adults body surf their way to shore, ride the waves, manoeuvre their bodies and slide into shore (sometimes tumbling and crashing into shore). Once safely on land the first thing they would do is preen (clean) their feathers (penguins spend a lot of their time taking care of their feathers). Then they make their way across the beach, and finally march one by one across the grass to find their burrows and to feed their young.

Magellanic Penguins Crossing Open Ground

The Magellanic Penguin is a common summer resident in Patagonia. Their breeding grounds are scattered along the southern Atlantic and Pacific coasts of Chile and Argentina. They also have important breeding colonies in the Falkand Islands (Islas Malvinas). This Otway Sound colony has an estimated population of about 4000 birds.

Penguin Parents Preaning Their Chick

The penguins are here to breed. The cycle begins in September and lasts until March. Being late January now, the chicks are getting bigger and they need a lot of food. To satisfy their hearty appetites the adults must go out to sea frequently to forage. There key food items include squid, prawns and a range of small schooling fish (jack mackerel, anchovies & sardines). These are the very same species that are presently being harvested in huge quantities off the coasts of Chile, Peru and Ecuador to feed the needs of the fish farming industry. These small pelagic fish are processed into fish meal, which is then used to feed the salmon and trout being raised in fish farms in different parts of the world including British Columbia. If you want to read more about the relationship between penguins, pelagic fish and fish farms, read my previous Blog post.