Give way to penguins!

The colony of Magellan penguins at Punta Tombo is famous. Lots of tourists went there. And many will come. In 2006 it was possible to walk anywhere. People would even touch the animals....the young are so cute!  I even saw a picture on the Internet of someone holding 2 chicks. The penguins,  already going down in numbers were to much disturbed by the increasing number of tourists. 

Now there are wooden walkways and clearly marked paths. A museum at the entrance of the park gives a lot of information about the penguins. Cars stay at the parking and a small coach brings you to the beginning of the route. 

There you are met by the locals ...... Yes, get aside! I am walking here.....   

Punta Tombo is an unique place if you want to see penguins. 

How fantastic to be able to see the baby penguin being fed.

Here the babes are fighting to be the first one.

An area with nest holes at Punta Tombo

 The beach is near...... and I was expecting the same large numbers of penguins as I saw 9 years ago..... How disappointing; this was the lot! Where did they go? 

These are pictures of the same spot 9 years before....

I had some local information, that the fishing grounds were less good. The younger penguins (these are the ones on the beaches) have to look for new fishing grounds about 400 miles away. A search on the Internet brought the same alarming news. The number of penguins at Punta Tombo is going down fast due to over-fishing and climate change.  Worse: In general 12 out of 17 penguin species are already in danger of extinction.  And note: this report dates from 2009, 6 years ago!!

From: TheWildlife Conservation Society feb 2009
Boersma’s data reveal that penguins at Punta Tombo are traveling farther to find food than they did just a decade ago due to changing ocean conditions and overfishing—particularly of anchovies, a favorite penguin food. This has forced some penguins to attempt to nest outside of protected areas where they often fall prey to predators. Meanwhile, changing weather patterns have also led to increased instances of heavy rains, which have caused high mortality of penguin chicks in five of the last 25 years.

All told, penguin numbers at Punta Tombo have declined by more than 20 percent in the last 22 years, from 300,000 to just 200,000 breeding pairs, Boersma said.

“Penguins are having trouble with food on their wintering grounds and if that happens they're not going to come back to their breeding grounds,” she said. “If we continue to fish down the food chain and take smaller and smaller fish like anchovies, there won't be anything left for penguins and other wildlife that depend on these small fish for food.”