Bodies of 100 of the world’s smallest species of penguin have been found dumped in a pile in a mysterious find.
A resident of Cable Bay, in the far north of New Zealand, had initially brushed off the smell of the penguins as being attributable to a dead possum.
But Pauline Wilson said that the smell kept getting worse and neighbours eventually began looking for the source of the stench.
A neighbour of Pauline eventually found the penguins on Friday night off the side of the Department of Conservation vehicle track.
Pauline said: “There’s probably over 100 there – they’re in a thick pile.”
The Department of Conservation and the Ministry for Primary Industries had been notified of the discovery.
While Wilson said it was not unusual to find a few dead penguins on Cable Bay’s beaches around this time of year - when juveniles often died of natural causes - she did not understand the sheer number of the penguins being found at once.
Nor did she understand why the animals, which according to their level of decomposition had died around the same time, had been dumped in such a way.
“You would’ve thought if they were caught in fishing nets they would’ve been dumped overboard,” she said.
She hoped that publicity around the discovery would prompt people to come forward with information about what had happened.
New Zealand’s Department of Conservation said natural deaths of the penguins, which were also known natively as kororā, could be exacerbated by climate change.
The La Niña weather conditions, which had continued into winter in Aotearoa, had also had an impact on the rate of deaths.
Warmer waters drive the fish that penguins live on into cooler, deeper waters, which in turn make it more difficult for penguins to find food.
More than 40 dead little penguins were found washed up on Tokerau Bay from May 2 to 8, just around the corner from Cable Bay, a department spokesperson said.
According to an investigation by the Ministry for Primary Industries, a lack of blubber to keep the birds warm suggested the kororā had suffered from starvation and hypothermia.
The penguins also had signs of poor body condition, while their gastrointestinal tract was empty.
It wasn’t the first case of dead penguins being found en masse in New Zealand this year - on May 31, the bodies of more than 100 little blue penguins were found on Ninety Mile Beach (Te One-roa-a-Tōhē), according to resorts on social media.
Dog owners were urged by the Department of Conservation to keep their dogs on a leash in coastal areas and keep them away from nests.
