SA Museum retains king penguin remains after bird spotted at Coorong, Eyre Peninsula
/ By Caroline Horn and Emma PedlerIn short:
A king penguin seen on the Coorong and Eyre Peninsula earlier this year was killed by a fox or dog.
It also had two sizeable pieces of plastic in its stomach
What's next?
SA Museum will keep the remains and the content of its stomach for future analysis.
The remains of a juvenile king penguin seen on the Coorong in January have been analysed by the SA Museum and will remain in its collection for future use.
A museum spokesperson said while the presence of two "sizeable" pieces of plastic in the stomach of the penguin were concerning, the cause of death was an attack, most likely by a dog or a fox.
The penguin was first spotted by a group of birdwatchers on a Coorong beach in January, thousands of kilometres from the sub-Antarctic region where it would usually be found.
Loading...It was then spotted on a beach at Port Neill on the southern Eyre Peninsula on February 7.
Unfortunately, the penguin was found dead on the beach at Lipson Cove, near Tumby Bay, only a few days later.
The SA Museum spokesperson said the coincidence and the odds were "too great" for the sightings not to be of the same animal.
The dead penguin was collected by National Parks and Wildlife Staff and kept in a freezer until it was transferred to the museum in June.
The spokesperson said a dissection confirmed it was an immature animal with a number of squid beaks, small rocks and two "sizeable" pieces of plastic in its stomach.
"While it is concerning to see seabirds ingesting plastic, the cause of death here was due to it having been attacked possibly by a dog or fox," they said.
They said the bird's skeleton, spread wing, stomach contents and tissue samples would be retained in the museum's ornithology collection for future research and potential genetic analysis.
'Quite vulnerable'
Julie McInnes from the Institute of Marine and Antarctic Studies at the University of Tasmania said the closest breeding colony to South Australia for the King Penguin was Macquarie Island.
Dr McInnes said the birds were known to travel large distances but were very rare visitors to the Australian mainland.
She said the one found in South Australia was likely to have been looking for a place to moult.
"They come ashore for about two to three weeks and they lose all their old feathers and gain all their new feathers and during that time they're not waterproof so they can't go back out to sea to forage … so during that time they are quite vulnerable," she said.
Dr McInnes said researchers were seeing a rise in the amount of plastic in seabird stomachs.
She said that included microplastics which were eaten by fish which were then eaten by the penguins.
She said king penguins were not endangered and their population had increased through the 1900s after being decimated by hunters in the late 1800s.
She said the Macquarie Island population was thought to be stable but researchers were studying it closely to see what impact changes to prey availability, temperature changes and storm events would have in the future.