Penguin for dinner: the taste is revolting

Press, 7 April 1982, Page 17

Penguin for dinner: the taste is revolting

By DR JOHN WARHAM, a reader in zoology at the University of Canterbury, who has studied penguins since 1957, and has produced many scientific papers on the biology of New Zealand species and those overseas.

The report in "The Press” of March 18 of the proposal to kill Magellanic penguins for their meat and skins in Argentina, must have made some old hands in the conservation movement wonder if time had not slipped into reverse.

It is just 62 years since the last commercial harvest of penguins in our part of the world was banned, after a campaign that began in 1891. This was the small industry operated at Macquarie Island by Joseph Hatch of Invercargill. He killed royal penguins and boiled them down for their oil which he then sold for use in rope and twine making. The Argentine company, however, evidently plans to sell penguin meat and to market the skins for glOvemaking. A spokesman is reported as claiming that the flesh of one penguin would keep a small child alive for a month.-

Maybe: but will a single starving child be helped? Not very likely, as it is proposed not to help starving refugees, but to sell meat and skins to the Japanese for hard cash. Japanese tastes must differ from mine. I recall trying penguin steak in 1960 from birds that had to be killed. The dark red meat tasted something like a cross between a coarse kangaroo tail and whale. Served as an experiment to a group of fellow expeditioners it was unanimously voted to be revolting; The threatened colony of Magellanic penguins is. at Point Tombo on the Atlantic coast of Patagonia. Unfortunately for the birds) there is now a road that allows people to drive down in two or three hours from Trelew,. the nearest town. The lure of this kind of resource is that is offers something, for nothing. Whitebait is another ex-

ample. Bountiful Nature provides; there’s no need to sow, merely to reap. And unlike Joseph Hatch’s operation on remote Macquarie Island, the Point Tombo colony offers a readily accessible supply that is easily transported for marketing. According to newspaper reports, the birds killed will be those that have lost their mates. It’s hard to imagine how these are to be identified because “widow or widower” penguins look just like other adult penguins of their kind. Anyway, to kill the adults is quite the wrong way to harvest long-lived animals like these.

A local example of the exploitation of a similar resource is the carefully, regulated mutton-bird industry of Tasmania. Like penguins, the mutton-birds are long-lived. They may raise a chick perhaps for 8 or 10 seasons, chicks that mostly die young at sea, so that, over their whole lives, the parents may. only succeed in replacing themselves by two birds of breeding age. So the Tasmanians can harvest 550,000 fat squabs annually on a “sustained yield” basis, without depleting the supply. Most of the chicks would have died anyway. Similarly, if Magellanic Penguins have to be harvested, it would make sense to take only the well grown chicks. Presumably the exploiters are only chasing a "quick buck,”' so they are unlikely to be interested in long-term considerations. One excuse given for this proposed project is that the penguin numbers have reached 10 million and now threaten Argentine fisheries. The 10 million figure seems to have been conjured from thin air as I know of no attempt to census the penguins throughout Argentina, although there is no doubt that some colonies are huge.

An aerial census at Point Tombo in 1976 and 1977 gave an estimate of 413,000 pairs there. Other colonies to the south are remote and mostly unknown. As for the birds’ effects on fisheries, these too seem quite unknown. The few stomach analyses that have been published seem to show the main foods as being several kinds of squid and a wide variety of small fish, including the local anchovy. But the fact that an animal feeds on another commercially valuable animal does not mean that it is detrimental: it may take the diseased or otherwise unfit and hence improve the quality of the stock.

Harvesting of the birds will be hazardous for .those not killed. Mutton-bird chicks are mostly taken when the adults are at sea, but this will not be possible with penguins. The resulting disturbance will both lessen the breeding success of those not

killed and reduce recruitment from the younger age classes. These will tend to shift to more peaceful and remote colonies.

In contrast, predators like the resident skuas may be expected to increase as they take advantage of the fracas to eat more unguarded eggs and chicks than, before.

Argentina badly needs hard currency, but I wonder whether a better economic return without the bad publicity of the present scheme could not be gained by developing Point Tombo as a tourist attraction. There are few more appealing animals than penguins: their colonies are full of activity and interest, much more so, for example, than those of our Koyal Albatrosses at Taiaroa Head, Dunedin. The Victorian Government has capitalised on this for many years with its famous "penguin parade” at Phillip Island, without detriment to the . blue penguins involved.

Point Tombo is bleak and exposed, but visitors have clear views of a wide area and there is already a warden stationed there. It does not seem too far fetched to envisage tourists paying to have close-up views of the birds from the shelter of strategically placed viewing and photographic “hides,” without interference with the penguins’ domestic activities.

Should the proposed exploitation plan go ahead Argentina is likely to meet increased opposition to her hold on the Falkland Islands. These have vast populations of several kinds of penguins and albatrosses — all potential yen earners in the wrong hands. Should the plan proceed, Britain's conservationists and agencies like the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, that met in Christchurch last October, are unlikely to let the matter rest.