A FAMOUS CURRENT

Waipawa Mail, Volume XLVI, Issue 148, 11 September 1925, Page 2 (Supplement)

A FAMOUS CURRENT

“SWITCH” IN THE HUMBOLDT. EFFECT ON THE PERU ISLANDS. CLIMATIC CONDITIONS.

The Humboldt, or Peruvian Current which has bathed the tropical desert coast of Peru with icy waters and so has given rise to numerous climatic paradoxes, is reported to bo changing its course, working havoc to animal life. A steamer captain recently passing up the coast reports that he encountered thousands of dead birds and fish in the sea. Other reports state that regions rainless for years are having heavy rains and that rivers have formed almost overnight in the one-time parched desert. A bulletin from the Washington D.C. headquarters of the National Geographic Society quotes a communication to the society from R. E. Coker, telling how Peru’s cold current has shaped conditions along the coast. The Humboldt Current, supplemented no doubt by the upturning of cold bottom waters, maintains its steady course for thousands of miles, from icy Arctic latitudes to the equator, says the bulletin. Thus it is that tropical shores are bathed by cold ocean waters, and, with this fundamental contrast the stage is set for an array of phenomena not fully paralleled in any other part of the world. Only two events in that interesting series command present attention. These are the absence of rainfall and the consequent accumulation, through centuries, untold of a mine of wealth which might have been dissipated by a few seasons of rain. Guano, it will be understood, is primarily the deposit of fish-eating birds, into which may be mixed and incorporated—in greater or less proportion —a variety of other Substances, such as the eggs and bodies of birds and the deposits and the bodies of sea-lions. It may be found mixed with gravel and sand in very small proportion or sometimes to an extent rendering it unprofitable to extract. “Peruvian guano" is practically synonymous with nitrogenous guano and has long been recognised as a fertil iscr of generally high nitrogen value. Consequently a peculiar interest attaches to birds of the Peruvian islands, which have long served to aid the world’s agriculture. They are the numerous sea-fowl of the coast, which find their abundant food in the ocean and make their nests upon the islands or points of shore. The peculiar climatic conditions previously mentioned offer merely the proper environmental conditions for the preservation of the produce. The primary requisite for abundant bird life is the existence of a plentiful food supply, and this is found in the schools of small fish, called anchobetas, that swarm in the Peruvian Current. There “shoals" of fish, acres in extent, aro ofton pursued iu the water by bonitocs and other large fish, while beset from the air by thousands of birds. Billions of pounds of fish must be consumed each year by the birds, besides the incalculable quantity devoured by other fishes; but the fecundity of the anchobetas is such that their numbers are still maintained. At times great areas of the sea arc made red by myriads of small, brightly coloured shrimp-like Crustacea; and these, too, play a part of importance as food for the fishes and birds. Not all the birds arc of equal importance from the commercial point of view. Indeed, throe species virtually support the guano industry at the present time—the white-breast cormorant (guannv), the big grey pelican and the white-headed gannet.