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Vendée: hundreds of seabirds stranded on the beaches
Hundreds of birds have been found on Atlantic beaches. A large proportion of these birds would have died from lack of food. – (France 2)
Hundreds of birds have been found on Atlantic beaches. A large proportion of these birds would have died from lack of food.
Dozens of dead birds have washed up on a beach in Vendée. These are guillemots, cousins of penguins that live off the Atlantic Ocean. Their bodies were carried by the currents to the shore, an unusual phenomenon noted by Antoine Prevel, a Sea Shepherd volunteer. The entire Atlantic coast is affected. How can we explain such excess mortality?
An already rare species
In a laboratory, the corpses of guillemots are autopsied. The conclusion is clear: all died of hunger and exhaustion. “We see that they have lost a little weight: the guillemots, we are around 800, 900 g. All those that I have had, on average, we are around 600 g”, comments a researcher. Fatigue and lack of food are probably caused by the repeated storms of recent weeks. With the strong swell, the murres were unable to rest or see the schools of fish that they usually catch. These disappearances are all the more worrying as the species was already rare in France.
