According to this article, about 10 dead penguins, on average, show up on Brazil’s beaches each year.
This year, 500 dead penguins (and counting) have washed ashored.
They are mostly Magellanic penguins, the penguins I wrote about in my novel (and pictured below).
The birds head north from Argentina in search of food. Overfishing is the probable reason why they are not finding food this year.
Overfishing.
The word implies that there was some limit to begin with. But for all practical purposes there is no limit. In open waters the fishing industry is in a mad race to take anything it can. The evidence of their actions — starved penguins.
Aeneas, the anti-whaling activist in my book, says:
“As long as there are fishermen out there, I’ll be out there. Fishermen don’t fish anymore. They obliterate, slaughter, expunge. They use vacuums, for fuck’s sake. That’s not fishing. That’s extermination. When you raise cattle, you at least feed them. But fishermen don’t feed fish. They just take. They even take the food the fish eat.”