More than 100 seabirds have been taken to Parque Las Leyendas to be rehabilitated after an oil spill

Two weeks after the oil spill in the Peruvian sea, on Pocitos beach, in the Ancón Reserved Zone, the eyes and skin still burn when walking near the rock blackened by hydrocarbons. Like a pasty mud, the oil still covers the stones on the shore and seeps into the nooks and crannies wave after wave.

Hundreds of people in white overalls, personnel from companies contracted by Repsol to clean the beaches, remove the oiled sand with shovels and place absorbent pads in the water. But that image is recent, according to officials from the National Service of Natural Areas Protected by the State (Sernanp) , which since Sunday, January 16, one day after the spill occurred, have been monitoring the impact of the disaster in this protected area. "Until Monday (January 17) there was no one from the company here," says Deyvis Huamán, head of the Sernanp Monitoring, Surveillance and Control Unit. According to his version, which is confirmed by other officials from the National Forestry and Wildlife Service (SERFOR), the cleaning activity, as it is seen today, "is barely a couple of days old," Huamán told us last Monday while we were touring the beach.

Fifty minutes offshore, around Los Pescadores Island, which is part of the National Reserve System of Guaneras Islands, Islets and Points, for the first time since the spill began, fisherman Abelino Ramírez sees containment barriers installed to prevent the black oil slick from reaching the rocks where thousands of birds gather, where suns and starfish hang out and shelter snails, octopuses, fish and molluscs. “Yesterday they weren't there,” he says as he steers his boat towards the island, where the polluted waves crash against the rocks, crowned with yellow foam, proof that the barriers were installed late.

On his boat, Ramírez, better known as Mayumi, normally takes tourists for a ride, an activity that he intersperses with fishing. Today, without the possibility of carrying out either of his two jobs, he transports Sernanp scientists to carry out a census of dead animals stained by oil, and try to save the lives of birds that drift without being able to fly.

The plan was to visit most of the islands that are grouped in front of Ancón Bay, but it was not possible. In the afternoon he went to Pescadores Island, picking up lifeless birds floating in the sea one after another.

dead and dying birds

There aren't enough black bags to put the bodies in. Sernanp officials have taken about 10, which is the number of birds that are normally found dead when they go out to take a census of the Guaneras Islands, Islets and Points National Reserve System. This time almost double the number of guanay and boobies found, and the Sernanp veterinarian, Giancarlo Inga Díaz, puts the bodies four by four in the plastic bags.

"They are the most sensitive species," explains Roberto Gutiérrez, a Sernanp specialist. To hunt their prey, both guanayes and boobies dive into the sea like an arrow launched at full speed and then hover over the ocean before their next charge. That behavior, says Gutiérrez, makes these birds more likely to come into contact with contaminated water, which covers, all at once or little by little, their body of oil until they can no longer open their wings and remain stranded, floating in the sea, unable to take flight.

What comes next is death by starvation or hypothermia. Due to contamination, the feathers lose their impermeability, the body becomes wet on contact with water and begins to cool down. But the exact opposite can also happen if the birds, instead of being in the water, are on land. “The layer of oil under the sun begins to heat up”, explains Giancarlo Inga, which can also end with the death of the animal.

In a few hours, Sernanp officials collected 16 guanayes and 2 dead boobies. They all had oil on their bodies and inside the peak "which indicates that they died from the spill," says Huamán. Three others were rescued still alive. One of them, dying, died shortly after on board the ship. A second, all covered in a pasty, black layer, with burn injuries around its eyes as a result of the hydrocarbon and opening its beak wide as if it desperately wanted to swallow air - a sign of stress, experts say - remained almost motionless in the box that held it. would take to the beach.

The destination of the survivors is the Parque de las Leyendas zoo, in Lima, where Serfor, in coordination with the park, is trying to rehabilitate them so that they can be reinserted into nature in the future. Until now, 147 specimens of 10 different species, mainly guanayes, boobies and penguins, have reached there, however the effects of poisoning, starvation and dehydration have killed many of these animals and today there are only 79 alive.

The cleaning procedure does not occur until four or five days later. In a first stage, the birds are evaluated to know exactly their state of health, this happens by weighing them and measuring their temperature, part of the protocol followed by the team of veterinarians formed to attend to the emergency.

While analyzing the body of a cormorant to see how devoid of its waterproofing layer it is, Luis Delgado, a veterinarian at Ricardo Palma University, explains that the normal temperature for these birds is 40 or 41 degrees. Many, however, arrive in temperatures of 36 or 37 degrees. Having wet their plumage not only cools their bodies, but also prevents them from searching for food, so they arrive weak and even in a state of starvation.

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The second stage is to stabilize the birds immunologically. They feed and shelter them so that they regain their weight and temperature. Only then do they move on to the third step: cleaning.

In the park facilities, a penguin is handled by two experts who bathe it with pressurized water. “It is not a soft bath. It is quite strong and it must be that way because otherwise the oil will not come out, ”explains Lizette Bermudez, general coordinator of the rescue. She has been in this function for about 30 minutes, while they stand him up, they put him on one side and the other, they take his wings to wash every part of his body. He waits resigned and apparently calm, but in reality he is not. "When you subject the animals to cleaning, they get very stressed," explains Bermúdez. So much so that "it could even cause death," she says. That is why the previous stage of stabilization is essential because it allows the animals to recover the necessary strength to face the moment of bathing.

That is the reason, too, why experts ask that animals not be washed when they are rescued by volunteers as it can be counterproductive. “Birds have already arrived here that have bathed them and they are much weaker. The procedure must be done by a specialist”, insists one of the veterinarians.

The rehabilitation process can last several months, depending on the state of health of each individual, and reinsertion even longer. The place where the birds will be released is something that will have to be evaluated to prevent them from coming back into contact with the contaminated sites.

lost conservation

Abelino Ramírez, alias Mayumi, used to fish in the National Reserve System of Guaneras Islands, Islets and Points. He did it, like the other Ancón fishermen, under strict regulations that they themselves imposed to ensure the conservation of the marine species they extracted: no more than 50 kilos of octopus and 50 bunches (eight dozen) of snail per boat.

But that is not all. Starting in 2015, some of the islands began to be closed for a time so that the species could recover. Ramírez remembers that the snails were large and the octopuses heavy after the first closure they made on one of the islands and that it lasted more than a year. After verifying that the strategy worked, they continued to establish temporary bans or closures and post guards to ensure that the rule was followed.

In June 2021, the then Minister of the Environment, Gabriel Quijandría, appointed the Association of Artisanal Fishermen of Ancón as ambassadors of the national initiative "Peruanos Naturalmente" for their work committed to the conservation of marine ecosystems. "They have been moving in the right direction, that is, towards a greener, fairer and more sustainable world," said the former minister.

Today, Ramírez, with a round face and a wide nose, narrows his eyes at the oil-stained plumage of the birds that squawk on the rocks, while the Sernanp experts continue to collect the inert bodies of the foamy water with a mesh to catch butterflies. “I have no words to express my frustration. The work of so many years has gone to waste,” he says. “How could a transnational company, with all the advances in science and technology, not be able to make a good contingency plan?” asks Ramírez. “For us it is as if the sky had fallen on us.”

Suddenly, an otter that appears to be healthy appears on the rocky outcrop. With his sweet face that he cleans insistently with his hands, he makes scientists and fishermen happy. It dives and swims nimbly. This is good news in the desolate landscape because the sea otter (Lontra felina) or sea cat, as fishermen call it, is in danger of extinction and is one of the most affected species. "They have not been able to withstand the spill," confirms Pilar Ayala, Serfor's wildlife specialist, and that is why, so far, none of these animals have even reached Las Leyendas Park.

"In Santa Rosa, in the Playa Chica resort, there was a whole family of four otters living years ago, but they all died," said Arturo Bullón, the Serfor technician who receives the rescued birds.

That the number of lifeless guanayes and boobies collected has been greater than that recorded on other days confirms what Sernanp specialists already assumed, that they are going to “continue to find more because these birds that have been contaminated are going to die in the course of every day," explains Huamán.

The information provided by the census will be delivered to the prosecutor's office so that it can be considered in the ongoing investigations for environmental damage against the Repsol company. But whatever the final figure of that census, it will be an underestimated number of the impact, say the Sernanp experts, who ask themselves the same question: How many dead animals have not been counted? "The penguins usually walk towards the interior of the island and that is why we find fewer, but it does not mean that there are no dead individuals," explains Gutiérrez. Likewise, not only the birds that have their bodies oiled or that have eaten contaminated food will suffer, because on the islands of the National Reserve there are thousands of chicks waiting to be fed by their parents and it is estimated that many of them will not survive.

Read more about rescuing species affected by the spill at Mongabay Latam.

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