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Humboldt Penguins (Spheniscus humboldti) in the Northern Hemisphere.

Article Excerpt
On 18 July 2002, salmon fisherman Guy Demmert caught an adult Humboldt Penguin (Spheniscus humboldti) in his purse seine net off Noyes Island, Alaska (55[degrees] 30' N, 133[degrees] 40' W), nearly 10,000 km from its native range in Peru and Chile (from 5[degrees] S to 42[degrees] S). The penguin appeared healthy and robust, and was released unhurt alter being photographed (Guy Demmert, pets. comm.) (Fig. 1). This may not have been the first sighting of penguins in Alaska. A 1976 research cruise in the Gulf of Alaska recorded "brown penguins" (M. J. Rauzon, pets. comm.), and Guy Demmert (pets. comm.) saw a penguin while fishing in 2001.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

There are four earlier observations of Humboldt Penguins along the west coast of North America. In 1944, a single penguin was seen in the Queen Charlotte Islands (Beurling 1978); another was observed in 1975 near Long Beach, Washington (Campbell et al. 1990). There were three reports in 1978 of one to three Humboldt Penguins on northern Vancouver Island (Burnes 1978) with pictures of the penguins published in regional newspapers (Anonymous 1978b). One was seen in 1985 off the Washington coast (Campbell et al. 1990).

The only penguin species known to breed in the Northern Hemisphere is the Galapagos Penguin (S. mendiculus), with a few dozen pairs just north of the equator on Isabella Island (Boersma 1977). All other penguin species are confined to the Southern Hemisphere. The absence of penguins in the Northern Hemisphere is generally attributed to a combination of history and climate; the ancestors of penguins evolved in the Southern Hemisphere, and thermal and productivity barriers prevented them from moving northward (Sparks and Soper 1987, Soper 2000). Penguins require cool productive water to survive (Williams 1995) and are limited to areas where water temperatures do not exceed 20[degrees]C (Sparks and Soper 1987, Soper 2000). Even the Galapagos Penguin is mainly restricted to productive cold water (Boersma 1978).

We compiled reports of penguins in the Northern Hemisphere, and addressed three possible mechanisms explaining the presence of Humboldt Penguins in the north Pacific: (1) naturally occurring vagrant, (2) escape from Northern Hemisphere zoos, and (3) intentional release into the wild.

Naturally Occurring Vagrant.--Reports of vagrant penguins (e.g., outside their normal range) are not uncommon within the Southern Hemisphere. Macaroni (Eudyptes chrysolophus), Rockhopper (E. chrysocome), and King (Aptenodytes patagonicus) penguins have rested on beaches at Punta Tombo, Argentina, hundreds of nautical miles from breeding colonies (PDB, pers. obs.). Juvenile King Penguins were seen molting near Palmer Station, Antarctica in January 2001 and 2002, more than 1,300 km from the nearest breeding colony (PDB, pets. obs.). In extreme examples, Yellow-eyed (Megadyptes antipodes) and Erect-crested (E. sclateri)...