Experts in Mexico say a warm Pacific ocean current known as El Niño, not avian flu, was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of birds along Mexico’s Pacific coast this year.
FILE – Birds perch on the barrier separating Mexico and the United States, where the border meets the Pacific Ocean, in Tijuana, Mexico, November 17, 2018. When hundreds of birds were found dead on Mexico’s Pacific coast in early 2023, experts immediately suspected avian flu. But the government said on Thursday, June 15, 2023, that warm currents from the Pacific Ocean associated with El Niño, not bird flu, were responsible for the mass death. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte, File)
The Associated Press
Mexico City — When hundreds of birds were found dead on Mexico’s Pacific coast earlier this year, experts immediately suspected avian flu.
But the government said on Thursday that warm Pacific Ocean currents linked to El Niño, not bird flu, were responsible for the mass death toll.
Mexico’s agriculture department said Thursday that tests on the dead birds showed they died of starvation, not the flu.
The department said warmer surface waters in the Pacific due to El Niño could drive fish into deeper, colder waters, making it harder for the birds to find food.
Most of the birds that died were sooty shearwaters, seagulls and pelicans. They hit states from Chiapas on the border with Guatemala to Baja California in the north and west.
“As per the autopsy conducted by veterinary doctors and specialized biologists, it was found that the animals died of starvation,” the department said. “The most likely cause of this epidemiological event is the warming of the waters of the Pacific due to the El Niño meteorological effect, which causes fish to seek deeper, colder waters, preventing seabirds from catching food.”
El Niño is a natural, temporary and seasonal warming of the Pacific that alters weather patterns around the world.
In May, US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration climate scientist Michel L’Heureux said that El Niño formed a month or two earlier than normal this year, which “gives it room to grow,” and that there is a 56% chance it will continue. would be considered strong. And there is a 25% chance that it will reach the big level.
