1,300 dead seabirds found on beach in Lenga, Chile

© Paolo Avila / AFP / Getty Images
A dead bird lies on the beach of Concepcion, 310 miles south of Santiago, Chile, May 18, 2015, one of 1300 birds of different species that were found dead on the shore.

    

At least 1,300 dead birds found on a beach in Chile is a mystery that officials may have finally narrowed down. MSN reports that Chilean authorities are investigating what killed so many seabirds belonging to the family.

It's possible that these birds may have drowned after getting trapped in fishing nets — or died from a disease related to bird flu. The country's Agriculture and Livestock Service (SAG) says that the bird flu isn't endemic to Chile.

The 1,300 dead birds on the beach were discovered Sunday afternoon by visitors to a small "black-sand beach in the southern town of Lenga, a cove with several hundred inhabitants who live mainly on fishing and tourism," the report states.

SAG planned to analyze the birds in an effort to determine their cause of death.

This isn't the first time several seabirds were found dead on the beach. Hundreds of birds were found dead in the around the same area back in 2010. At the time, experts learned they were killed after getting trapped in fishing nets.

Raw Story reported in May of 2012 that around 2,000 birds were found dead on the beaches of central Chile. Fishermen were blamed for snagging them in their nets and allowing them to drown. The dead birds covered some four miles of beach around Santo Domingo. The main species of those found dead were gray petrels, but there were also pelicans, gannets, and Guanay cormorants.

The fishermen were accused of "doing nothing" when the birds got trapped in their nets. The fisherman essentially allowed the birds "to drown before throwing the bodies back into the sea," said San Antonio Natural History and Archeology Museum Director, Jose Luis Brito.

Around the same time the dead birds were found on the beach, thousands of dolphins and other seabird carcasses were discovered on beaches in Peru. This included pelicans. Oil exploration work was blamed by environmental groups. Peru's deputy environment minister, Gabriel Quijandria, disagreed with the animals' cause of death. He argued that warming waters resulted in their deaths due to food supplies being disturbed by the radical change.

The 1,300 dead birds found on a beach is an alarming number of animals to die from fishing nets. Any time a large volume of animals mysteriously show up dead, it appears some sort of imbalance in nature is going on until scientists learn what the actual cause is and how it can be remedied.