A deleted scene from the seminal, 2007 cinematic epic, Surf is upwent down in real life recently when an emperor penguin popped up during a surfing session in Western Australia. Sadly, Chicken Joe was nowhere to be found. Maybe too far to swim for a blasé bird to swim.
An unexpected visitor has been spotted on the beach in Norway, Australia, a town more than 250 miles from Perth. That’s 2,100 miles from the penguin’s home in Antarctica. Now, emperor penguins are known to travel up to 1,000 kilometers in search of food, but the distance from Antarctica to Australia is almost unheard of. And the divers who found the penguin? They were rightly shocked.
“There was this big bird in the water, like it was coming out of the waves,” diver Aaron Fowler, who was in the water when the unexpected visitor appeared, told ABC. “He just fell on us, he came to us. He tried to, as it were, throw himself forward on his stomach [like it was snow] but he just left derp in the sand. It was definitely the coolest wildlife experience I’ve ever had.”
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Due to the extreme distance, and the extreme rarity, it is suspected that this was the first time in history that an emperor penguin swam towards the shores of Australia. It is possible that this bird was on a hunting trip, when it was caught by a current, which took it all the way to Oz.
As suspected, due to the journey, the animal was malnourished. He was half the weight of an emperor penguin. Wildlife rescue duo, Carol and Graham Biddulph, jumped in to help.
“The care, attention and efforts of Carol and Graham Biddulph have given the Antarctic bird, found thousands of kilometers outside its habitat and in a different climate, a fighting chance of survival,” a representative of the Australian Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions (DBCA) wrote in a press release.
Once they nursed the bird – lovingly named Gus – back to health, the team transported him back home to Antarctica. A happy ending for all. But no live action Surf is up redo…for now.
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