Penguin wanders into Alaskan waters

A group of Alaskan fishermen pulled a penguin onto their salmon boat last month, while fishing off the southeast coast of Alaska.

“My nephew saw this odd-looking bird swimming around and asked what it was,” Guy Demmert told the Anchorage Daily News.

“I didn’t know. The first thing that came to mind was the unusual sea life we get coming in off the [ocean] currents, so I didn’t pay that much attention to it.”

Nothing prepared him for the sight of a little black-and-white penguin standing among the salmon and jellyfish on deck after they emptied the net.

“He popped up and just stood there. We were kind of in shock,” Demmert said. “It looked real healthy. Nice and plump, kind of like a seal, like he was eating really good. He didn’t look like he suffered any kind of damage from the net.”

The bird, released after Demmert shot a few photos, has since been identified as a Humboldt penguin. These birds usually live on the coast of Chile and Peru.

In South America, penguin populations have fallen steadily in the past century as humans have destroyed their nesting islands