Isla Magdalena penguins and the wildlife around them

The Isla Magdalena penguins fill the hour you spend ashore, but the trip around them is a wildlife outing of its own. The tour this site recommends adds 30 minutes of wildlife viewing at Isla Marta to the hour on Magdalena, with speedboat legs of 50, 25 and 45 minutes in between. Its record puts Marta's sea lion colony at more than 1000 animals and adds cormorants, skuas, austral gulls, Antarctic pigeons and the occasional elephant seal.

The same record lists southern dolphins, piebald dolphins and sei whales as possible sightings on the water. Possible is the honest word. The operator itself warns that sightings outside the Magdalena colony depend on the natural behaviour of each species, and the tour's record says Marta is visited only when the weather is good.⁵ Expect the penguins, and treat everything else as a bonus that depends on the day.

The protected area itself is built around this mix. CONAF says that between September and March more than 7 species of birds share Magdalena and Marta, including the dolphin gull and the Chilean skua.² Marta hosts an imperial cormorant colony, and its southwest corner is a breeding beach for South American sea lions and fur seals; Magdalena only offers sea lions a place to rest.¹ Knowing who lives where tells you which side of the boat to watch.

Sharing Marta with the sea lions is the South American fur seal, a smaller and more agile animal. CONAF lists it among the species breeding at the island's southwest end.¹ Argentina's biodiversity system gives males at 1.80 to 1.90 m and 150 to 200 kg, and females at 1.35 to 1.50 m and only 30 to 60 kg.¹⁷ Side by side, a fur seal looks compact next to a sea lion bull, and the weight gap between males and females is even wider than in sea lions.

Where you see them says a lot. Fur seals prefer rugged rocky places exposed to heavy surf, and on land they can climb almost vertical rock and leap from one rock to another or into the sea.^25,19 Scan the broken edges of Marta rather than the flatter beach, and watch for animals perched higher than you would expect a seal to manage. When the swell is up, the spray around those rocks is part of the show.

They keep different hours from the penguins. The same source says fur seals usually feed at night, near the coast or tens of kilometres out to sea, and that in November the males start arriving on the coast to set up breeding areas.^26,6 On a daytime boat you may well find them hauled out on the rocks. Use binoculars if you have them, since nobody may land on Marta.⁴ A small pair is enough, and it also helps with the cormorant colony on the same rocks.

The rules that protect the colony also shape how you watch everything else. On Magdalena the code is simple, with a minimum gap of 2 metres to every penguin, no flash, no loud noise and no blocking a bird on its way.^44,45 Drones are banned inside the protected area, except for authorised research or professional filming.³⁰ Leave the drone at the hotel and bring a zoom lens instead, which lets you fill the frame from the path or the deck.

Isla Marta has the strictest rule of all, a total ban on landing.⁴ Any good Magdalena Island penguins tour treats Marta as a floating viewpoint, and the operator itself frames it as sailing alongside the island to watch sea lions and southern bird species.⁴⁶ Feeding or disturbing wildlife is forbidden throughout the monument, and that includes throwing scraps to gulls or birds following the boat.³⁴

Health rules now matter as well. If you notice a sick or dead bird, leave it untouched and let the SAG, Chile's farm and livestock service, know, as the agency asks.⁴⁷ Chile's environment ministry adds that a penguin found injured or struggling on a beach should be reported to Sernapesca, the competent authority.⁴⁸ The islands' penguins and their neighbours are wild animals in a protected area, and watching them well means leaving them exactly as you found them.