Study reveals whaling and climate change led to 100 years of feast or famine for Antarctic penguins

ANTARCTICA – New research reveals how penguins have dealt with more than a century of human impacts in Antarctica and why some species are winners or losers in this rapidly changing ecosystem.

A chinstrap penguin standing on snow near a
breeding colony along the Antarctic Peninsula.
Credit: Michael Polito © Louisiana State University

Michael Polito, assistant professor in Louisiana State University’s (LSU's) Department of Oceanography & Coastal Sciences and his co-authors published their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“Although remote, Antarctica has a long history of human impacts on its ecosystems and animals. By the early to mid-1900s, humans had hunted many of its seals and whales nearly to extinction. Seal and whale populations are now recovering, but decades of climate change and a growing commercial fishing industry have further degraded the environment,” Polito said.

Without Paris Accord, emperor penguins are in dire straits

ANTARCTICA – Unless climate change is slowed, emperor penguins will be marching towards extinction, according to a newly published study co-authored by a University of Canterbury (UC) scientist.

“Basically, if we don’t hit the Paris Accord emissions goals, emperor penguins are in deep trouble,” said paper co-author UC scientist Dr Michelle LaRue, a Lecturer of Antarctic Marine Science in the School of Earth and Environment.

Emperor penguins are some of the most striking and charismatic animals on Earth, but a new study from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in the United States has found that climate change may render them extinct by the end of this century. The study, which was part of an international collaboration between scientists, was published on 7 November in the journal Global Change Biology.

"Catastrophic" breeding failure at one of world’s largest emperor penguin colonies

ANTARCTICA – Emperor penguins at the Halley Bay colony in the Weddell Sea have failed to raise chicks for the last three years, scientists have discovered.

Adult emperor penguins with chick on the
sea ice close to Halley Research Station on
the Brunt Ice Shelf. Credit: Richard Burt.

Researchers from British Antarctic Survey (BAS) studied very high resolution satellite imagery to reveal the unusual findings, published on 25 April 2019 in the journal Antarctic Science.

Until recently, the Halley Bay colony was the second largest in the world, with the number of breeding pairs varying each year between 14,000–25,000; around 5–9% of the global emperor penguin population.

The failure to raise chicks for three consecutive years is associated with changes in the local sea-ice conditions. Emperor penguins need stable sea-ice on which to breed, and this icy platform must last from April when the birds arrive, until December when their chicks fledge.

For the last 60 years the sea-ice conditions in the Halley Bay site have been stable and reliable. But in 2016, after a period of abnormally stormy weather, the sea-ice broke up in October, well before any emperor chicks would have fledged.

This pattern was repeated in 2017 and again in 2018 and led to the death of almost all the chicks at the site each season.

King penguins may be on the move very soon

SUB-ANTARCTIC – King penguin colonies in Crozet, Kerguelen and Marion sub-Antarctic islands  – more than 70% of the global king penguin population – may be nothing more than a memory in a matter of decades, as global warming will force the birds to move south, or disappear. This is the conclusion of a study carried out by an international team of researchers and published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

King penguins. Photo (c) Celine LeBohec.

"The main issue is that there is only a handful of islands in the Southern Ocean and not all of them are suitable to sustain large breeding colonies" said Robin Cristofari, lead author of the study, from the Institut Pluridisciplinaire Hubert Curien (IPHC) (a mixed research unit of the CNRS and the University of Strasbourg) and the Centre Scientifique de Monaco (CSM).

King penguins are picky animals – in order to form a colony where they can mate, lay eggs and rear chicks over a year, they need tolerable temperatures all year round, no winter sea ice around the island, and smooth beach of sand or pebbles. But, above all, they need an abundant and reliable food source close by to feed their chicks.

Finding new homes won't help emperor penguins cope with climate change

ANTARCTICA – If projections for melting Antarctic sea ice through 2100 are correct, the vanishing landscape will strip emperor penguins of their breeding and feeding grounds and put populations at risk. But like other species that migrate to escape the wrath of climate change, can these iconic animals be spared simply by moving to new locations?

Stephanie Jenouvrier with young emperor penguins.
Photo credit: Stephanie Jenouvrier,
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

According to new research led by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), they cannot. Scientists report that dispersal may help sustain global emperor penguin populations for a limited time, but, as sea ice conditions continue to deteriorate, the 54 colonies that exist today will face devastating declines by the end of this century. They say the emperor penguin should be listed as an endangered species. The study was recently published in the journal Biological Conservation.

“We know from previous studies that sea ice is a key environmental driver of the life history of emperor penguins, and that the fifty-percent declines we’ve seen in Pointe Géologie populations along the Antarctic coast since the 1950s coincide with warmer climate and sea ice decline,” said Stephanie Jenouvrier, WHOI biologist and lead author of the study.

Endangered African penguins are falling into an 'ecological trap'

AFRICA – As the climate changes and fisheries transform the oceans, the world's African penguins are in trouble, according to researchers reporting in Current Biology on 9 February. Young penguins aren't able to take all the changes into account and are finding themselves "trapped" in parts of the sea that can no longer support them even as better options are available.

"Our results show that juvenile African penguins are stuck foraging for food in the wrong places due to fishing and climate change," said Richard Sherley of the University of Exeter and University of Cape Town.

Yellow-eyed penguins at risk from new NZ climate record

NEW ZEALAND - Increasing temperatures will have disastrous consequences for New Zealand's wildlife - including yellow-eyed penguins - unless the Government acts urgently to cut emissions and fund environmental research, says conservation organisation Forest & Bird.

Figures released this month by the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) show that 2016 was the hottest year on record for New Zealand, in line with a new global record announced by the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service last week.

“Yellow eyed penguins, kea, and tuatara are already showing some signs of climate change induced stress. The consequences for these and many other native species will be severe unless the Government starts leading the way in cutting emissions and funding adaptation research,” said Forest & Bird's Chief Executive, Kevin Hague.

Citizen scientists can now lend a hand in penguin conservation

Adelie penguin nesting on the Antarctic Peninsula.
Photo credit: Heather Lynch, Stony Brook University

USA – Ordinary citizens now have the opportunity to be penguin detectives and help scientists find Antarctica's undiscovered penguin colonies after the launch of a website that tracks Antarctic penguin populations.

The interactive and user-friendly tool was developed by Heather J. Lynch, PhD, an Associate Professor of Ecology and Evolution at Stony Brook University, and colleagues. It is the first of its kind, and provides a lens into the world of scientists who analyse penguin living patterns, which are a strong indicator of climate change effects.

Dr Lynch and Mathew R. Schwaller, PhD, at NASA Goddard teamed up with Oceanites, Inc. to develop the Mapping Application for Penguin Populations and Projected Dynamics (MAPPPD): www.penguinmap.com.

Litte penguins' resilience to climate change investigated

AUSTRALIA - New research by Murdoch University will investigate the future of the little penguin colony in Rockingham, Western Australia.

Dr Belinda Cannell, who has been part of a long term study of the birds, will spend the next three years examining their resilience to coastal waters that have remained warmer than average since late 2010 .

“Little penguins are essentially the canaries in the coalmine for the Shoalwater [Islands] Marine Park,” she said.

“Understanding the viability of this population of penguins will give us a good understanding of the health of the whole ecosystem.”

Penguin populations could drop 60 percent by the end of the century

Adelie penguins at risk
Credit: University of Delaware/Megan Cimino

ANTARCTICA - Climate has influenced the distribution patterns of Adélie penguins across Antarctica for millions of years.

The geologic record shows that as glaciers expanded and covered Adélie breeding habitats with ice, penguin colonies were abandoned. When the glaciers melted during warming periods, this warming positively affected the Adélie penguins, allowing them to return to their rocky breeding grounds.

But now, University of Delaware (UD) scientists and colleagues report that this beneficial warming may have reached its tipping point.

Abandoned 'supercolony' may hold clues to penguins' response to climate change

More than 600,000 Adelie penguins nest on Cape Adare,
Antarctica. Photo credit: Steve Emslie, UNCW

ANTARCTICA – Researchers recently discovered that Antarctica’s most populous colony of Adélie penguins may have once been nearly twice the size it is today. Clues about why the colony grew so large and what caused the population to decline could help scientists chart the penguins’ response to changes in climate and food resources.

Collaborative research conducted by Louisiana State University (LSU), University of North Carolina Wilmington (UNCW), University of California at Santa Cruz and University of Saskatchewan led to this discovery at Cape Adare, Antarctica.

Penguin parents' inability to share roles increases their vulnerability to climate change

Crested penguin feeding its chick.
Photo credit: Kyle Morrison

NEW ZEALAND - The fixed division of labour between crested penguin parents increases their chicks' vulnerability to food shortages made ever more common by climate change.

Penguin parents have been unable to adapt their habits to the challenges of increasingly frequent years of limited food supply. As a result, they will become further threatened by extinction, said Kyle Morrison of Massey University and the National Institute of Water & Atmospheric Research, who led a study published in Springer's journal Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology.

Adelie penguin numbers may expand as glaciers retreat

ANTARCTICA - Shrinking glaciers could lead to increasing numbers of Adélie penguins in East Antarctica, according to research published in the open access journal BMC Evolutionary Biology.

The study shows that in the last 14,000 years the population of Adélie penguins has seen a 135-fold increase, as additional breeding sites become exposed by retreating glaciers. This population explosion suggests that current environmental conditions are more favourable for Adélie penguins than they were at the end of the last ice age.

Shifting winds and ocean currents double endangered Galapagos penguin population

Galápagos penguins. Credit: Snowmanradio on Flickr

GALAPAGOS ISLANDS – Shifts in trade winds and ocean currents powered a resurgence of Galápagos penguins over the past 30 years, according to a new study. These changes enlarged a cold pool of water the penguins rely on for food and breeding – an expansion that could continue as the climate changes over the coming decades, the study’s authors said.

The Galápagos Islands, a chain of islands 1000km west of mainland Ecuador, are home to the only penguins in the Northern Hemisphere. The 48-cm tall black and white Galápagos penguins landed on the endangered species list in 2000 after the population plummeted to only a few hundred individuals and are now considered the rarest penguins in the world.

Genetics reveals where emperor penguins survived the last ice age

A group of emperor penguins is resting and preening
 next to a tide crack in the ice near the Gould Bay colony.
Credit: Dr Tom Hart

ANTARCTICA - A study of how climate change has affected emperor penguins over the last 30,000 years found that only three populations may have survived during the last ice age, and that the Ross Sea in Antarctica was likely the refuge for one of these populations.

The Ross Sea is likely to have been a shelter for emperor penguins for thousands of years during the last ice age, when much of the rest of Antarctica was uninhabitable due to the amount of ice.

The findings, published on 1 March in the journal Global Change Biology, suggest that while current climate conditions may be optimal for emperor penguins, conditions in the past were too extreme for large populations to survive.

Climate change does not bode well for picky penguins

A gentoo penguin and a chinstrap penguin
Credit: Rachael Herman, Louisiana State University

ANTARCTICA – In a part of the world that is experiencing the most dramatic increase in temperature and climate change, two very similar penguin species – chinstraps and gentoos – are responding very differently.

Chinstrap penguin numbers at Antarctic Peninsula breeding colonies are decreasing while gentoo penguin numbers are increasing.

New research published this month in Marine Ecology Progress Series suggests that the ways in which these species have adapted to co-exist with one another might be to blame.

Genomes reveal penguins' secrets

Adélie penguin close up.
Credit: Yvette Wharton – The University of Auckland

ANTARCTICA - Two penguin genomes have been sequenced and analysed for the first time in the open access, open data journal GigaScience. The study reveals insights into how Adélie and emperor penguins have been able to adapt to the cold and hostile Antarctic environment.

Antarctic penguins are subject to extremely low temperatures, high winds and profound changes in daylight. They have developed complicated biological systems to regulate temperature and store energy for long-term fasting.

Most studies have focused on the physiological and behavioural aspects of their biology, but an international team of researchers has now analysed the DNA of the two Antarctic penguins relative to other bird species, revealing the genetic basis of their adaptations and their evolutionary history in response to climate change.

Penguin chick weights connected to local weather conditions

Adelie penguin chicks in Antarctica
Credit: Megan Cimino/University of Delaware

ANTARCTICA - Adélie penguins are an indigenous species of the West Antarctic Peninsula (WAP), one of the most rapidly warming areas on Earth. Since 1950, the average annual temperature in the Antarctic Peninsula has increased 2°C on average, and 6°C during winter.

As the WAP climate warms, it is changing from a dry, polar system to a warmer, sub-polar system with more rain.

University of Delaware (UD) oceanographers recently reported a connection between local weather conditions and the weight of Adélie penguin chicks in an article in Marine Ecology Progress Series, a top marine ecology journal.

'Reactive' penguins more prepared for climate change?

NEW ZEALAND - As the global climate continues to change, the ability of many animal species to adapt is being put to the test.

John Cockrem of the Institute of Veterinary, Animal and Biomedical Sciences at Massey University suggests that a bird’s individual personality may be among the factors that could improve its chances of successfully coping with environmental stressors. He studied differences in the level of the stress hormone corticosterone that little penguins secreted when exposed to stressful stimulus.

Study looks at threats to the world's penguins

King penguins.
Photo credit: Pete Bucktrout,
British Antarctic Survey

A major study of all penguin species suggests the birds are at continuing risk from habitat degradation.

Writing in the journal Conservation Biology, a group of internationally renowned scientists recommended that measures are adopted to mitigate against a range of effects, including food scarcity (where fisheries compete for the same resources), being caught in fishing nets, oil pollution and climate change.