Penguin tragedy

Monday 28th August 2023

Penguin tragedy

Emperor penguins in the Antarctic are suffering a “catastrophic” breeding failure as the region’s sea ice vanishes, pointing to a grim future for a species highly susceptible to the impacts of climate, a new study has found.

Researchers used satellite imagery to find that chicks in four out of five emperor penguin (Aptenodytes forsteri) colonies in the Bellingshausen Sea, an area along the west side of the Antarctic Peninsula, didn’t survive to fledge in the Southern Hemisphere spring of 2022. This lack of fledgling success is directly attributed to sea ice loss, which is a consequence of human-induced climate change, according to the study published in Communications Earth & Environment.

 

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Jonathan Downes
Cryptozoologist, naturalist, musician, singer, composer, poet, novelist and Director of the Centre for Fortean Zoology since 1992. Jon was born in Portsmouth in 1959 and spent his infancy in Nigeria and his childhood in Hong Kong. His wife Corinna died of cancer in 2020, leaving him with two stepdaughters and a six year old granddaughter called Evelyn.