Berlin – Researchers Sound Alarm Over Antarctic Penguin Chick Deaths

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    After a short boat ride from a cruise ship, tourists observe scores of Adelie penguins at Brown Bluff on the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula on Dec. 12, 2005.  (AP Photo/Brian Witte)Berlin – Almost the entire cohort of chicks from an Adelie penguin colony in the eastern Antarctic was wiped out by starvation last summer in what scientists say is only the second such incident in over 40 years.

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    Researchers said Sunday the mass die-off occurred because unusually large amounts of sea ice forced penguin parents to travel farther in search of food for their young. By the time they returned, only two out of thousands of chicks had survived.

    “Not only did the chick starve but the partner (who stayed behind) also had to endure a long fast,” said Yan Ropert-Coudert, a marine ecologist with the French science agency CNRS.

    Ropert-Coudert, who leads the study of seabirds at the Dumont D’Urville Antarctic research station, said the Adelie colony there numbers about 18,000 pairs who have been monitored since the 1960s. A similar breeding loss was observed for the first time in the 2013/2014.

    “It is unusual because of the size of the population concerned,” he said in an email to The Associated Press. “Zero breeding success years have been noted before elsewhere, but never for colonies of this size.”

    Sea ice extent in the polar regions varies each year, but climate change has made the fluctuation more extreme.

    The environmental group WWF, which supported the research, urged governments meeting in Hobart, Australia, this week to approve a new marine protection area off East Antarctica. Rod Downie, head of polar programs for the group’s British branch, said the impact of losing thousands of chicks was dramatic for an otherwise hardy species such as Adelie penguins.

    “It’s more like ‘Tarantino does Happy Feet’, with dead penguin chicks strewn across a beach in Adelie Land,” he said.

    Ropert-Coudert said creating a protection zone in the D’Urville Sea-Mertz region, where the colony is located, wouldn’t prevent larger-than-usual sea ice, but it might ease the pressure on penguins from tourism and over-fishing.


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    12 Comments
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    GlatteKup
    GlatteKup
    6 years ago

    Well, you know how penguins operate- if one does something, then all the rest follow. …

    6 years ago

    Sad as it might be, I’m more concerned about millions of Jews living in poverty whose children are starving.

    6 years ago

    Once again silly environmental ggroups trying to push their fake agenda on the masses thereby restricting them . So sad

    The_Truth
    Noble Member
    The_Truth
    6 years ago

    I dont get it. If they care so much about the penguin population and have been monitoring them, then why not get some food for the chicks and prevent the deaths to start with?!