Warmer seas put penguins at ‘serious’ risk
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WARMER sea temperatures are forcing Indian Ocean king penguins to travel further for food, cutting into their breeding season researchers said Tuesday, warning of a “serious threat” from climate change.
A rise of one degree Celsius in the ocean surface temperature shifts the birds’ hunting ground about 130 kilometers southward, said a study in the journal Nature Communications.
Researchers from France and Japan fitted king penguins from the Crozet archipelago in the southern Indian Ocean with satellite transmitters, and tracked their foraging trips for a period of 16 years until 2010.
They looked specifically at the Antarctic Polar Front, an area where warm and cold waters converge to offer a rich diet of plankton and fish.
Usually, the penguins will travel about 300-500 km for food.
But in years which were warmer due to weather “anomalies” like El Nino, “the penguins not only went further but also they dived deeper,” said the study.
During one warm period, in 1997, mean foraging distances for chick-rearing penguins doubled, said the study, and the birds had to dive about 30 meters deeper on average.
“Synchronously with these very unfavorable environmental conditions, the penguin breeding population experienced a 34 percent decline,” said the report.
The findings showed ocean warming had a major effect on the penguins’ wellbeing, said the researchers.
“Future climatic scenarios indicate a warming of the surface waters that should lead to a progressive southward shift of the Polar Front... potentially representing a serious threat for penguins and other diving predators of the Southern Ocean.”
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