A severe combination of environmental shifts and human-driven fishing practices has resulted in a critical food shortage along South Africa’s coast, leading to the demise of tens of thousands of adult African penguins. A recent scientific investigation indicates that the species’ population has contracted by approximately 95 percent within an eight-year span.
“Comparable population decreases are being observed in other regions,” stated Richard Sherley, a conservation biologist affiliated with the University of Exeter. He further elaborated that the species has “witnessed a global population reduction of nearly 80 percent over the last three decades.”
Annually, African penguins (Spheniscus demersus) dedicate roughly 20 days ashore for the molting process, shedding their worn feathers to maintain essential waterproofing and insulation.
Typically, they augment their body fat reserves to sustain them through this period of fasting. However, between 2004 and 2011, the abundance of their primary food source, Sardinops sagax sardines, experienced a drastic decline, falling to about a quarter of its former peak levels.
“If sustenance becomes excessively challenging to procure either before or immediately after molting, they will lack adequate reserves to endure the fasting period,” Sherley noted. “We do not encounter large accumulations of deceased birds; our assessment suggests they likely perish at sea.”
A significant period of starvation affected two of the most vital breeding grounds for African penguins between 2004 and 2011, contributing to the fatalities of an estimated 62,000 adult individuals.
Ecologist Robert Crawford, associated with Cape Town’s Department of Forestry, Fisheries, and the Environment, along with his research associates, identified alterations in water temperature and salinity, attributed to human-induced climate change, as the underlying cause of the sharp decrease in fish populations. Concurrently, pressures exerted by the fishing sector remain substantial.
“The survival rate of adult penguins, particularly during the critical annual molt, exhibited a strong correlation with prey availability,” Sherley elucidated. “Intense sardine harvesting rates – which momentarily reached 80 percent in 2006 – compounded by a period of declining sardine numbers due to environmental shifts, likely exacerbated penguin mortality.”
The precarious situation for African penguins has not improved since that time, leading to their classification as critically endangered, with fewer than 10,000 breeding pairs remaining as of 2024.
Similar to the widespread mortality observed in river dolphin populations, localized interventions to alleviate the crisis can only provide limited relief.
“Fisheries management strategies that reduce sardine exploitation when its biomass falls below 25 percent of its maximum and permit more adults to survive and reproduce, as well as those aimed at lowering the mortality of juvenile sardines, could offer additional assistance, although this point is subject to ongoing debate among various stakeholders,” Sherley commented.
Without addressing the root causes of environmental change, the researchers caution that the restoration of penguin populations will remain an arduous undertaking. If current trends persist, African penguins face the imminent threat of extinction within the next decade.
Human endeavors are contributing to the collapse of Earth’s biodiversity at an unprecedented scale for our species. Wildlife populations have experienced a decline exceeding two-thirds since the 1970s.
This occurrence, alongside the devastation of global coral reefs and the loss of numerous species including birds, African elephants, and river dolphins, represents another instance of wildlife mortality now linked to climate change.
From the pervasive impact of plastics and pesticides to habitat destruction and illegal hunting, we are consistently compromising the ability of the natural world to thrive.
Scientists have long underscored the critical necessity of a global reduction in fossil fuel consumption to halt this planet-wide hemorrhaging of life; otherwise, our efforts to address the crisis will be akin to using a minor bandage on a severe injury.
