Antarctic expedition reveals dramatic penguin decline

A team of scientists from two US universities set sail on an Antarctic expedition at the start of this year. During several weeks at sea, they studied the impact of climate change on the remote region. More specifically, they wanted to assess how many chinstrap penguins are left in Western Antarctica compared to the last survey of their population in the 1970s.

Chinstrap penguins inhabit the islands and shores of the Southern Pacific and Antarctic Oceans. They are named after the narrow black band on the underside of their heads. Even before the scientists can hear the birds' loud, harsh calls, a pungent smell of penguin excrement indicates that a colony is nearby. Penguins have not learned to fear humans, so they mostly ignore their visitors.

The scientists used manual and drone surveying techniques to count the chinstrap penguins. Their findings revealed that some colonies had experienced a drop of up to more than 70%. "The declines that we've seen are definitely dramatic," Steve Forrest, a conservation biologist who was part of the expedition, told Reuters.

Chinstrap penguins feed on small fish, like krill, shrimp and squid. They can swim up to 80 kilometers (50 miles) offshore each day to obtain their food. Their tightly packed feathers work like a waterproof coat and enable them to swim in freezing waters. But climate change is decreasing the abundance of krill, which is making it harder for the birds to survive.

Chinstraps choose to nest in particularly inaccessible and remote places. When they procreate, they build circular nests from stones and lay two eggs. Both male and female work in shifts of around 6 days each to incubate the eggs. But as global warming is causing ice sheets to melt and is driving food abundance down, reproduction is becoming less successful.

There are an estimated eight million chinstrap penguins globally, which is why there hasn't been much concern about them thus far. But in the past 50 years, their population on the Antarctic Peninsula has declined by more than half. Chinstraps aren't in imminent danger of extinction, but the decline of their populations is a stark warning about broad environmental changes taking place.