Read more at The Guardian

African Penguin Crisis and Starvation

• Mass Starvation: More than 60,000 African penguins have starved to death in colonies off the coast of South Africa, primarily due to the disappearance of their key food source: sardines.
• Extreme Decline: The two most important breeding colonies, on Dassen Island and Robben Island, saw a more than 95% mortality rate among breeding penguins between 2004-2012.
• Widespread Collapse: These losses are not isolated; the overall African penguin population has declined by nearly 80%, leading to their current classification as critically endangered (fewer than 10,000 breeding pairs remain).
• Sardine Collapse: The biomass of the sardine species has fallen to only 25% of its maximum abundance in most years since 2004.
• Driving Factors: The disappearance of the sardines is attributed to a combination of factors:
  • Climate Crisis: Changes in ocean temperature and salinity have reduced the success of the sardines’ spawning.
  • Overfishing: Levels of commercial fishing in the region have remained high despite the fish stock decline.
• Moulting Vulnerability: Penguins are especially vulnerable during their 21-day moulting period, as they must fast on land and require sufficient fat reserves built up beforehand to survive.

Conservation and Management Actions

• Fishing Bans: Commercial purse-seine fishing has been banned around the six largest penguin-breeding colonies to increase the penguins’ access to prey during critical life cycle phases.
• Conservation Efforts: Conservationists are taking action on the ground, including:
  • Building artificial nests to shelter chicks.
  • Managing local predators.
  • Hand-rearing adult penguins and chicks who require rescue.
• Urgent Need: Experts note that the situation has not improved since the data cutoff for the study and stress that addressing the extremely low small fish stocks is an urgent requirement for the survival of the African penguin and other endemic species.