The Perils of Penguins

Penguins have had a good run in the popular media over the past few years, from March of the Penguins to Madagascar to Happy Feet.

Outside of movie theaters, the story's not as great. Penguins in temperate regions already faced a are in decline because of a quadruple whammy:  mining of guano, egg harvesting, commercial fishing and oil spills.

Now comes a new study indicating that climate change is adding new stresses, as penguins are forced to swim farther from shore to find food. The loss of sea ice and icebergs means fewer places where their prey species can aggregate.

No polar bears in the Southern Ocean, no penguins in the Arctic, but these ice-dependent creatures face similar threats.

Dee Boersma of the University of Washington spells out the details in a paper just published in Bioscience.

There's a lot we can do as individuals to reduce our carbon footprint. And we can take ownership of the overfishing issue by using a Seafood Watch pocket guide when buying seafood, or becoming a Seafood Watch Advocate and encouraging businesses to change their seafood buying practices.

It won't happen overnight, but our incremental changes will make a different -- for polar bears and penguins.

Comments

[Tammy]

I'm in the hobby of marine tank and realize that it is important to see the whole context of the lives in the sea in order to work with the global needs and not against them