Iced Earth Something Wicked This Way Comes Review
Earth's Penguins Skating on Thin Ice
If the harrowing plight of emperor penguins portrayed in the film "March of the Penguins" looked bad, it'southward nothing compared with the dire straits faced by many other penguin species.
Of the xviii penguin species on Earth, xiii are considered either threatened or endangered, with some species on the brink of extinction. Experts gathered last calendar week to discuss the situation at the International Penguin Briefing at the New England Aquarium in Boston. [See all 18 penguin species.]
"I hope that people will hear the word that they are in trouble, the oceans are in trouble," said Heather Urquhart, managing director of the New England Aquarium'south penguin showroom and organizer of the conference. "I hope we assemble and make some changes and hopefully stem the tide of what'south going on with these species."
Penguins are non-flying, aquatic birds that live exclusively in the Southern Hemisphere.
"They occupy a niche adequately unexplored by other bird species," Urquhart told OurAmazingPlanet. "They evolved from birds of flight, and evolved non to fly and then they could exploit the ocean resource that flying seabirds couldn't get to. Many species spend 80 percent of their lives at sea."
Ascetic life
Emperor penguins are the largest of the penguin species, and mate and brood on the water ice of Antarctica. They make a harrowing trek across upward to 75 miles (120 kilometers) of ice to achieve breeding colonies during the frigid Antarctic winter, and after chicks are born males and females take turns diving for food and caring for the young.
While this life can be rather austere, for now it is sustaining: Emperor penguins are rated of to the lowest degree concern on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species.
"I think they're faring a lot better than some other species," said conference presenter Gerry Kooyman, a biologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California-San Diego who studies emperor penguins. "The massive amount of Antarctic ice is a buffer; it adds some level of stability. Even though some of the ice is failing, there's a much greater buffer of ice there than in the Chill."
On the brink
Not faring so well are species such as cock-crested penguins, a New Zealand native that has lost about lxx percent of its population over the last 20 years.
The Galápagos penguin, endemic to the Galápagos Islands around the equator in the Pacific Bounding main, has experienced a population turn down of over fifty percent since the 1970s, and faces a thirty-percent chance of extinction in this century, said Tony LaCasse, spokesman for the New England Aquarium.
"One big incident could wipe out that population," Urquhart said.
Other species like the yellow-eyed penguin of New Zealand, and the northern rockhopper penguin that breeds on islands in the southern Atlantic Sea, are also endangered (the latter has declined by 90 percent over the concluding fifty years, co-ordinate to a 2009 paper in the periodical Bird Conservation International).
African penguins, a one time robust iconic species in Namibia and South Africa, accept experienced a precipitous refuse and were recently reclassified as endangered.
"It's a very disturbing sign that that should happen in a species that was once so abundant, and it's occurring correct earlier our eyes," Kooyman said.
Hit from all sides
The reasons for these declines vary co-ordinate to species, with some penguins existence striking from all sides by multiple threats.
Mutual dangers to penguin survival are pollution and human cribbing of habitats, as well as new mammalian predators such every bit dogs, cats and weasels that have been introduced by humans to penguins' environments. Some penguins are caught equally bycatch past commercial fishers, and others are starving because fisheries are harvesting almost of the prey available to penguins. Oil dumping and algae blooms in the oceans are also wreaking havoc on their nutrient supply and habitats.
Finally, and in many cases most importantly, climate change is radically altering many penguins' habitats, affecting sea temperatures and reducing the corporeality of ocean ice. The changes result in limited space available for penguin breeding and a diminishing supply of krill, the small crustaceans that dominate many penguins' diets and which require sea ice cover to spawn.
Not only is this bad news for penguins, merely information technology could spell disaster for the larger ecosystem around them.
"They're kind of the sentinel, or the canary in the coal mine, for the ocean in full general," Urquhart said. "They can show us some things that are happening to the body of water surroundings."
While awareness of penguins' plight is growing and efforts are underway to aid the animals, a major reversal in human consumption and environmental interference could be necessary to save some penguin species, scientists said.
- 10 Species You Tin Kiss Goodbye
- viii of the World'southward Nigh Endangered Places
- Why Don't Penguin Feet Freeze on Ice?
Clara Moskowitz is a senior writer for LiveScience, a sister site to OurAmazingPlanet.
This commodity was provided by OurAmazingPlanet, a sis site to LiveScience.
Clara has a bachelor'south caste in astronomy and physics from Wesleyan University, and a graduate document in science writing from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She has written for both Space.com and Live Science.
Source: https://www.livescience.com/11045-earth-penguins-skating-thin-ice.html
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