Endangered Penguins

Most of the Antarctic penguin species are relatively safe. There are two obvious potential threats. First, there are some moves to commercial harvesting of Krill in the Southern Ocean. Krill is the mainstay of the Antarctic food chain, some penguins feed directly on Krill, while others feed on the fish and larger crustaceans that themselves rely on Krill. At present very little is known about overall Krill stocks or how much it may be safe to harvest. However, if commercial Krill fisheries take off there is a real danger that this food source may be removed by over-fishing.

The other threat is global warming, all penguins live in and around the fertile cold seas. As the Earth heats up so penguins will need to move to breeding grounds further south. Clearly they have achieved this in past ice ages. However, the problem this time is that the changes seem to be occurring very quickly, so that the penguins may not be able to adapt to new sites quickly enough to avoid disaster.