South African Penguins – Global Warming
Music, Ambience: African Jackass Penguins
Many scientists agree that the earth’s climate is warming. We may be beginning to see the effects of this trend on certain species around the world – including penguins. I’m Jim Metzner, and this is the Pulse of the Planet. We’re listening to the sounds of penguins recorded off the coast of South Africa.
“Climate change as an influence on penguin populations is a very, very recent idea. We certainly weren’t thinking along those lines of 5 or 10 years ago.”
Les Underhill is director of the Avian Demography Unit at the University of Cape Town in South Africa.
“One of the things that we’re going to do, starting this year, is to put logging devices onto penguins so that we know when they go out to sea to get food for their chicks and when they come back. And we suspect that one of the consequences of global climate change is that with warmer seas the journeys will become longer. On the Prince Edward Islands, which are part of South Africa’s territory, we’ve done surveys of penguin populations on those islands. Now one of the things about penguins is that they swim, so they can’t feed very far from their breeding islands. Penguin populations for virtually all species on the Prince Edward Islands are declining and that is thought to be due to the shifting of the polar front further south, so that it’s at a further distance from the island. The polar front is the interface between warm water and cold water, which is very rich in food, and that’s where the penguins are thought to go and fish, and the declining penguin populations on those islands is thought to be due to global climate change.”
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We’ll hear more on penguins in future programs. Pulse of the Planet is made possible by the National Science Foundation. I’m Jim Metzner.