“Between 2004 and 2011, the sardine stock off west South Africa was consistently below 25% of its peak abundance and this appears to have caused severe food shortage for African penguins, leading to an estimated loss of about 62,000 breeding individuals,” said co-author Dr Richard Sherley, from the Centre for Ecology and Conservation at the University of Exeter’s Penryn Campus in Cornwall.
We killed 60,000 penguins because we wanted to kill and eat their food.
And we learned nothing, we’re so fucked
It is even weirder / worse.
Changes in the temperature and salinity of the spawning areas off the west and south coasts of South Africa made spawning in the historically important west coast spawning areas less successful, and spawning off the south coast more successful,” said Dr Sherley.
“However, due to the historical structures of the industry, most fishing remained to the west of Cape Agulhas, which led to high exploitation rates in that region in the early to mid 2000s.”
So breaking this down, climate change moved the sardines from the west to the south. The penguins are in the south.
The fishing fleet kept going out in the west and they heavily damaged the fish stock leaving too few survivors to breed the next generations.
The losses to the fish stock in the west is a problem that has now spread out to where the Penguins live.
Think cascading collapse of a complex system.
We killed 60,000 penguins because we wanted to kill and eat their food.
Well, were currently raping Antarctica of krill for pet food and as a sumplement for farmed salmon and vitamin supps for humans. Fuck the whales
As to penguins
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-66492767
A catastrophic die-off of emperor penguin chicks has been observed in the Antarctic, with up to 10,000 young birds estimated to have been killed.
The sea-ice underneath the chicks melted and broke apart before they could develop the waterproof feathers needed to swim in the ocean.
More than 90% of emperor penguin colonies are predicted to be all but extinct by the end of the century, as the continent’s seasonal sea-ice withers in an ever-warming world.
And tomorrow we’ll drive our cars, fly in planes and vote for politcans that enable it all to happen
