- The African penguin (Spheniscus demersus) is expected to go extinct in the wild in just over a decade, largely due to a lack of sardines, their main food.
- A colony in South Africa’s busy Algoa Bay is suffering a population crash that researchers say coincides with the introduction of ship-to-ship refueling services that have made the bay one of the noisiest in the world.
- They say theirs is the first study showing a correlation between underwater noise pollution and a seabird collapse.
- Current studies are investigating whether the ship noise is interfering with the penguins’ foraging behavior and their ability to find fish.
“Some were emaciated, especially the chicks,” he recalls. “Their chest and hip bones were sticking out. Their bellies were flat, not rounded.”
It looked as though they weren’t feeding well, and his colleagues at the nonprofit Southern African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds (SANCCOB), which helps monitor the colony, on Bird Island, agreed. As soon as a weather window opened, South African National Parks, a government agency, sent in a helicopter to airlift 95 starving chicks for hand rearing at a rehabilitation center on the mainland, 60 kilometers (37 miles) away in the port city of Gqeberha.
This rescue is a red flag for marine conservationists. The African penguin (Spheniscus demersus) is expected to go extinct in the wild in just over a decade, given its current population decline. The main reason is a lack of food — sardines, mostly — caused by disruptions to ocean conditions from global heating and competition from the commercial fishing industry.
Another colony in the same bay, on St. Croix Island, just 43 km (27 mi) away, has seen one of the most devastating population crashes in recent years. Annual head counts show that St. Croix’s penguin numbers dropped by 85% in five years, between 2016 and 2021.
Scientists have identified a possible additional cause, one that is an entirely new threat and that further inhibits the penguins from finding food: noise pollution from marine vessels in a bay that has become one of the noisiest shipping hubs on the planet.
These two colonies, in the busy port area of Algoa Bay, are the eastern-most breeding sites for the species. If the collapse occurring here were to affect the entire African penguin population, conservationists say it would bring about the D-Day for functional extinction much sooner than 2035.
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