More than 70 percent of king penguins, the second largest penguin species, can abruptly relocate or even disappear before the end of the century as a result of global warming and overfishing, a new study has warned.
King penguins are picky creatures needing tolerable temperature all year round, suitable habitats and abundant food to live and raise their offspring, according to the study published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change.
"There is only a handful of islands in the Southern Ocean and not all of them are suitable to sustain large breeding colonies," Robin Cristofari, lead author of the study, said in a press release.
For millennia, these seabirds have relied on the Antarctic Polar Front in the Southern Ocean that has provided abundant prey for them.
As climate change moves their feeding grounds southward, king penguins are forced to swim farther from the islands where they currently live to find food for themselves and their chicks.
The study predicts that, for most colonies, the length of the parents' trips to get food will soon exceed their chicks' starvation resistance, leading to either a massive decline in king penguins' population, or hopefully, their relocation on other islands.
Although king penguins survived several population dips due to major climate changes in the past, the researchers are worried that the current changes caused by human activities can be too fast, and even irreversible, for the penguins to adapt to.
"It is difficult to predict the outcome, but there will surely be losses on the way," Celine Le Bohec, co-author of the study, said.
"If we want to save anything, proactive and efficient conservation efforts but above all, coordinated global action against global warming should start now," she added.
