PREVIEW

Record low levels of Antarctic sea-ice in late 2023 have resulted in breeding failures in a fifth of the continent’s emperor penguin colonies according to research released by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) on World Penguin Day on 25 April 2024. With 14 of 66 colonies and tens of thousands of penguins affected, the finding is not as severe as the 2022 season, in which 19 colonies — almost 30% — were impacted but there is an increasing trend of colonies losing chicks as a result of ice-loss before the end of the breeding cycle with 2023 the second worst year since the observations began in 2018. Emperor penguins breed and raise their chicks on land-fast sea ice – stable sea ice that is firmly attached to the shore. If this ice breaks up too early, the chicks go into the sea before they grow their waterproof feathers — known as fledging. This leads to high, or sometimes total, chick mortality at the colony. Several colonies that were badly affected in 2022 also showed adaptations with some moving home to find more stable ice and some breeding on icebergs or ice shelves - raising hope for the future. Despite this, current predictions suggest that in scenarios in which greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise at current levels the population of emperor penguins will fall by 99% by the end of the century, leading to the virtual extinction of this beautiful animal.