Photo Illustration by Kelly Caminero / The Daily Beast / Getty
We’ve all seen some version of the image of a polar bear stranded in the middle of the sea on a piece of floating ice—a stark illustration of the effects of climate change as hotter temperatures ravage the Arctic. But some new research wants to remind us to not forget the penguins. The iconic birds are having a rough go of things as well—perhaps worse than we thought.
A study published Thursday in Nature Communications Earth & Environment reveals that the loss of Antarctic ice is causing emperor penguin colonies to collapse due to unprecedented breeding failure. In the central and eastern Bellingshausen Sea, a region where there was total sea ice loss in 2022, researchers observed that there was a high probability no chicks had survived from four of the five known emperor penguin colonies in that area.
“We have never seen emperor penguins fail to breed, at this scale, in a single season. The loss of sea ice in this region during the Antarctic summer made it very unlikely that displaced chicks would survive,” lead study author Peter Fretwell, from the British Antarctic Survey, said in a statement. “We know that emperor penguins are highly vulnerable in a warming climate—and current scientific evidence suggests that extreme sea ice loss events like this will become more frequent and widespread.”