Endangered African penguins are at risk from overfishing and climate change, which have reduced stocks of prey fish in their juvenile feeding grounds.
Richard Sherley and Stephen Votier at the University of Exeter, UK, and their colleagues used satellites to track 54 juvenile African penguins (Spheniscus demersus; pictured) over a three-year period as the birds migrated in search of food. They found that the juveniles tried to feed in areas off the coast of Namibia and western South Africa that had cold surface waters and high chlorophyll levels, which are normally indicative of a healthy fish population. But fishing has drastically decreased sardine and anchovy populations in these regions, and climate change has caused the remaining fish to move southward, leaving the penguins caught in an ecological 'trap'. This could explain why penguin populations have been declining across western South Africa and Namibia.
Swathes of the penguins' breeding grounds are now protected, but unless this protection is extended to their feeding grounds, populations may not recover, the authors say.
Curr. Biol. http://doi.org/bzkx (2017)
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Penguins caught in ecological trap. Nature 542, 275 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/542275a
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/542275a
