What is happening to Antarctic penguins?
Show notes
Everyone loves a penguin. Charismatic, perfectly adapted to living in one of the world’s wildest places and the feature of many a Hollywood blockbuster. But did you know that our favourite flightless friends could be in trouble? Across the Antarctic peninsula, populations show evidence of decline but figuring out why is tricky, as there are many overlapping threats in the region, including climate change and overfishing. Disentangling these issues is crucial to safeguarding penguins, as we need this information to inform targeted conservation strategies and management measures. This is exactly what penguinologist and SOSF project leader Dr Tom Hart aims to do. In honour of World Penguin Day (April 25th) – a day dedicated to celebrating penguins and raising awareness of the challenges they are currently facing – we chat with Tom to find out about all things Antarctica; penguins; species decline; and penguin poop.
We start as we always do with Tom’s most memorable ocean experience [4.42]. He’s spent more time travelling to Antarctica than most, so it’s no surprise this experience comes from one of the most remote places on the planet, the South Sandwich Islands, and a surprisingly calm day for the Southern Ocean! We then talk about Tom’s (very cool) job title as Penguinologist and what this entails [5.51]. In a fundamental sense, Tom studies many different aspects of penguins, including their genetics and changes to their population structures. He explains that his journey to studying penguins started with a deep interest in their home: Antarctica [7.50]. Apparently, there is still an excited kid inside Tom who squeals with glee every time he packs for the next expedition! As soon as Tom started learning about Antarctica, he knew he wanted to work there. His appreciation for penguins developed because of their role as an indicator species for the entire ecosystem (more on this later).
We then talk about Antarctica and what it’s like [12.21]. Tom talks about how human influence has extended even to such a remote place and that while it is ‘wild’, it’s not the untouched wilderness many people think. He also describes that although there are many glaciers and sea ice, there is much more colour and life there. One of these is pink, which comes from – you guessed it – penguin poo [14.35].
Antarctica is a rapidly changing environment. Tom discusses some of the changes he’s noticed across his many trips there, driven by climate change [15.30]. One of the most noticeable is the retreat of glaciers and biological change in the species living there. Penguins are a good indicator of change in the region, but understanding the drivers of their decline is difficult given the other threats that overlap climate change. Interestingly, the pandemic offered a way to separate some of these threats. As Tom explains [17.54], the absence of tourism over the last two years has allowed him and his team to disentangle the effects of this activity from other issues, like climate change and fishing. In the places they’ve studied, they have found that tourism might have a very minor or even a positive effect – but this is still important, as it allows the focus to shift to other threats. But we’ll come to those other issues a little later on.
First – penguins (it is World Penguin Day, after all)! We spend some time discussing what a penguin actually is [20.37] and some of the incredible adaptations they have to allow them to live in such extreme conditions, including starvation, low-temperature tolerance and specialised feathers suitable for deep diving and staying warm. We also talk about some of the main species you can find in Antarctica, and how this is still shifting as we make new genetic discoveries [24.37]. Tom also mentions that historically, there could have been as many as three times as many species of penguins in the Antarctic peninsula!
We then talk about what Tom means when he says that penguins are ‘indicators’ [28.47]. In short, they are ‘easy to study and they are everywhere’! That means that it’s relatively easy to measure how they respond to environmental change in a way that allows you to understand the health of the environment. Tom also discusses the reason behind his interest in non-invasive methods, like time-lapse cameras and drone footage, which minimise the potential disturbance to wild species that could be caused by scientific research [30.01].
Next, Tom speaks about his research and the project he leads, funded by SOSF [31.12]. We learn about the value of using drones, and how he is combining this data with historical records and time-lapse footage to build a comprehensive picture of colony success over a longer-term period. He also talks about the other side of his research: collecting poo to look at diet, disease and stress indicators! We then discuss some of the main threats Tom and his team are trying to disentangle in his research, starting by going into a little more detail on tourism and other human visitation [33.48]. This obviously has pros and cons, the latter being something like causing abandonment by straying too close to a nest. But overall, Tom isn’t seeing that – he feels that as long as tourism is closely managed and tightly controlled, it isn’t too much of a concern and the positives of raising awareness currently outweigh the cons. One issue he is more worried about is fishing [36.24]. There is an increasing amount of fishing around the Antarctic peninsula and the South Orkney Islands, which places pressure on krill, on which most life in Antarctica depends.
Tom gives us some stats on how penguins are faring, specifically populations that are in decline [39.35]. It seems that, although there are some discrepancies, overall the biggest populations are declining, likely as a result of both fishing and climate change. But, there is hope. There are things that you can do, from the comfort of your own home, to help conserve penguins [41.54]. This includes being an ethical consumer (be careful of krill products, which can be found in pet food and omega-3 supplements), and contributing to citizen science through PenguinWatch, an initiative set up by Tom and his colleagues [43.50].
About our Guest
Dr Tom Hart
Tom is a research fellow and Save Our Seas Foundation project leader currently based at the University of Oxford, UK. He developed a passion for the conservation of wildlife in extreme environments at a young age, and sought to understand changes in Antarctic species early on in his career. His PhD involved tracking macaroni penguins and researching their foraging behaviour, which then evolved into population genetics and image analysis. He now runs the Penguin Watch project, a citizen science initiative with over two million volunteers from across the world, where the public can help count penguins from aerial photos or time-lapse cameras. And, in 2021, Tom began his project “Disentangling the Drivers of Antarctic Peninsula Penguin Colony Declines”, funded by SOSF, which aims to tease apart the impacts of human visitation, climate change and fishing on penguin populations in Antarctica.
Find out more about penguin watch or follow @penguin_watch on Instagram and Twitter.
Find out more about Tom’s project with Save Our Seas Foundation
