African penguins are facing a new challenge of becoming stuck, foraging for food in poor places due to fishing and climate change. The young endangered penguins leave the colony for the first time, traveling long distances searching for signs of plankton, and the feed that feed on the species. However, the penguins are led to destinations with plankton but no fish due to over fishing and climate change, and are instead replaced with low energy fish and jelly fish. Richard Shirley and his colleagues at the University of Exeter made this discovery when they were using satellites to track the movement of newly leaving African penguins. What they found was that they still travelled to the Benguela Current Large Marine Ecosystem (BCLME) and in the past it was one of the most abundant ocean areas in the world, with anchovies and sardines available fro penguins and humans. Now, fish numbers are low but penguins still travel to where the plankton are. Researchers suggest that penguins respond to a substance given off by phytoplankton when they are under stress, which to the fish means there are fish. As a result, the penguins often fail to survive. Breeding numbers are are about 50% lower than if the penguins found other feeding locations but precautions are beginning to take place. Possible protection is to translocate chicks to an area that the penguins will not get trapped. Although this is temporary relief, if climate change does not slow down and if fishing is not more closely regulated, the penguins will run out of places they can be moved to. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/02/170209133516.htm
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
April 2017
Categories |