Robben Island, South Africa, May 28 - Populations of African Penguins are facing extreme declines over the last years. Scientists presume that climate change might be one of the reasons for those changes.

Experts from the University of Cape Town and the International Ornithological Committee registered that since 2001 the number of African Penguins has plummeted down by almost 60 percent to fewer than 18,000 individuals in the two largest colonies on South Africa’s tip. Although there have been population fluctuations in the past, none has been so extreme. Next to many other factors, the biggest one for the penguins’ decrease in numbers seems to be the access to food, such as anchovies and sardines on which African penguins depend.

Starting around 1997, sardines began to relocate eastwards, leaving the African Penguins without a food supply. The African Penguin is not able to follow the fish because it is limited to foraging for food not more than about 25 miles offshore.
The reasons for the sardines’ relocation are not clear. Either it is part of a worldwide shift, that occurs every 50 years or it is connected to global warming. Scientists concluded that the sardine movements were related to changes in the Benguela Current, a vast, frigid flow of nutrient-rich ocean water from Antartica up the southwest African coast, which the fish follows.

The African Penguin is listed under AEWA and currently classified as “vulnerable”. But some scientists plead for reclassification as “endangered” in the face of the recent developments.

Further information:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/04/world/africa/04robben.html?ref=worl