PLEA Network

13 June 2025, The Conversation: As Antarctic sea ice shrinks, iconic emperor penguins are in more peril than we thought. When winter comes to Antarctica, seals and Adélie penguins leave the freezing shores and head for the edge of the forming sea ice. But emperor penguins stay put. The existence of emperor penguins seems all but impossible. Their lives revolve around seasons, timing and access to “fast ice” – sea ice connected to the Antarctic coast. Here, the sea ice persists long enough into summer for the penguins to rear their chicks successfully. But climate change is upending the penguins’ carefully tuned biological cycles. The crucial sea ice they depend on is melting too early, plunging the chicks from some colonies into the sea before they are fully fledged. In the latest bad news for these penguins, research by the British Antarctic Survey examined satellite images from 2009 to 2024 to assess fast-ice conditions at 16 emperor penguin colonies south of South America. They noted an average 22% fall in numbers across these colonies. That translates to a decrease of 1.6% every year. This rate of loss is staggering. As the paper’s lead author Peter Fretwell told the ABC, the rate is about 50% worse than even the most pessimistic estimates. Read more here