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What Happens When Emperor Penguins Lose Their Ice · How To Protect The Ocean

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  Emperor Penguins are running out of ice faster than expected.
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  What happens when your entire life depends on ice and that ice disappears
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  before your chicks can survive?
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  That's not a future scenario.
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  That's already happening to Emperor Penguins.
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  This is the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast, your weekday Ocean news update.
• 0:22
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• 0:27
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  Emperor penguins have one of the most rigid breeding
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  cycles in the animal kingdom.
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  They have courtship, which is during the Antarctic winter; egg
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  laying, which is from May to June; And then males incubate the eggs
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  for about 65 days without feeding.
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  Chicks hatch in the coldest conditions on earth and everything depends on one thing.
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  Stable sea ice lasting eight to nine months.
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  If that timing breaks, the entire reproductive cycle fails.
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  Imagine having that rigid of a reproductive cycle.
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  That is insane.
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  That is crazy to think about you know how you depend on environmental circumstances,
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  the environmental stability, and we are at a time where an environmental
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  stability is that it's lowest.
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  We're seeing changes happen each and every day.
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  Now think about this.
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  You have a male.
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  He does everything he needs to do to court his woman.
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  His court, his mate, he's trying to go in, he is trying to buddy up with her.
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  He is trying to like hang out, you know, they mate for life.
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  So
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  this is the one that he wants for the rest of his life.
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  On the females side, that's the female penguin that wants this male
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  penguin for the rest of their life.
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  They walk together, they go through the whole motions, and
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  they breed and they have an egg.
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  And that incubation period takes a long time.
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  And it all depends on how cold and how warmer things get.
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  But if it gets too warm or if the wind pattern is off or the snow
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  doesn't come, or things don't happen the way they're supposed to happen,
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  or you get more extreme storms, then that can throw off the entire cycle.
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  Think about when you don't feed for that long, 65 days.
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  I go two hours without food and I go crazy.
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  Imagine going 65 days without food.
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  That's an energy cost that is very demanding on the body to just stand
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  there and sit on an egg or make sure an egg does not hit the ice.
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  Imagine what that would do.
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  Compare it to somebody, like a flexible breeding species that
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  will actually have the ability to change and be able to handle change.
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  This is just not gonna go well for this breed, this species.
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  If it fails, everything fails.
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  That's a lot on this poor species.
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  That's a lot on someone an animal, a species that lives.
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  And the freezing cold for most of the year.
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  Emperor penguins just don't need ice.
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  They need fast ice.
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  They need sea ice attached to the continent.
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  So they need the strongest ice.
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  It's not just ice floats.
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  They need the strongest ice just to be on the safe side.
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  And you're probably gonna be like, why do they need that?
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  Because it provides stability for breeding colonies.
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  These are massive breeding colonies.
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  It keeps chicks safe from Ocean predators 'cause the Ocean predators
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  that they face are in the Ocean.
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  Orcas, leopard seals.
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  We went through them the last couple of episodes.
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  If you haven't listened to those, go to the last couple of episodes of a
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  previous two days and you'll be able to hear about orcas and leopard seals.
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  And of course they need stabilized 'cause it lasts long
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  enough for chick development.
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  Recent studies have shown that fast ice is now forming later.
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  And it's breaking up earlier and it's becoming less predictable.
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  That's not a good thing for a species that demands that stability for
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  the environment and for its land.
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  Imagine just kind of like walking around and all of a sudden the
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  land is just gone underneath you.
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  It just collapses.
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  That's really, really bad.
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  And I think when you lose that ice, that rapidly freezes, like that fast ice.
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  That pack ice eventually that's there for life apparently, but not anymore.
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  It starts to decay and it starts to go down.
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  And I think that's really what's happening here and that's what we're seeing a
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  degradation of, and a decrease of.
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  And that's scary.
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  That's really scary.
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  Now, before satellites, we had limited colony monitoring.
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  And I feel like now with the satellites we're starting to see more.
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  And I think there's been some really cool thing.
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  High resolution satellite imagery tracks the colonies near real time.
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  I believe it was Michelle La Rue, Dr. Michelle LaRue on the
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  podcast a number of years ago.
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  She's a great scientist.
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  She now lives in New Zealand.
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  She studies penguin.
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  She studies Antarctic colonies essentially.
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  I don't remember the exact numbers, but I remember from the interview
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  there were about four colonies they believe of emperor penguins that
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  were sitting there in Antarctica.
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  And then they were like, they notice it.
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  Basically, they look at satellite imagery of the scat profiles.
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  So when you have a dense population of emperor penguins, they're
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  gonna poop and they're gonna poop all in and around that area.
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  And that poop stains the ice.
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  And that poop can actually be seen from a satellite in space.
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  That's how much they poop.
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  And so when they looked around, they saw that it's not four colonies.
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  They actually saw 22 very densely circled scat marks, poop marks.
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  And they were able to track that there were actually 22 populations.
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  I don't know.
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  This was a long time ago.
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  This was in the mid 20 teens.
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  I don't know if they're right there anymore.
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  But when you start to have high resolution satellite imagery that's
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  tracking these colonies almost in your real time, depending on when you
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  get the pictures, they can detect whether colonies are failing or not.
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  So failure events that are happening across Antarctica.
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  And so in 2022 to 2024, research showed that the key finds what multiple colonies
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  experienced complete breeding failures.
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  An early ice breakup caused a hundred percent chick mortality
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  in some of those regions.
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  That's how scary we are seeing this change happen.
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  In two years, we saw multiple colonies experience complete breeding failure.
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  In some areas there were a hundred percent chick mortality.
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  I'm saying it twice for a reason.
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  It's not just a gradual decline, it's a sudden system failure.
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  These are not species that can handle change.
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  We already established that.
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  And they're seeing change constantly.
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  And so you look at like 22 colonies and now it's probably less than that.
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  That's a scary thought and it's not gonna get better.
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  How do we save these?
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  I have no idea.
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  We have to stop climate change to save these.
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  This is not something that is going to help these populations.
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  Recent modeling studies showed that up to 90% decline of emperor
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  penguin populations by 2100.
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  That's less than a century away, less than a century away, even
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  under moderate emission scenarios.
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  Why is this happening?
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  Because small changes in ice timing equals massive reproductive loss.
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  Penguins have low ability to relocate quickly.
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  There's not much place to go, folks.
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  It's really just a situation where you have to be where you have to be.
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  The ice is melting around you and you're getting smaller, smaller
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  areas, and these colonies are big.
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  You have more competition for sites, and until these colonies disappear, start
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  disappearing more, that's when you're gonna have a little bit more room.
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  But even then, it's not even gonna be that much room.
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  And then the recovery rates are pretty slow.
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  So that doesn't help either.
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  It just doesn't happen.
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  When you have a species that's long lived, it takes a while
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  for it to reach sexual maturity.
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  You start to get a slowdown in the population recovery.
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  And so when you have a slow down in the population recovery and you have all
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  these changes happen to a species that doesn't like change, you start to see
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  a drastic decline in their population.
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  Now, Antarctica, when you look at the ice and how it's being affected
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  by climate change, Antarctica is experiencing increased Marine heat waves.
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  So that's warmer Ocean temperatures and reduce sea ice extent.
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  So when you have a heat wave, that's where the water is being hot.
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  Not just at the surface, but pretty far down.
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  And then when the ice is at the surface and you have
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  warmer water, it's gonna melt.
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  That's just the way it goes.
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  It melts.
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  And you're not gonna have ice for very long after that.
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  It's really sad.
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  Like people keep talking about how climate change is not that big of a
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  deal, and it bothers me so much because they have no idea what's going on.
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  They have no idea what's going on.
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  In 2022 and 2023, record low Antarctic sea ice levels were observed.
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  And it was directly linked to colony collapse events.
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  That's how bad we are.
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  That's in a situation where we're seeing heat waves really
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  changing the entire planet.
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  We're seeing a hundred degree Fahrenheit sea surface temperature in Florida.
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  We're seeing rapidly increasing intensity of hurricanes in
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  the North American continents.
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  And then of course, we're seeing typhoons and cyclones doing the same thing.
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  Because the water's warmer.
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  And so that difference in pressure that it provides, we get some more intense storms.
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  It's really what it comes down to.
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  And then of course when you have heat that melts ice, you're getting
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  more fresh water in the system.
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  And that disrupts how salt water flows and what's capping the salt
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  water, and how that's gonna affect circulation in the long, long term.
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  It's not good, folks.
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  I don't mean to be depressed.
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  I don't, but this is just frustrating because we're hearing this all the time.
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  And then when you have emperor penguins, which are canaries in
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  the coal mine, essentially they're sentinel species, which means that
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  they signal a broader ecosystem health.
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  If they fail, ice dependent krill systems may also shift.
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  Krill is being massively overfished in Antarctic.
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  We're seeing a change in their population, a decline in their population.
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  But then we also see like, you know, for emperor penguins, like a predator prey
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  dynamics that will change and a southern Ocean stability that will be affected
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  because of climate change and because of this lack of ability to hold populations
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  and to keep stable essentially.
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  And so when we see krill fisheries declining, we're seeing whales decline
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  and we're seeing climate change affect that, it's just, it's a negative loop that
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  we continue to see happening over again.
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  And here's the hard truth.
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  You can't create sea ice and you can't move entire colonies
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  that depend on ice very easily.
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  But you can protect feeding areas.
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  And you can reduce additional stress like fishing and disturbance.
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  And then you can push for climate mitigation.
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  We can do all of these things.
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  That's what we can do.
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  That's what we have that ability to do that by pressuring
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  our governments to change.
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  In 2022, emperor penguins were proposed for protection under the
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  Endangered Species Framework in the US.
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  Emperor penguins.
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  But the protection without climate action has its limits.
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  And even now we're seeing less protection of endangered species.
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  We're seeing less protection of things that are affecting the
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  US and affecting other places.
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  Even in Canada, we're probably gonna start to see changes in that as well.
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  We're seeing changes in how DFO manages things in the environment because
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  of pipelines, because of fossil fuel development and so forth, because
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  the world is changing politically and economically to be frank.
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  And it's all being driven by this lack of science knowledge by this
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  push for greed for money and just lack of scientific understanding of
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  things that can help us in the future.
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  And it's really a lack of intelligence all the way around.
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  And I think it's a scary thought.
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  It really is a scary thought.
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  Now scientists are watching out for certain things.
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  So researchers are focusing on identifying certain climate refugia
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  areas where ice can persist for longer.
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  So areas, whether that's actually gonna be colder or not longer.
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  There may still be areas like that.
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  Scientists are gonna be tracking colony movement.
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  They're gonna be looking at monitoring adaptive behavior.
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  That's gonna be really important.
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  But the key question is, can Emperor penguins adapt fast enough?
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  Cause right now the data suggests that it's not.
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  And I think that's a scary thought.
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  It really is a scary thought, and it's not gonna stop until you and I act, until we
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  start engaging and electing our government representatives, our government officials
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  that will act for climate change, not for big business, not for fossil fuels.
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  Not for chemical companies, not for the companies that will just wanna make money.
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  This is for you who wants to survive, for you who wants to see the world do
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  well and the world be taken care of.
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  When we look at the final kind of thoughts here, emperor penguins
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  are not just losing the habitat.
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  They're losing the timing that makes their survival possible.
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  That's really what it comes down to.
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  And when that timing breaks, the system's gonna break.
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  And it's gonna be an overall break and something that we need to work on to act.
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  Now tomorrow we're gonna be covering ice and glaciers and pack ice and
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  so forth in Antarctica and how it's doing and where we're at.
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  But this is really important.
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  We've covered three different types of species this week.
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  Orcas, leopard seals, as well as emperor penguins.
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  We found there's not a lot of information on these species.
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  The information we do have does not suggest growth.
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  It suggests decline maybe other than the orcas, but it also a
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  lot of lack of understanding.
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  And in a time where we need a lot of environmental understanding.
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  We have the technology and we know what works and we have the solutions
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  and we're just not enacting them.
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  It's a very frustrating time to be someone who is for the Ocean.
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  And I think that's kind of sad.
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  It's frustrating.
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  If you wanna learn more and you want to know more about Antarctica,
• 13:03
  what it's like to work in Antartica and the work that's being done.
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  I have an interview coming up on Friday.
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  We're talking to Ocean Networks Canada that just went down there
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  this year in February I believe.
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  And they did a bunch of work.
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  They installed some monitoring systems to basically data
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  acquisition systems in Antarctica.
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  We're gonna hear all about what's like to work and the challenges and
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  everything like that that goes into it, and how to work in Antarctica.
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  It's gonna be a lot of fun.
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  But this one, I'm sorry that it wasn't like a better episode.
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  I wanted it to be more fun, but just the research that I found is just not fun.
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  It's is not fun in the poles.
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  And the Southern pole is no different than the North Pole, in this case.
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  So, but if you wanna learn more, follow How to Protect the Ocean
• 13:36
  so you don't miss what's happening tomorrow and the day after that.
• 13:39
  I want you to follow.
• 13:40
  I want you to learn 'cause that's the best way to start moving and start acting for
• 13:44
  the Ocean, is to learn about the Ocean.
• 13:46
  So thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the How
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  to Protect the Ocean Podcast.
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  I'm your host Andrew Lewin.
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  Have a great day.
• 13:52
  We'll talk to you tomorrow and happy conservation.